Brian May says Freddie Mercury would still be performing with Queen today if he were alive

12 July 2021, 10:58

Queen's Brian May has said Freddie Mercury would still be performing with the band 50 years on.

Brian May thinks Freddie Mercury would still be playing with Queen if he were alive today.

Freddie died of bronchial pneumonia resulting from AIDS in 1991, when he was just 45-years-old.

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But now Brian, 73, has said the rock star would still be a part of the band if he hadn’t passed away.

“He would still be saying ‘Oh I need to do my solo stuff’, but he would be coming back to the family to do what we do,” he told Simon Mayo in a recent interview.

The star continued: “The funny thing is I feel more and more that he is kind of with us in a way, maybe I’m getting to be an old romantic, but Freddie is in my day every day.

“He’s always in my thoughts and I can always feel what he’d say in a certain situation, oh what would Freddie think, ah he’d like this, he’d laugh at this or whatever.

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“He’s so much part of the legacy we created, that will always be the case.”

May went on to say he has found it difficult to come to terms with the death of his friend, even 30 years on.

The guitarist said: “You never finish grieving if you lose a family member, and Freddie was a family member, but you get to the point where you’re at peace and you think, My God the guy had a great life.

“We created wonderful stuff together that is still making people happy, and there’s an acceptance there and a joy that it all happened. How amazing that it all happened.”

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This comes after Queen re-released a special edition of their Greatest Hits album.

The 40th-anniversary version includes a collector’s edition of the CD and a limited edition cassette available in five different colours.

And it’s even more good news for Queen fans as May recently confirmed he and Adam Lambert have been working on new music.

While the artists have been playing together for over a decade, they haven't recorded anything new since The Cosmos Rocks with Paul Rogers in 2008.

According to Contact Music, when asked about a potential new record, May told Guitar Player Magazine: "I always say, 'I don't know.' It would have to be a very spontaneous moment.

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"Actually, Adam, Roger and myself have been in the studio trying things out, just because things came up.

"But up to this point we haven't felt that anything we've done has hit the button in the right way.

"So it's not like we're closed to the idea, it's just that it hasn't happened yet."