"It's a little over-heroic. But it's fun. It's colourful. And there is also a little undercurrent of something deeper in the lyrics”: Brian May reveals the inspiration for one of Queen’s greatest hits

It’s a Queen song so over-the-top that many would think it was composed by Freddie Mercury. But no - it was Brian May who wrote Flash.

As the theme song to the 1980 sci-fi adventure movie Flash Gordon, it came in two versions.

In the album version, titled Flash’s Theme, the dialogue is all lifted from the movie’s opening scene. The single version, titled simply Flash, features dialogue from different parts of the story - most famously, the exclamation “Gordon is alive!” from Brian Blessed’s character Prince Vultan. And it's this version that is known and loved around the world.

Flash reached No.10 on the UK chart and was a hit in various other countries.

“I'm very proud of the song,” May said in a 2024 interview with Total Guitar.

But as the guitarist went on to explain, there was a moment when he believed the song would be rejected by the movie’s producer Dino De Laurentiis.

May told Total Guitar: “I was so immersed in the Flash Gordon project. I always loved that kind of ’50s science fiction stuff anyway, and I was very aware that the way that the film was evolving was very comic book.

“It was very tongue in cheek. Very retro. Mike Hodges, the director, handled it that way in a very clever approach, I think.

“But strangely enough, Mike didn't see eye to eye with the producer of the film, Dino De Laurentiis, who was the the guiding force behind the whole thing.

“Dino saw it more as a serious epic, but it was Mike who said, ‘No, you can't do that. It's got to have this element of fun and slightly taking the mickey out of itself.’

"So in the end Mike won, and some of what I was trying to do with this track is to do a comic book in sound. That's exactly what it is.

“So it's slightly exaggerated. It's a little over-heroic, if you like. But it's fun. It's colourful.

“And there is also a little undercurrent of something deeper in the lyrics: ‘Just a man/With a man's courage.’

“That, to me, is what gives it its heart and soul, because there is something rather rather lovable about the character of Flash Gordon. He’s so innocent. And there's this love affair going through the film as well, and I think you really warm to him as a character, even though he's unreal, he's a comic book character.

“So that's what I tried to put in the song.

“And,” he continues, “I wanted to make it something that people would just grab ahold of very easily.

“I could hear ‘Flash!’ very quickly in my head. So it was just a question of realising it in the studio. I had a lot of fun with it.”

May, however, was in for a surprise when Queen’s music for the soundtrack was first presented to producer Dino De Laurentiis.

As the guitarist recalled: “When we'd made all the tracks in demo form, having seen the rushes of the film, we had a session with Dino and Mike Hodges, all of us in Trident studios playing back what we done for the film.

“And Dino sat there with a face like iron. Like, ‘I'm not sure if I like this?’

“The last thing we played was Flash and Dino went, ‘Yes, it's very good, but it's not for my film.’

“That was a mortal blow for me. I thought, I didn't encapsulate what the film needed.

"But Mike took me aside and said, ‘Don't worry, I'll sort him out. He will love it!’

“And the conclusion of the story is when we had the premiere of the film. Dino came over to me and said, ‘Thank you for what you did for my film. It's beautiful!’ So that was that was nice.”

Summing up this extraordinary track, May said: “It is very fluffy, but I'm proud of it - because within my brief within the genre, I think it does fit perfectly.”