Firstly we have to sadly report that, due to the current Covid-19 pandemic, the launch date of the updated and refreshed edition of the book ‘Brian May’s Red Special‘ has been put back until October.

I should have done this months ago, but here are some details as to what’s actually new in the revised edition.

Two new chapters

Revisiting The Past – This chapter deals with and details the repairs and maintenance that has been carried out on the Red Special since its first major refurbishment, undertaken by Greg Fryer in 1998. A new fingerboard dot and a replacement machinehead are just two of the trials the guitar has had to go through, and the infamous ‘Lost Tone Knob‘ is also discussed.

From Feltham to Hollywood – In this chapter Brian discusses the impact the film 2018 film Bohemian Rhapsody had has, and he also goes into detail regarding some of the prop Red Specials that were built especially for the film. There’s also a fascinating interview with Gwilym Lee, who played Brian in the film. Imagine if you had to tell Brian he was playing the solo to Bo Rhap incorrectly… it happened.

Updated Gallery chapter

Previously titled ‘Red Special In Production‘, we’ve added to and updated the selection of commercially-available RS guitars, and we’ve dug out some guitars rescued from Brian’s archive that have rarely been seen up close before. There are also a few more Guild models plus a newbie or two from BMG .

The first five chapters remain largely the same as the original edition, although Brian has added some details to certain parts. It’s great fun re-reading the chapters to find the new information.

There’s also a new author’s picture of me. Fame at last…

Here are some examples of the May’s hand-drawn documents.

 

 

 

Here’s an example of a so-called Guild Pre-Prototype that was made in 1992. In the Guild timeline it sits somewhere between the BHM1 and BM01 and probably its most famous appearance is on the longform video Live at the Brixton Academy that was released in 1993. Brian still owns the guitar and it appears in the updated Gallery section of the Red Special book, which will be out soon.

 

Although many rock fans believe that the whole guitar was fashioned from an old fireplace, in reality the only part of the Red Special’s build to be sourced from such a thing was the mahogany Brian used for the neck, apocryphally reclaimed from a mantlepiece. He says he used a tenon saw to cut around a template and took it the rest of the way with “…planes, knives, chisels and a lot of sandpaper. I gradually just whittled it away until it felt good”.

This is what was left after the neck had been hand-shaped and, from this angle, it’s easy to see not only the unmistakeable red hue of the mahogany but also the neo-legendary damage by woodworms. Brian filled similar holes in the wood he used for the neck with matchsticks and, peering at the Red Special up close, it’s almost impossible to see the marks… almost!

The mahogany, secured as it is through the very heart of the Red Special, forms an interegral part of Brian’s tone and contributes to the guitar’s ability to unfailingly sustain on cue, one of the main goals of the build.

 

Here’s a shot of the Red Special‘s scratchplate, one that’s at a slightly different angle to that of the image featured in the book. It shows not only the bevelled edges and modest width of the material, but also the three pickup surrounds and the wounds of over 50 years in rock ‘n roll.

A lovely shot of the Red Special on the day it was finished, propped up on a chair in living room of the May family home, Feltham, October 1964.

Note the original features; the headstock logo, those quaint radio knobs, the guitar’s first tuners and the orginal pickups. This also shows the vibrato arm in its original configuration. When compared with images from the earliest Queen gigs, it’s far straighter here than it became, developing a kink that was adopted for the Burns and BMG guitar’s vibrato arms of several decades later.

Two images of the 12th fret dot inlays of the Red Special. The contrast of the second has been adjusted to highlight the fine cracks that have appeared in the central dot, one that was actually replaced by Andrew Guyton during his 2016 restoration of the guitar. It was, by all accounts, ‘wafer thin’.

And here are some of the original buttons that the teenage Brian ‘sourced’ from his mother’s sewing box during the build. They’re all either pearl or mother of pearl and Brian meticulously shaped each one of the Red Special’s 16 fingerboard dots by hand. He recalls that he could get ‘two or three’ from each pearl button.

Here’s a great shot of the contraption that Harold and Brian May made – from scratch, of course – upon which they wound the three pickups that were originally fitted to the Red Special. Sadly, they didn’t quite do what Brian wanted, so he shelled out for a trio of Burns Tri-Sonics and the rest is history.