Brian May says Queen’s touring days are over.
In a new interview with The Times, the 79-year-old guitarist revealed that he decided a year and a half ago that he no longer wanted to spend extended stretches on the road. The realization came after a close family friend died while Queen were touring the US, and May learned he couldn’t simply leave the tour for a few days and return.
“I made a decision 18 months ago that I didn’t want to tour again,” May said. “A close family friend died when we were in the States, so I said to my tour manager, ‘I’ll just nip home for a few days and come back.’ She looked me in the eyes and said, ‘You know you can’t do that.'”
“I love to play, I love to travel, but the trade-off is sacrificing your freedom,” he continued. “I have a wife, grandchildren and a lot of astrophysics I want to do, so I’m thinking maybe 50 years is enough.”
The comments mark a firmer position than May offered earlier this year, when he ruled out Queen shows in the US while leaving open the possibility of performing elsewhere. Queen + Adam Lambert haven’t played together since wrapping their “Rhapsody Tour” with a February 2024 show in Tokyo.
That doesn’t mean Queen are disappearing from the stage entirely. May said he and Roger Taylor remain interested in creating something “fairly revolutionary” and floated an immersive Queen experience inspired in part by Sphere in Las Vegas. He said he sketched out an entire Queen production after visiting the venue, though his concerns about the use of artificial intelligence have complicated the idea.
“We do want to do something fairly revolutionary,” May said. “Not as ABBA did [with digital avatars], but along those lines.” He added, “I think an immersive experience is still on the cards and it could conquer time and space, but currently you can’t make it without AI and I have serious misgivings about that.”
