

Dr. Brian May on Freddie Mercury's creativity - patrickaljord
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/happy-birthday-freddie-mercury.html

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teoruiz
He's signing the article as:

 _Dr. Brian May, CBE. Guitarist._

As in: Doctor Brian May with a PhD in astrophysics from the Imperial College
London, Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Guitarist of Queen.

It can't get cooler than that.

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bootload
_"... I was very poor & the thought of a Stratocaster was way out of my price
range. So me and my Dad took it into our hands to make the guitar... It took
about 2 years and we made it from all sorts of scraps and pieces ..."_

Brian May is no slouch either. The link is a quick 1992 interview describing
how his Dad built their own TV and how they both built the Red guitar you see
him play. cf: @neilmurraybass, _"Brian May guitar 1992"_ ~
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPD7_hQk7hk>

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philwelch
My favorite Brian May fact is that, as soon as he had a few years off from
being a legendary rock star, he went back to grad school and finished his
doctorate in astrophysics.

~~~
serge2k
Yeah, I love that one of my favorite guitarists has a PhD in Astrophysics.
It's just cool.

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patrickaljord
I thought this kind of attitude would appeal to anyone building a startup:

"Freddie was fully focused, never allowing anything or anyone to get in the
way of his vision for the future. He was truly a free spirit. There are not
many of these in the world. To achieve this, you have to be, like Freddie,
fearless—unafraid of upsetting anyone's apple cart.

To create with Freddie was always stimulating to the max. He was daring,
always sensing a way to get outside the box. Sometimes he was too far out ...
and he'd usually be the first to realise it. With a conspiratorial smile he
would say "Oh ... did I lose it, dears?!" But usually there was sense in his
nonsense—art in his madness. It was liberating. I think he encouraged us all
in his way, to believe in our own madness, and the collective mad power of the
group Queen."

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phugoid
I appreciate you sharing this; it was sweet. But there's something disturbing
in the way you're framing it.

Have we lost perspective to the point where even the basic notions of how to
live one's life have to be seen through the lens of a hacker working on a
startup?

I say this as a hacker, working on a startup. When I'm done with my IE7 hacks,
and I figure out why my production server isn't behaving like my dev server, I
might take a moment to re-read that article and play some Queen, so I can fix
my mind's eye on that beautiful human being who died too young.

~~~
patrickaljord
> Have we lost perspective to the point where even the basic notions of how to
> live one's life have to be seen through the lens of a hacker working on a
> startup?

Absolutely not, I just posted that because people tend to complain about posts
that are not related enough to the hacker/startup world here so I anticipated
that complain by posting that.

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ojosilva
I don't get why Google posponed showing their Freddie doodle (quite awesome
btw) until Sep. 6th in the US. "Out of respect for Labor Day?" Why does Labor
day require that kind of respect? I'd absolutetly understand a Memorial Day
hiatus. Is it because it's Freddie Mercury? I recall a Charles Schulz birthday
doodle with Snoopy on Thanksgiving. Just confused here...

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marquis
Snoopy is synonymous with Thanksgiving because of the Charlie Brown movie, "A
Charlie Brown Thanksgiving".

Labor Day is celebrating workers, hard-won worker rights etc. I personally
like that Google is respecting this by delaying showing Freddie's celebration
a day.

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philwelch
More cynically, Labor Day is a day off from work, so Americans are usually
barbecuing with their families and enjoying the last bit of summer rather than
sitting inside and using the internet. They would have a bit more exposure
waiting until Americans were back to work.

