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Queen guitarist Brian May has revealed the moment that he learned that he, John Deacon and Roger Taylor would never play a gig with Freddie Mercury again.
The quartet played their final show together on August 9, 1986, at Knebworth, at the conclusion of their 26-date Magic tour, their first tour since their iconic performance at Live Aid. The following year, Freddie Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS.
At the time, Brian May recalls in a new interview with The Times, he was unaware that this would be the group’s final bow, but looking back, he believes that Freddie Mercury knew about his illness before the end of the tour.
“He came off stage at Knebworth and said: ‘I can’t do this any more,’ ” May recalls. “He did have a tendency to be dramatic, so we thought Freddie was just being Freddie, but I now realise he already knew the prognosis, which was grim.
“I remember reading about young men dying in America, and then we saw Freddie with these strange symptoms, so we put two and two together. It’s incredible that he carried on with such confidence and energy to the very end.”
Mercury died on November 24, 1991, aged 45.
“I was on my way to see him when I got the news,” drummer Roger Taylor tells The Times. “It really broke us up, and I don’t think John Deacon did cope. He went to pieces. He didn’t want to go on in the music industry after that.”
In the same interview, Brian May says that Queen will never tour again.
“I made a decision 18 months ago that I didn’t want to tour again,” he says. “A close family friend died when we were in the States, so I said to my tour manager, I’ll just nip home for a few days and come back. She looked me in the eyes and said, ‘You know you can’t do that.’ I love to play, I love to travel, but the trade-off is sacrificing your freedom. I have a wife [actress Anita Dobson], grandchildren and a lot of astrophysics I want to do, so I’m thinking maybe 50 years is enough.”
Last month, May revealed that he’s still weighing up the idea of an ABBA Voyage-style immersive avatar show for Queen.
In an interview with Absolute Radio, the guitarist was asked if he might consider working on a similar virtual concert residency for Queen.
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“Yeah, like the ABBA Voyage thing?” the guitarist responded. “It’s not really a hologram, but it’s an immersive experience, right? Yes, we looked at it very seriously, particularly after I saw the [Las Vegas] Sphere and what the Eagles did with the Sphere, which I thought was amazing. And I spent a lot of time planning out what I thought could be a Queen show.
“I’ve kind of backed off now because you can’t do it without massive use of A.I., with all the consequences of that,” he continued. “Now, in some ways, I don’t wanna be stealing the work of other people. If you’re stealing your own work, I’m not quite sure where I stand on it, ’cause you would be stealing from the Queen oeuvre, you know, which maybe is okay because that’s ours. But at the same time, you’re adding to the stresses that A.I. is putting on the world.
“So, I don’t know,” May admitted. “I’m not so keen as I was. I think it would be great to have a permanent place where people could go and feel like they’re seeing us play live in our peak, maybe all over the world, maybe at all points in time. The doors are open, but I don’t know if we’re gonna walk through.”
