Some more relics that were considered for inclusion in the book ‘Brian May’s Red Special’.

Click on the picture to enlarge.

The small brown box just below the glass is labelled ‘Bri’s Continuity Tester c. 1959’, while just to the left of the laptop is a plastic bag labelled ‘Red wooden dot taken from Red Special – 5th fret marker’ on 15th January 1998, presumably by Greg Fryer.

There’s also a box of homemade tools including the ‘template for fretboard curvature’, a collection of pickup surrounds, some modern Burns bass Tri-Sonics and a further box of screws and wires that were replaced on 3rd June 1998 during repairs, again, we presume, by Greg Fryer.

By all means share this photo, but please credit The Red Special.com should you do so.

Don’t miss Simon’s six-part blog that goes behind the scenes of the book in much more detail

For part one click here
For part two click here
For part three click here
For part four click here
For part five click here
For part six click here

Here’s the second exclusive shot of various parts of the Red Special, taken during the dismantling of the guitar for the book ‘Brian May’s Red Special’.

This is the somewhat substantial nut and washer array that secures one end of the Red Special’s truss rod. It’s hooked around a hefty bolt (not shown here) that goes through the body and is secured by these unassuming pieces. They remain from the original build…

By all means share this photo, but please credit The Red Special.com should you do so.

Don’t miss Simon’s six-part blog that goes behind the scenes of the book in much more detail

For part one click here
For part two click here
For part three click here
For part four click here
For part five click here
For part six click here

As a treat to help lift the dark clouds of Blue Monday, here’s the Red Special in a state of undress. It’s an outtake from the photo session that provided incredible images that formed the heart of the ‘Brian May’s Red Special’ book.

The screws that secure the mahogany neck to the guitar’s oak insert are clearly visible, as are the contacts of the middle pickup, one of three that Brian made and wound before discovering that Burns Tri-Sonics did a far better job.

We can also see that, in the guitar’s dim and distant past, the bridge pickup has been moved back towards the bridge a couple of mm and a rubber base has also been included. Greg Fryer applied the copper shielding to the control cavity, and we can also see how thin the mahogany veneer is atop the lighter-coloured blockboard.

This photo, snapped by co-author Simon Bradley, was obviously taken before Andrew Guyton‘s more recent restoration and we’ll be posting a few more shots like this over the coming weeks and months, so keep checking back to www.theredspecial.com.

By all means share this photo, but please credit The Red Special.com should you do so.

Don’t miss Simon’s six-part blog that goes behind the scenes of the book in much more detail

For part one click here
For part two click here
For part three click here
For part four click here
For part five click here
For part six click here

The August 2016 issue of UK publication Guitar & Bass features a detailed piece on Brian’s Vox AC30 amps, written by the co-author of the Red Special book Simon Bradley. Here, for your viewing pleasure, are a selection of phone shots taken on the day by Simon that show just a little more than could be squeezed into the feature.

Rest assured that the images that feature in the magazine itself, courtesy of Eleanor Jane, are of an infinitely higher, nay professional, standard but we hope you enjoy this exclusive peek.

Read the whole feature, plus loads more, in the August issue of Guitar & Bass, which is on sale from 5 July 2016. Find out how to order a single print or digital copy of the magazine via this link: http://www.guitar-bass.net/magazine/the-august-2016-issue-of-guitar-bass-is-on-sale-now

More information on the magazine can be found at www.guitar-bass.net

Brian May took time out before the ‘One Voice’ show with Kerry Ellis in Milan to meet up with members of Tsunami Edizioni, publishers of the Italian version of the Red Special book written by Brian and Simon Bradley.

Copies are available at each of the venues and are selling very strongly, which is great news. You can read about the tour so far in Brian’s own words by clicking here, and it sounds like some great music, plus no small amount of fun, is happening out there!

To buy your own copy of the Italian version of the Red Special book, click here

To buy a copy in the original English, click here

For details on the remaining Italian dates, click here

Italian Queen fansite Communità Queeniana has conducted an interview with the co-author of the Red Special book, in which he talks about aspects of the book’s production and how Brian was involved, as well as his own background and history.

Click here to read the full interview in both English and Italian

Click here for details of the Italian version of the Red Special book

Still not got your copy? Click here to right that wrong…

The January 2015 issue of Classic Rock magazine featured a positive review of ‘Brian May’s Red Special’, as well as new interviews with Brian May, Roger Taylor and Adam Lambert.

