Sir Brian May confessed he “doesn’t know how long he’s got left” and said he is now “treasuring time with family” after half a century of touring. The Queen legend sat down with the Daily Express during the launch of his new book Islands in Infinity: Galaxies 3-D – which views astrophysics through a three-dimensional stereoscopic lens.
During the interview, Sir Brian, 78, confessed he is “not talking about touring at the moment” with his fellow bandmates and Adam Lambert. He said: “I’m certainly not talking about touring because I’ve done 50 years of it, and I’m treasuring my time with the family at the moment and time to be able to do things like this, the astrophysics side of my life.
“To be able to do stuff with animals and basically spend time with my grandchildren and my animals. So that’s become very important to me. I don’t know how much longer I have left. It’s going to be finite. We know that. But to me, that’s a priority now.
“And I love to play. Everybody knows I love to play. I love to go to places and play and meet wonderful people. I loved working with Benson Boone. What a joy, what a treasure. I loved doing the Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.
“But signing your name on a dotted line to say you’re going to be on tour for the next six months, and you cannot go home… I kind of don’t feel like doing at the moment. I like to do it in different ways where I keep control.”
However, to keep Queen’s legacy alive, Brian is keen to do an “immortal” show at the Las Vegas Sphere, explaining: “I’m anxious to develop some ideas which I have in my head to make an immortal Queen show. I think it’s nothing less than that. I think that’s what we need to leave the world with. It will be epic.”
The star has just released a new Christmas single with X Factor star Talia Dean, as well as having his track Who Wants to Live Forever featured on the Stranger Things final season. Brian admitted: “It’s nice when people take up our music and make it into something new and different. Otherwise, your music becomes a fossil. It has to keep growing and has to be related to a new audience every day.”