Don’t Stop Me Now is one of Queen’s greatest hits - with a blockbuster guitar solo from Brian May.
But as May admitted a 2024 interview with Total Guitar, that song was a real challenge for him as a guitarist.
“Worldwide, it’s a massive Queen song,” he said. “It wasn't in the beginning. It was a sleeper and it grew.”
But when Queen recorded Don’t Stop Me Now for their 1978 album Jazz, May found himself sidelined by singer Freddie Mercury, who wrote the song and had very definite ideas about how it should sound.
“It was quite funny,” May recalled. “Freddie saw it very much as a piano song, a la Elton [John]. Powerhouse piano, powerhouse vocal, and that's it.
“So I played lots of rhythm guitar on it, and Freddie still said, ‘No, no, no, no - it’s a piano song!’
“That was a bit disappointing, but he did say, ‘Well, it does need a solo. I need you to take over the vocal.’ Which is what the way we thought about things.
“I said, ‘Okay, give me a verse and let me see what I can do.’ And being in the studio and hearing it evolve, I could sort of hear the solo in my head before I actually picked up the guitar to do it.
“As very often with me, [the guitar solo] a kind of little diversion. It's a counter melody. It's not the actual tune of the verse.
“But it's something which goes with it, a sort of counterpoint, and it’s something I could sing. And it was just a question of transferring it to a guitar.
“It's very simple. But I do notice that [the solo] gets a reaction from people. It steps up the energy quite a bit, even from a song that's got high energy. So I'm happy with it the way it is.
“Every time the solo comes up live, I think, well, actually I can't do much better than that! So I tend to play it more or less as it is on the record - with little variations.
“I feel like the audience is singing along to it, and it would be disappointing to them if I didn't play it!”
