Recharged and Ready to Rock You

"To be honest with you, if you take the instant before this whole Paul Rodgers thing came up, I was quite happy," May says. "I was attuned to the fact that we'd done all that stuff in the past and I was proud of it, but I was doing different things in life and I didn't really think we'd be doing arenas again. It wasn't bothering me, except for the odd twinge when we'd talk about the Superdome and, oh yeah, we used to do that.

"I was okay, but then Paul comes along and there is this sense of empathy, this real excitement of 'this works.' It's exactly that kind of feeling you get when you're starting off in a group, when you realize, boy, I can really play with this guy, we make music together, we have chemistry, there's something going on."

May played on Rodgers's 1994 album, "Muddy Water Blues," but the seeds of the current partnership were sown two years ago when the two performed at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Fender Stratocaster at London's Wembley Arena. After that, May called Taylor to say he liked the way his guitar sounded with Rodgers's voice on "All Right Now." Not long after, the three musicians were invited to play at the UK Music Hall of Fame awards. They suspected they were onto a good thing when they got a standing ovation rehearsing "We Will Rock You," "We Are the Champions" and "All Right Now."

The biggest challenge was figuring how to replace the irreplaceable and avoid the appearance of hiring a mere impersonator for rock's most over-the-top showman or, worst of all, become a Queen cover band.

"I would have hated to go out there and be an imitation of what we were before," May insists. "Paul is great because he will never sing anything unless he can sing it from the heart. You always get the real thing with Paul, you cannot get an imitation. He's what he is: He's Paul Rodgers, he's a great creator, interpreter, and, boy, does he have the pipes. And they're better than ever!"

And, May points out, "Paul is a part of our history anyway. Free was such a big influence on us in the early days, and [guitarist Paul Kossoff] for me was a real hero, still is, such a fabulously bright talent extinguished tragically so soon." (Kossoff died of a drug-induced heart attack in 1976 at age 25.)

In retrospect, May says, it's odd that Queen never thought of working with Rodgers "because obviously you're thinking every day, damn, I can't play anymore because we don't have the [singer] anymore. And lots of people came up to us with suggestions: 'Why don't you take this man out on tour?' "

Suggestions started being made as far back as 1992's Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness at Wembley. Until last April's concert at London's Brixton Academy, that had been the last Queen performance, with George Michael in Mercury's spot. "He [Michael] was pretty much set in his ways in regards to pursuing his solo career, which really was not in the direction of rock," May says, adding: "I don't think we were ready; it wasn't the right time."

Talk subsided until 1999, when the band started auditioning would-be Mercurys for "We Will Rock You" and in 2001 when they teamed with British pop star Robbie Williams on "We Are the Champions" for the movie "A Knight's Tale."

"That was close," May says. "Some dates were actually booked, and we would have gone for it. Not as a career move, but wouldn't it be fun? I think it was really Robbie's management that pulled him out of it."

The Queen's Golden Jubilee performance in 2002 at the Buckingham Palace Gardens, which featured Tony Vincent, the musical's Mercury, performing "Bohemian Rhapsody" with and for the Queen, also featured May playing "God Save the Queen" (the British national anthem, not the Sex Pistols song) on the roof of the palace, with the queen's permission, of course.

Last March, May found himself back at the palace, which has now become a regular stop, something "furthest from my expectations," he laughs. May and fellow guitar legends Page, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck were honored by the queen for their contributions to the music industry. In December, he was back again, this time to receive a Commander of the British Empire honor for his services to music. May reminded Queen Elizabeth II that he had been the one playing "God Save the Queen" on her roof.

" 'Oh, that was you, was it?' She had a little joke about it, said, 'It's a lot warmer down here, isn't it?' Which is true.

"She was very charming," May says, adding, "She's good at her job."

So is Brian May, of course, not only as one of the most respected and influential guitarists in rock history but also as a songwriter. People forget that Queen is the only band in rock history whose members all have written songs that have been No. 1 singles somewhere in the world; even the Beatles can't match that. Among May's better-known songs: "Fat Bottomed Girls," "Tie Your Mother Down," "Who Wants to Live Forever" and the ubiquitous "We Will Rock You," which still excites its author when he hears it at sporting events. It's two minutes of drumless foot-stomping and hand-clapping machismo built on a surging, anthem-like chorus and May's majestic guitar vamp -- the ultra jock anthem as a bid for immortality.

"It's a thrill," he says proudly. "It amuses me that a lot of young people think it was always there. We do it in the show, of course, and a lot of them think, 'Oh, they do that ?' Maybe we should make a bigger deal of it. We just treat it as a song, but it has become kind of an institution.

"I'm very happy, and I won't need a gravestone!"

Queen + Paul Rodgers Appearing Thursday at Verizon Center Sounds Like: They will, they will rock you by dipping into the Queen catalogue and Rodgers's standards from Free and Bad Company.