Brian May

At 76 years old, Brian May has this physical status:

Musical career

In 1968, May formed Smile. Tim Staffell as the lead singer and bassist, as well as drummer Roger Taylor, who later went on to play for Queen. Staffell's band lasted just two years from 1968 to 1970, leaving the band with a catalog of nine songs. On December 22, 1992, Smile would reunite for several songs. "I Were a Carpenter" and "If I Were a Carpenter" were topliners for Taylor's band The Cross, along with May and Staffell. Various other songs were also performed that night.

May was mainly the lower-range backing vocalist in Queen's three-part vocal harmonies. He sings lead vocals on several of his albums, including "I Want It All" and "Flash's Theme's Last Word", "She Makes Me" and "All Dead, All Dead"; "Work" and "Flash's Theme"'s first verse, "Baby's Theme"), and "Leaving Home Ain't Easy" and "Lives Me" on "Some Day One Day" and "Theme"; "She Makes

May used to write songs for the band, "We Will Rock You," "I Want It All," "I Want It All," "Man's Song," "Brighton Rock," "Now I'm Here," "I Want To Die Younger")," "Good Lives" and "Save Me" as well as "Brighton Rock," "You Will Be Here"), "We Will Die Young," "Now I'm Here," "We Will Rock You" and "The Good Die Young")

Mercury rang his band members and suggested writing a song together at the Live Aid concert in 1985. The result, "One Vision," which was basically May on music (the Magic Years documentary explains how he came up with the opening section and the basic guitar riff); the four band members co-wrote the lyrics.

The band had decided that none of the songs would be credited to the entire band, regardless of who had been the main writer on their 1989 debut album, The Miracle. Interviews and musical evaluations can help to determine each member's input on each track. May created "I Want It All" for the album, as well as "Scandal" (based on his British press frustrations). He did not contribute much to the rest of the album. However, he was instrumental in the creation of "Party" and "Was It's Worth It" (both Mercury's works) and created the "Chinese Torture" guitar riff.

Innuendo was the queen's reincarnation of Innuendo. In most cases, May's contributions increased, but more in terms of arranging than actual writing. He was involved in the design of the heavy solo on the championship track. He arranged the solo for "These Are the Days of Our Lives," a song for which the four of them selected the keyboard parts together and sang of vocal harmony to "I'm Going Slightly Mad" and composed the solo for "These Are the Days of Our Lives."

"Headlong" and "I Can't Live With You" were two songs May had written for his first solo album, "I Can't Live With You" and "I Can't Live With You" ended up on the Queen project. "The Show Must Go On" was his other composition, and he was the primary composer. He has been in charge of the remastering of Queen albums and various DVD and hit releases in recent years. He and drummer Roger Taylor appeared on tour for the first time in 18 years as "Queen," alongside Free/Bad Company vocalist Paul Rodgers. The band, who was billed as "Queen + Paul Rodgers," appeared in South Africa, Europe, Aruba, Japan, and North America, and later this year, they released The Cosmos Rocks, a new album with Rodgers. A major tour helped this album.

In May 2009, Paul Rodgers joined the band. Adam Lambert, a fellow vocalist, was not selected until 2011. Adam Lambert and Queen Elizabeth II toured Europe in 2012 and 2014 and 2015. The 2016 Festival Tour was the most popular outing. On Eve 2014 and New Year's Day 2015, the Big Ben New Year concert was also performed on New Year's Eve 2014 and New Year's Day 2015.

During 1983, several members of the Queen explored side projects. May was in a studio with Eddie Van Halen on April 21 and 22, with no intention of recording anything. The result of the two-day session was a mini album titled Star Fleet Project, which was not intended to be announced. May contributed to the album Feedback 86 by playing guitar on the track "Cassandra" and providing guitar and vocals for the song "Slot Machine," which May co-wrote. Despite being released in 1986, the album was not released commercially until 2000. May collaborated with actress Anita Dobson on her first album, most notable for the song "Anyone Can Fall in Love," which added lyrics to the EastEnders theme tune and debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart in August 1986. May and Dobson were married in 2000. May contributed guitar solos to the album "When Death Calls" on Black Sabbath's 14th album Headless Cross and "Blow The House Down" on the album Gatecrashing. Both albums were released in 1989.