Back issues can be purchased online.

Review (c) Team Rock

In the final part of Simon Bradley’s blog detailing the production process of the Red Special book, the job is fnally done and finished copies being arriving in bookstores.

Although articles I’ve written have featured in numerous copies of various magazines over the past 18 years or so, I’ve never really considered myself to be a ‘published author’. Maybe it’s the somewhat ‘…here today, gone later today…’ nature of some aspects of modern digital media, but a book, it seems to me, is for life, whereas an issue of Guitarist, for example, is for just three weeks until the next one is published. A book – any book – may ultimately go out of print, but it’s unlikely that, as with magazines, unsold copies will be pulped for recycling when the new issue on the block sashays through the door of WHSmith or wherever, spitting on the floor and laughing at the now irrelevant ‘back issue’. Of course, the same fate awaits them, mere weeks in the future.

We’d hit the deadline with mere days to go, as previously described, and then…well, a whole lot of nothing happened, or so it seemed from where I was sitting. I cherish my ignorance of the whole process of assigning print slots to a particular title (think a huge jigsaw with pieces each made from thousands of pounds and one false move would see the whole thing disintegrate) but, needless to say, the book needs to actually be printed in time to allow for its distribution to retail outlets and this takes planning and precise timing. Get it wrong and there’s danger that slots will be missed, leading to the ultimate in publishing no-no’s: it goes on-sale either late or, worse, not at all.

All I could do was wait. Then, one day, I got a short text from the Malandrone household. ‘Book looks great’, it said. An advance copy had arrived. Wha’? Does it? Where’s mine? WHERE’S MINE!!?? A panicky call to Carlton Books led to us discovering that an incorrect postcode had delayed my copy, and I spent a pathetically tense afternoon and evening waiting for the clock to tick around to the following day when our postie would drop a big padded envelope through my door. I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve, although it was a dark and unsettling level of excitement rather than one filled with sugar plums, reindeer hooves and a fat bloke with a beard.

The next day, to my eternal relief, postie didn’t let me down and pushed a package through the letterbox…just 30 minutes before I had to leave for work. Pile it on, why dontcha!? I treated myself to the quickest of quick flicks, emotions running every which way, before bolting out the door. I sort of dreamt my way through that day’s shift, and I actually felt a little weepy at times. That said, I was also feeling impossibly happy, buoyed by our – my! – achievement in actually getting the book out there.

It’s difficult to accurately describe how I felt when I finally sat down to give it a proper going-over, but seeing the by now familiar cover image, actually holding the book in my hands and flicking through, spotting certain passages that I distinctly remembered writing a couple of years previously, was an almost out of body experience.

By this time I’d read the book in myriad guises many, many times, so was intimately familiar with the book’s pacing, where my favourite bits were and, as is the author’s curse, parts where, in hindsight, we could have done a little better. But I thought – think – it was great and I tried to imagine if I was 14 years old today, clicking away on Amazon to order my copy and waiting, breathlessly, for it to be delivered so I could do exactly what I was doing at that moment: revel in the story of a man and guitarist I admired and the iconic instrument with which he played music that changed my life forever.

If truth be told, I’m a little sad that the journey is over. Don’t get me wrong; I’m so happy that the book is out there, but it’s unlikely that I’ll be involved in such an engrossing project again any time soon. I’ve held the dismantled Red Special in my hands, a dream for such a Queen-obsessed guitar geek as myself, and have worked closely with my ultimate guitar hero. While I’m not sufficiently arrogant to assume that Brian and I are close friends, we have what I consider to be an effective and warm working relationship, and – take it from me – he’s as affable and accommodating a man as everyone says he is. Remember, he’s a world-famous rock star, a member of one of the most successful rock bands of all time, and an icon to countless tens of thousands. For me to have had the opportunity to work with him on this overdue and incredibly worthy project… well, I’m struggling to imagine how it will ever be bettered.

Still, we didn’t do it for the glory, but because it needed to be done. The book’s proving popular and is selling well, I’m told, which is the greatest achievement of all, and I genuinely hope everyone who did us the great privilege of buying a copy finds themselves revisiting the story of one man and his guitar again and again.

What shall we cover in the next book…? Let’s see…