Queen guitar legend Brian May recently guested on BBC's Raised On Radio and discussed the band's 50th anniversary, the 30th Anniversary of frontman Freddie Mercury's death, and he offered some insight as to the band's future plans with singer Adam Lambert.

On Freddie Mercury

May: "I'm absolutely sure if he was still here today, we'd still be doing it. The mother ship would still be steaming around the world, and we would be taking time off to do our solo stuff like this, but the Queen would come together and we'd be doing it. He loved it. He lived for music, he lived for the band, it was his family, as it is my family still, although I fought against it, and so is Roger. You can't really get away from the fact that Queen is our family more than anything else, really. He lived to the max every second of the day. 

I don't think we even realized that Freddie is a bit of a genius, really; a pretty eccentric kind of genius. And you wouldn't have thought it if you met him in the street or in Kensington market around 1970. You'd just thought, 'A strange guy... obviously thinks he's a rock star.' But he had an incredible belief in himself, incredible drive, and he stood for no-nonsense. Nothing would ever get in his way of achieving what he wanted to achieve. So I take that as an example even now because we're all people-pleasers, aren't we? We think, 'Oh, I like to do this but I don't want to do that because that might upset this person.' Freddie was never like that. He said, 'I want to do this, I'm going to do this. If you don't want me to do it, get out of my way.' And some people might have found him rude, but generally Freddie achieved what he did because he was so focused and had so much belief. Pretty fantastic voice as well. A gift from God, obviously."

Continuing weekly through to March 2022, Queen YouTube is taking Queen fans on a unique and remarkable journey -  a chance to revisit some of the band’s most iconic moments and discover some aspects of the story we didn’t know. Episode #21: Greatest Hits can be seen below.

"To mark the bands first decade, Queen's Greatest Hits was released - packed with 17 of their biggest hits to date. Today it's still the ultimate playlist, and the biggest selling UK album, ever."