Brian May names Queen “mentors” that “would have been as big as the Stones”
“I remember watching Mott The Hoople burst onto the stage and the whole audience would erupt because it was just engineered that way,” May said of his memories of the band.
Queen in 1973, backstage on their first major US tour in support of Matt The Hoople, Photo: Linda D. Robbins / Getty
Brian May has named Mott The Hoople as a “great influence” on Queen, saying they learned much about the touring business early on from the English rock group.
May was speaking in an interview for the recently released reissue of his 1988 solo album, Another World, which includes a cover of Mott The Hoople’s All The Way From Memphis.
“Mott The Hoople were a great influence on us. They were our mentors in a way,” May said. “[Queen started off] as a rock group – we have so many big ideas, we have songs, we have presentation ideas – but we’ve never been on tour.”
“So we go on tour very luckily supporting Mott The Hoople, who were a big band in those days – in fact they should have been bigger. If they hadn’t broken up, they would have been like the Stones.”
Mott The Hoople, which started in 1969, eventually split in 1980 but would reunite on stage several times over the years. Notably, the group also toured the US in 1974 with Aerosmith – leading to a three-way stadium rock bonanza in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where Mott The Hoople, Queen and Aerosmith performed for tickets priced at just $4.50.
“I remember watching Mott The Hoople burst onto the stage and the whole audience would erupt because it was just engineered that way,” May said of his memories of the band. “I say engineered because you do work on an audience, you don’t just stroll on and plink away and hope something will happen.
“You have that opportunity to excite, to impassion, to inspire an audience and they did that.”
The reissue of Brian May’s Another World came out in April 2022 with a 15-track bonus disc titled Another Disc.