May chose to live as fully as possible after Mercury's death in November 1991, first by completing his solo album, Back to the Light, and then touring around the world to market it. In press interviews, he frequently stated that this was the only form of self-prescribed therapy he could recall. "It was unquestionably a devastating and tragic blow to lose someone he was so close to." Def Leppard lead singer Joe Elliott said, "It was definitely an enormous and devastating blow to lose someone he was so close to." I know it ripped the heart out of Brian, but after that, he was in great spirits." Back to the Light performed the single "Too Much Love Will Kill You," which he performed as a songwriter with Frank Musker and Elizabeth Lamers. On the Queen album Made in Heaven, a version of Freddie Mercury's vocals was later released, and the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically & Lyrically was named in 1996.

The Brian May Band officially formed in late 1992. When May appeared in the Guitar Legends guitar festival in Seville, Spain, May had partially formed an earlier version of the band for 19 October 1991. May was featured on vocals and lead guitar, Cozy Powell on drums and percussion, Mike Moran and Rick Wakeman on keyboards, and Maggie Ryder, Miriam Stockley and Chris Thompson on backing vocals. May was the original line-up, with Powell on vocals and lead guitar, Powell on drums and percussion, Michael Casswell on guitar, Neil Murray on bass, and Ryder, Stockley, and Thompson on backing vocals. This version of the band appeared on five dates only during the South American support tour (supporting The B-52's and Joe Cocker).

May made some changes afterwards, but the group never quite gelled. Jamie Moses was brought on to assist Mike Caswell, who was recalled on board. Catherine Porter and Shelley Preston replaced the backing vocalists, Ryder, Stockley, Thompson, and Thompson. This new Brian May Band line-up began touring the United States on February 23, 1993, supporting Guns N' Roses and headlining a few dates. The tour covered dates in North America, Europe, and Japan. The band held a show in London on June 15, 1993, notably Live at the Brixton Academy. May would perform a few lines from "Love of My Life" on the show, and then invite the audience to join in. May returned to the studio with fellow Queen band members Roger Taylor and John Deacon to work on tracks that became Made in Heaven, the final Queen studio album. Mercury performed Mercury's solo album demos and final recordings, which he managed to perform in the studio after the album Innuendo was finished, and the band finished the album in both musically and vocally. Following Mercury's death, Deacon and May's album debuting in 1992, but it was postponed until a later date due to other commitments.

In 1995, May began working on a new solo album of covers tentatively titled Heroes, in addition to being on various film and television projects and other collaborations. May has since shifted the focus from covers to more focused on those collaborations and new content. Spike Edney, Cozy Powell, Neil Murray, and Jamie Moses were among the songs included in Another World, and they were mainly aimed at Spike Edney, Cozy Powell, Neil Murray, and Jamie Moses. Cozy Powell was killed in a car crash on the M4 motorway near Bristol, England, on April 5, 1998. This performance caused an unexpected halt to The Brian May Band's forthcoming tour, who now needs a new drummer on short notice. Steve Ferrone was brought on to assist May with recording the drum tracks and joining the band on the first stage promotional tour in Europe before the world tour. Eric Singer was promoted to his position on the 1998 world tour after the early promotional tour.

T. E. Conway was the briefing of a brief'service act' during the 1998 tour. Before May's 'arrival', Conway (Brian May in a wig and colorful suit portraying a teddy boy crooner) would perform many 1950s rock and roll standards. To some pressings of the Another World album, T. E. Conway's special edition, Retro Rock Special, was attached. At the end of the tour, the Conway character was discarded. May performed lead guitars on the Guns N' Roses song "Catcher in the Rye" on Chinese Democracy in May 1999, but his appearance was missing from the album by the time it was released in 2008.

May has appeared as a solo artist, as part of an ensemble, and infrequently as Queen with Roger Taylor from his debut in 1998. He appeared on "Overkill" at Brixton Academy as a guest artist on the occasion on October 22, 2000. May performed "God Save the Queen" from the roof of Buckingham Palace on Sunday as part of the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II commemorations, with the performance appearing on the 30th Anniversary DVD version of A Night at the Opera. On the Spider-Man 2 soundtrack in 2004, May performed guitar on the song "Someone to Die For."

