There are not that many guitars in the favored position of Brian May’s Red Special. I mean there you have Gibson Les Paul, it’s a classic that everybody loves and recognize, you have a Tele, a Strat, but let’s face it, everybody can recognize the Red Special.
Red special became a brand, a guitar that made history because of ONE SINGLE MAN, Brian May!
There are so many famous Les Paul players, so many fantastic Strat or Telecaster players but, hey, there is only one that made this guitar famous, and that one is Brian May.
You know, in Romania, after 1989, when music and western culture suddenly bloomed, there were a few musical currents, like you were either a rocker, a dance music fan, a disco(OK, I think it was too late for this even in Romania), etc, or you were a…Depeche Mode fan!!
There were so many bands playing rock, so many bands that played dance, pop, disco, but hey, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BAND playing, well, Depeche Mode, right? And still, this started a whole new category for music lovers. I paid some thinking over the years how this could happen and I still can’t explain it.
Somehow the same thing here with Red Special. One man, one guitar, one brand facing the rest of the world. A fair situation, I’d say.
…and when you think the actual reason for this post is the official site of Brian May guitars, www.brianmayguitars.co.uk…
Enjoy, Stumble and comment!
Tennyson Williams
October 15th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
I like Depeche Mode and I like Brian May even more. Yes, the Red Special is just iconic as the man who plays it now, but also it has a lot to do with the man himself and amazing sound that he developed. I recently saw a video of May where he was demonstrating his approach to using delay, and it was really revolutionary stuff. Ways of using it that I had never thought about before.
Ovidiu
October 15th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Of course, a great personality that gets involved in music so deep as he did, marks the music forever. He created his style and his sound probably because this is who he is, did you notice that great artists make no effort when creating fantastic art works? It comes from their heart, I guess that this guitar and Brian May’s almost trademarked sound came just because he felt it, without making too much of an effort to be different.