1 December

If you listen to this short clip, the focus will nearly always be the lead vocal. But there are 2 lead vocals here, Brian May’s guitar parts are playing counterpoint lines to the main melody. It’s that contrapuntal play between May and Mercury, both ‘singing’ the lead vocal, that is extremely rare in rock. Why May uses a sixpence as a pick too, to create a level of articulation or splutter that gets closer to a voice. It makes him a far more interesting guitarist than pretty much all the other legends, because he’s doing something much harder, and which is rarely even recognised for what it is. Counterpoint is fiendishly hard to do, you have to be able to invent melodies in real time, and not just any melodies, but ones that resonate with the main melody in surprising ways. It’s also a model for societies, where instead of having one belief that everyone harmonises with (or not), you have different viewpoints all coexisting, but creating a surprising interplay.