Brian May was in attendance at the Gibson Garage London yesterday to support the launch of his new signature guitar, a stunning limited edition SJ-200 12-string fresh out of the Custom Shop at Bozeman, Montana.
The Queen guitarist shared the story behind the guitar’s design, explaining why he prefers his 12-string guitars to be strung in reverse, with the octave and the standard strings swapped around, and he accompanied Brian May Guitars signature artist Arielle onstage for a performance of the Everly Brothers’ So Sad, Love Token from May's 1992 solo album, Back To The Light, before finishing their set with a poignant rendition of Queen’s Love Of My Life.
It was an emotional occasion. Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian made a speech. May's family were there. He spoke of his pride at putting his name to the first ever 12-string version of the SJ-200, and how his planetary design for the pickguard graphic featured the planet Mercury as a tribute to the late Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. He also revealed that it turns out it is quite difficult to design 8-pointed star inlays out of agoya shell but the luthiers at Bozeman managed it.
And the occasion took May all the way back to when he was beginning on the guitar. As he noted to the crowd, Elvis played one, the Everly Brothers played them, and both were influences on him when he was starting out – a time when May risked suspension from school because the guitar was strictly forbidden.
This was a different time. There were no YouTube lessons in those days. If you wanted learning materials for guitar you had the great Mel Bay and that was it. May didn’t even have that. He had his ear.
“I started off on acoustic, and I was on acoustic for a long time, and all I did was sing and play accompaniment,” he said. “It was a long time before I became clever enough to play what I call single notes. I could hear people doing it on records but I couldn’t. I didn’t know how to do it myself.”
He was in good company. None of his friends did either. The instrument might have contraband under official school policy but that didn’t stop him and his friends taking their acoustic guitars on-campus. May and friends build up a “kind of competition” as to see who could develop their playing faster, and shared their progress out of sight of the teachers.
“In the lunch hours, we would hide behind the cycle sheds because it was illegal to have a guitar at my school,” said May. “Seriously, things were very different in those days! Hampton Grammar School, you would get suspended for even having a guitar let alone possessing one at school.
“So behind the cycle sheds, we would hide, and we would play, and go, ‘Hank Marvin’s done this, y’know. And this…’ All these wonderful things were happening. Elvis was happening. Buddy Holly was happening. And we were finding out what they do, how they do it. That’s what we wanna do!”
It worked out in the end for May. He learned guitar without unduly disturbing his academic career, and completed his studies in 2007 with his PhD in astrophysics from Imperial College London. And the guitars he played got considerably better over the years.
He modded his first acoustic with a home made pickup before perfecting his craft on the father/son product that brought him his iconic Red Special electric guitar (that got a quick workout during Love Token). And now he has this opulent 12-string – a guitar he described as a “dream come true.
“As soon as I held the guitar, I thought this is what I need,” said May. “It has such presence and such a beautiful breadth of sound. Gibson has done the most beautiful job, it has the lovely solar system on it, including Mercury, but the most important thing is it sounds massive.
“It’s very traditional old-school technology, not made with AI or mechanised in any way. I take fantastic pride in it and I’m very honoured to have worked with Gibson. From the days when I used to gaze enviously at the guitar catalogues, sitting there with my Dad, I wish he was here to see this amazing fusion of the collaboration we’ve made.”
Read more about the Gibson Custom Brian May SJ-200 12-string here. This Vintage Sunburst doozy is available now, priced $7,999 and limited to 100 instruments worldwide. See Gibson for more details.
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