“I didn’t know what to do. It sounded like an angry wasp”: Brian May recalls the time he played live through Jimi Hendrix’s Marshall – and it didn’t go well

Freddie Mercury and Brian May onstage in the early 1970s; May is wearing a white patterned cape and plays his Red Special electric guitar while Mercury strikes a pose with his mic stand.

We’ve all been there, turning up to a gig only to find out that all the guitarists will be playing through the same backline, cue the onrushing panic as we try to get a decent tone out of an unfamiliar guitar amp. It is some comfort to learn that the greats are no different – even Brian May has a war story to share.

In a recent interview with Guitarist, the Queen guitarist recalls an evening in the early days in which he had to play through a Marshall tube amp and the experience was so bad he sounded like “an angry wasp” and struggled to play a lick.