He was named on the Queen's birthday list of 2005 as a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire "for contributions to the music industry and for charitable causes." He appeared on the song Il mare... for Italian singer Zucchero Fornaciari on his album Zu & Co., and he performed in the Royal Albert Hall in London in May 2004, alongside the other Italian bluesman guests. In 2007, May was a celebrity attender at Twickenham Stadium's Genesis reunion concert. Phil Collins, a frontman from May and Genesis, performed together on two occasions, at The Prince's Trust Rock Gala in 1988 and the Party at the Palace in 2002, when Collins had played drums with the Queen. In 2011, he contributed to a Collins for FHM feature, lauding him as "a brilliant guy and an amazing drummer."

Since being cast in the film We Will Rock You, May worked extensively with stage actress and singer Kerry Ellis. Anthems (2010), a sequel to her extended play Wicked in Rock (2008), as well as appearing with Ellis at several public performances—playing guitar with her. In exchange for the use of drummer John Miceli, he played guitar solo to Meat Loaf's Hang Cool, Teddy Bear album. In 2009, May and Elena Vidal published A Village Lost and Found: Scenes in Our Village. The book is an annotated collection of stereoscopic photographs taken by Victorian era photographer T. R. Williams. It contained a focusing stereoscope. As a child, May became a fan of stereoscope photographs, and she first encountered Williams' work in the late 1960s. May began a hunt to find the exact location of the Scenes in Our Village photographs in 2003. He had identified the village of Hinton Waldrist in Oxfordshire as the village of Hinton Waldrist in 2004.

On the season finale of American Idol, with champion Kris Allen and runner-up Adam Lambert providing a vocal duet on May 20. May appeared on The X Factor in November 2009, with Queen and the contestants assisting the contestants, and then performed "Bohemian Rhapsody." May established "Save Me" in 2010 to campaign against any proposed reversal of the British fox hunting ban and increase animal rights in the United Kingdom. In February 2011, May was revealed that the tour would be headed by Kerry Ellis, who appeared on 12 dates around the UK in May 2011.

May and Taylor, the founder and former lead singer of Free and Bad Company, announced at the end of 2004 that they would reunite and return to touring in 2005. Rodgers will be "featured with" Queen and Paul Rodgers, not replacing the late Freddie Mercury, according to Brian May's website. John Deacon, the former president of the United States, will not be participating.

Queen and Paul Rodgers embarked on a world tour between 2005 and 2006, the first leg being Europe and the second, Japan and the United States in 2006. The Queen received the inaugural VH1 Rock Honors at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May and Taylor, who were joined by the Foo Fighters to perform a selection of Queen songs. May reported on August 15, 2006, on August 15, 2006, that Queen + Paul Rodgers would begin recording their first studio album in October, but at a "unknown location." The Cosmos Rocks album was released in Europe on September 12th, 2008, and in the United States on October 28th. The band began a tour of Europe and parts of the United States, opening on Kharkiv's freedom square in front of 350,000 Ukrainian spectators. Later in the year, the show in Ukraine was later released on DVD. On May 12, 2009, Queen and Paul Rodgers officially broke up. Rodgers did not rule out the possibility of working together again.

Lady Gaga revealed on 18 April 2011 that May will perform guitar on her album "You and I" which was released on May 23rd. At the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards held at Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, May joined Gaga on stage during the performance of "You and I." May performed with Tangerine Dream at the Starmus Festival in Tenerife in June 2011, marking the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's first spaceflight.

On the 26th of August 2011, May performed "We Will Rock You" and "Welcome to the Black Parade" with the rock band My Chemical Romance. May performed at a "intimate" 100 Club show with support from Dark Stars on October 10th. May, a long-time fan of the band, appeared onstage with The Darkness, including Queen's "Took My Mother Down" at the Hammersmith Apollo on the company's subsequent "comeback" tour.

