'I still have the pain': Queen guitarist Brian May recalls going solo after Freddie Mercury's death

It's been almost three decades since Queen's Brian May ventured out on his own with his debut solo album, Back to the Light. When he recently reissued the record for its 30th anniversary, he was forced to reconsider his connection to the unhappy young man he was in 1992.

"I thought I would feel paternal towards that boy that I'm looking back on," May said in an interview with Q guest host Ali Hassan. "But actually, as soon as I immersed myself in it, I felt [like] no, this is still me. I am still that boy…. I still have the pain. I still have the yearning. I still have the feelings of unfulfillment."

The initial release of Back to the Light culminated a period of personal upheaval for May. Just a year before in 1991, he experienced the death of two people close to him: his father and Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury. On top of that, he was still reeling from a divorce.

"The boy that made that record was not in a good state," he said. "[He] was in a very depressed state because he was losing Freddie, he was losing his dad, he was losing his marriage [and] he was losing the band that he'd put all his energies into. It was a bleak time."

For May, the solo album was a way of reaching out to others who, like him, were in a dark place and looking for the light. He said creating it was partly for his own therapy and partly to find a new identity for himself outside one of the biggest rock bands in the world.

Mercury gave May his blessing to go solo

May felt uneasy about going solo until he wrote the lead single on Back to the Light — a track called Driven by You, which he was challenged to create for a Ford car commercial in 1991. He played the song for Mercury as he and his fellow band members normally did when they had a new demo.

"I said, 'What do you think? Maybe it should be a Queen track? Do you want to sing it?'" May remembered asking Mercury. "And he said, 'Darling, you sing it beautifully. I don't think I should sing it. I think you should go with it.'"

After complimenting him on his vocals, May said Mercury initiated a "strange conversation" he hadn't expected to have. May had worried about his friend's failing health, but he had never brought up the possibility that Mercury's time on Earth might have been coming to a close — so the Queen frontman brought it up himself.

"Freddie said, 'Look, I don't know how long I'm going to be around and I know you're probably feeling anxious about putting this out because you might be feeling it's disrespectful to me,'" recalled May.

"He said, 'You shouldn't worry about it…. We are here, we're doing what we always do.  Business as usual. We're Queen as long as we can [be]. But you should be thinking about your solo career because that's going to come up. And this is a great way to start.'"

Having Mercury's blessing to go solo was exactly the confidence boost May needed. Driven by You charted in both Europe and North America, peaking at number six on the U.K. singles chart.

"As soon as I delivered this [song] and it was a hit, I thought, OK, I can do this. I can make a track and make an album," said May. "It's going to crystallize the emotions that I'm going through — the journey that I'm on — and it's going to be an album which means something to me and to people who listen to me."

WATCH | Official video for Driven by You:

Losing Mercury and learning to cope

The night May recorded his single Nothin' But Blue, he had an intuition that Mercury was close to death. Although he never admitted it at the time, he wrote the track about and for Mercury.

"I had Freddie in my mind and I just had this feeling he was about to go," said May. "And all I could think about was what might have happened, what might have been — and it was now not going to happen."

Freddie was like family…. Losing him as a family member is something that never goes away.- Brian May

While May has never quite gotten over his grief, he has been able to find peace with it. "Freddie was like family," he said. "It was definitely a family that we had. And losing him as a family member is something that never goes away."

May added that the emotions that accompany grief are often complex. He said that he and Queen drummer Roger Taylor first went through a stage of denial, refusing to talk about the band or even acknowledge they had ever been a part of it. Then feelings of anger and frustration kicked in at the thought of being left behind. "It's not the emotions that you really expect," May said.

While reissuing Back to the Light may have forced May to consider the similarities between the way he was then and the way he is now, he said his present feelings are much more positive. 

"I think of Freddie every day, but it's good," he said. "It's a good feeling of pride that we had those great times together, that we created all those things together [and] that we had the great friendship that we had."

Listen to the full conversation with Brian May near the top of this page.

Written by Vivian Rashotte. Produced by Vanessa Nigro.