Legendary Queen guitarist Brian May the best guitarist of all time by the British magazine Total Guitar
Regarding the title, May told the magazine, visibly moved, “I’m absolutely speechless. I’m blown away. I have to say this is completely unexpected. Obviously, I’m deeply touched that people feel this way about me. I’m under no illusions that, technically, I’m actually in the tree of great guitarists.”
“I think that tells me that what I did affected people, and that means a lot to me,” the artist continued. “I’ll never talk about being a great guitarist in the sense of, you know, a virtuoso. I think I just try to play from my heart and that’s all.”
The guitarist surpassed names like Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page , and Jimi Hendrix , who was at the top before May. Regarding this, he commented, “Oh my God! Well, I feel very humbled. Jimi is, of course, my number one. And I’ve always said that. To me, he’s still something superhuman. It’s like he really came from an alien planet, and I’ll never know how he did what he did. And every time I go back to Hendrix, I get emotional and stunned, and I feel that feeling again, like I’m going to give up playing guitar because I can’t handle it, or I’m really going to have to get really involved and try to do what’s in my own body and soul. I never stop learning from Jimi. Strangely enough, these days I rarely play his songs, but it’s all inside me anyway.”
Regarding another idol on this list, Jimmy Page, May also didn't hold back in praising one of his greatest inspirations, "He's almost my generation, but a little older, and we went to the same primary school, although he was, I think, two or three years ahead of me – and that's a lot when you're little. So I always looked up to him, I have to say, because he's kind of a role model for me. Strangely, we lived very close to each other back then."
“For me, he’s a master of invention, that’s what I would say. And he’s a great, great force in defining what heavy rock became when he was born,” May stated. “I never get tired of listening to those [Led] Zeppelin albums, and I never will. And it’s a funny feeling too, because we were kids trying to do our thing and hoping that one day we could be rock stars and live their lives, and listening to 'Communication Breakdown' and 'Good Times Bad Times', I remember having the feeling of 'Oh my God, he’s doing what I want to do and I have to give up, or else I have to try really hard'.”
Check out the magazine cover below.