Queen received the Global Icon Award at the 2011 MTV Europe Music Awards on November 6th, which Katy Perry presented to Brian May. "The Show Must Go On," "We Will Rock You," and "We Are the Champions" concluded the awards ceremony, with Adam Lambert on vocals. Both supporters and critics expressed admiration for the project, which culminated in questions about future projects together. On August 11 and 12, 2012, Queen + Adam Lambert appeared in two shows at the Hammersmith Apollo, London. Within 24 hours of tickets going on sale, both shows were sold out. On July 14, a new London date was added. Queen + Lambert appeared in Kyiv, Ukraine, on June 30th at a joint concert with Elton John for the Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation. The Queen appeared with Lambert on 3 July 2012 at Moscow's Olympic Stadium in Moscow, and on July 7, 2012 at the Municipal Stadium in Wroclaw, Poland.

May appeared on N-Dubz frontman Dappy's solo album "Rockstar" in January 2012, delivering "rumbling guitar riffs that culminate in an empathetic solo." For BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge, the two stars also collaborated on a live broadcast of "We Will Rock You."

On August 12, 2012, Queen Elizabeth appeared at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. May performed as part of the "Brighton Rock" solo before being joined by Taylor and solo artist Jessie J for a "We Will Rock You" set performance. May appeared at the Sunflower Jam charity concert at the Royal Albert Hall on September 16, 2012, along with bassist John Paul Jones (of Led Zeppelin), drummer Ian Paice (of Deep Purple), and singer Bruce Dickinson (of Iron Maiden).

May was one of the celebrities featured in a week of voicing God in Monty Python's 1975 film Monty Python's musical adaptation of Monty Python's Monty Python's 1975 film Monty Python's "The Musical Version of Monty Python's Monty Python's Monty Python's 1975 film Monty Python's Monty Python's "The Holy Grail" in the West End. May performed guitar on the end credits song "One Voice" from the film A Dog Named Gucci in 2015. Norah Jones, Aimee Mann, Susanna Hoffs, Lydia Loveless, Neko Case, and Kathryn Calder appear in the album. Dean Falcone, who wrote the film's score, produced it. On Record Store Day, "One Voice" was launched, with proceeds from the single's sales going to benefit animal charities.

May inducted Def Leppard into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 29, 2019. In April 2019, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, a contemporary metal band, and blues artist Kenny Shepherd, re-recorded a new version of "Blue on Black" in support of the Gary Sinise Foundation. The artists banded together to re-create the classic song that Shepherd co-written. At a Mott the Hoople show at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, he performed "All the Young Dudes" with Def Leppard's Joe Elliott at the end of the month.

Not long after appearing with American Idol finalists Kris Allen and Adam Lambert during the program's season finale in 2009, May and Taylor began wondering about the future of Queen after the group's amicable split with frontman Paul Rodgers. Queen was awarded with the 2011 MTV Europe Music Award for the first year, which was honoured by May. Queen performed a short set with Lambert as part of the program, garnering a largely positive response. Soon, rumors regarding Lambert's collaboration emerged, with the three countries announcing a short summer tour of Europe, including three dates at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, as well as shows in Ukraine, Russia, and Poland.

Since the three performers appeared together at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas on September 20th, the collaboration was revived in 2013. On Good Morning America, five months later, Taylor and Lambert announced a 19-date summer tour of North America. Five dates were soon available due to ticket sales. Shows in Australia and New Zealand were announced in May 2014, as well as festival performances in South Korea and Japan. In early 2015, the tour was extended to the United Kingdom and parts of Europe. In September 2015, the group appeared in South America for the first time since 1985, with Queen's first appearance at the Rock in Rio Festival.

The Queen + Adam Lambert 2016 Summer Festival Tour took place in Europe and Asia in 2016. On June 12, England's Isle of Wight Festival came to an end as a tribute to the victims of the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida earlier this year. For the first time in front of 58,000 people, the performers appeared at the Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv, Israel, on September 12th. The group appeared in the MGM Park Theater in Las Vegas in September 2018. Despite the fact that the partnership is still active, there are currently no plans to record a studio album, although the three artists are keen to do so in the future. Because of the global COVID-19 pandemic, King + Adam Lambert's touring dates were postponed until 2021.

Queen + Adam Lambert held the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II on June 4, 2022, outside Buckingham Palace. May performed a three-song set in front of the Victoria Memorial Museum as they opened with "We Will Rock You," which had been introduced in a comedy segment in which the Queen and Paddington Bear tapped their tea cups to the beat of the song.

Scientific career

May studied physics and mathematics at Imperial College London, graduating with a BSc (Hons) degree and an ARCS in physics, as a member of the Upper Second-Class Honours. He studied for a PhD degree at Imperial College from 1970 to 1974, discovering sunlight on the Solar System's plane from interplanetary dust and the velocity of dust. When Queen began to have international success in 1974, he discarded his doctoral studies but nevertheless co-authored two peer-reviewed research papers, which were based on his observations at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife.

May re-registered for his doctorate at Imperial College in October 2006, a year before he expected it to complete. May had to review the research on zodiacal dust produced during the intervening 33 years, which included the finding of the zodiacal dust bands by NASA's IRAS satellites. The revised thesis (titled "A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud") was accepted in September 2007, nearly 37 years after it had started. He was able to submit his thesis only after a lack of study during the intervening years, and has characterized the subject as one that was hot again in the 2000s. He investigated radial velocity in his doctoral studies by using an absorption spectroscopy and doppler spectroscopy of zodiacal light using a Fabry–Pérot interferometer based at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife. Jim Ring, Ken Reay, and Michael Rowan-Robinson's later stages supervised his studies. He graduated from Imperial College's awards ceremony held in the Royal Albert Hall on May 14th, 2008.

May was appointed a Visiting Researcher in Imperial College in October 2007 and he maintains his interest in astronomy and collaboration with the Imperial Astrophysics Group. Bang! co-author Sir Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott are co-authors. The Complete History of the Universe and The Cosmic Tourist. May appeared on the 700th episode of The Sky at Night hosted by Sir Patrick Moore, as well as Chris Lintott, Jon Culshaw, Professor Brian Cox, and Royal Martin Rees, who was also on the panel, told Brian May, "I don't know a scientist who looks like Isaac Newton." On January 8, 2013, May was also a participant in the BBC's Stargazing Live's first episode.

On November 17, 2007, May was elected Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University, and he was rewarded with an honorary fellowship from the university for his contributions to astronomy and contributions to the public's understanding of science. He served in the role until 2013. Brianmay, an asteroid whose name was not known until he was discovered on June 18, 2008, presumably inspired by Patrick Moore's provisional designation of 1998 BM30).

May co-founded Asteroid Day with Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, B612 Foundation COO Danica Remy, and German filmmaker Grigorij Richters. Asteroid Day is a worldwide awareness campaign in which people from around the world come together to learn about asteroids and what we can do to shield our planet. May was a guest at the 2016 Starmus Festival, where he performed with composer Hans Zimmer on stage. Beyond The Horizon: A Tribute To Stephen Hawking.

May was announced as a science team collaborator at the New Horizons Pluto flyby NASA press conference on July 17, 2015 at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, as a science team member. "You have inspired the world," Trump told the panel. May performed an updated version of his "New Horizons" commemoratatory song from December 31 to January 1, 2019. He worked on the first stereoanaglyph based on photographs of (486958) Arrokoth that were captured by the spacecraft as part of May's mission as a collaborator with NASA's science team on the New Horizons mission.

In 2019, he was given the Lawrence J. Burpee Medal of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society for his contributions to the field of geography.

In 2020, he was part of a group that provided the stereography images of numerical simulations of asteroid explosions and re-accumulations in a peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications by Michel, P. et al. (2020) presenting a scenario of the asteroids' formation (1011955) Bennu and (162173) Ryugu, respectively, investigated by NASA OSIRIS-REx and JAXA Hayabusa2 probes respectively. He was given the JAXA Hayabusa2 Honor Award for his efforts in creating stereoscopic photos of Ryugu.

In a publication in the peer-reviewed journal Icarus by DART and Hera team members in 2021, he contributed stereography photos of the structural stability of double asteroid (65803) Didymos, the object of NASA DART and ESA Hera missions. He is also on the advisory board of the NEO-MAPP project (Near-Object Modelling and Payloads for Protection), which is also funded by the European Union.

Professor Brad Gibson of the EA Milne Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Hull awarded an honorary Doctor of Science honoris causa in 2022. Since he was unable to attend in person, he attended the graduation ceremony via video connection. May was given the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication at the Starmus IV festival in Yerevan, Armenia, in September 2022.

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