PRESS

MUSIC AND THE SPHERES

22 Nov 2006

NEW SCIENTIST, ISSUE 2573, 14 October 2006
PAGE 56-57

Interview By Marcus Chown
author of "THE NEVER-ENDING DAYS OF BEING DEAD (Faber)"
www.marcuschown.com

In 1969, Brian May, lead guitarist of the legendary rock band Queen, gave up a career in astrophysics to pursue his dream of becoming an international rock star. Now, almost four decades later, the two strands of his life, music and astronomy, are coming back together. He is currently finishing the PhD he started at Imperial College London back when Queen was just beginning to take off. He has also co-authored a popular book on cosmology, Bang! The Complete History of the Universe.

On the eve of the book's publication, Marcus Chown caught up with May at his home in Surrey, UK, which is complete with a shiny observatory dome.

How did you become interested in astronomy?

I must have been 7 or 8. I saw Patrick Moore's Sky at Night TV programme and it blew me away. It wasn't just the stars, it was also the programme's incredible theme music by Sibelius. So my love of astronomy and my love of music were born at the same time. I badgered my dad to get me the record and to let me stay up late and watch the programme.

What was the subject of your PhD at Imperial?

It was on the zodiacal dust that appears to orbit the sun. You can actually see it quite easily with the naked eye from a dark site - part of the black sky behind the stars is brighter than the rest because of sunlight reflected from the dust. Nobody was sure whether the dust particles swept around with the planets or orbited in the opposite direction. We did observations from Tenerife. By looking at the Doppler shift of a particular wavelength of sunlight absorbed by the dust, we found evidence to suggest that most of it goes around with the planets. We published a couple of papers, one in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and one in Nature.

Why did you abandon your PhD?

I was writing up the thesis, working as a maths teacher at a comprehensive school in Brixton, south London, which I loved, and doing the music too. I wasn't getting much sleep! I actually completed a draft of my thesis, but my departmental head wanted "more interpretation". I did it, but then he wanted even more interpretation. So I decided that I needed to move on. At the time, there was an opportunity with Queen we really couldn't let pass.

Did anyone try to persuade you to stick with science?

My dad was upset about me abandoning my PhD for music. He thought being a scientist was a better career. Thankfully, though, he came around. He worked as a draughtsman on the development of Concorde, and one of the great pleasures of my life was flying him over to New York on Concorde for the first concert Queen played at Madison Square Garden.

Did it nag at the back of your mind over the years that you'd left your scientific work incomplete?

Not really. I considered myself lucky to be doing what I was doing in music.

What inspired you to return to your PhD after all these years?

You get to this age and you think, I'm still alive when some friends aren't, and you ask yourself, "Why am I here? What should I be doing?" So there's that. But a crucial event was inviting professor Francisco Sanchez to the opening of our musical We Will Rock You in Madrid. He had been a kind of extra supervisor for me in Tenerife. Francisco asked, "Are you going to finish your PhD?" and I said, "Yes!" I felt the strands of life coming together again. Crucially, Francisco said I could submit my thesis to the University of La Laguna.

It seems remarkable that, after 30-odd years, your thesis isn't out of date.

That's the peculiar thing. The subject did not attract much attention during those years in between, but it's actually become topical recently because of the discovery of extrasolar planets. Some of these planetary systems seem to have zodiacal dust clouds just like ours. I need new data to update things. Garik Israelian, an Armenian astronomer friend of mine is helping me. We are planning to make new observations.

How did the book on cosmology come about?

I've been a friend of Patrick Moore's for years. We both have the twin interests of astronomy and music, though rock music is not Patrick's thing. We were in Scotland to see an annular eclipse of the sun in 2003. Over lunch in a pub afterwards Patrick said, "I want you to write a book with me." The idea was to do a history of the universe. Day one: creation; day two: inflation... and so on.

What was your reaction?

I was flattered. I thought Patrick would forget about it. But he didn't. He's very astute. He definitely saw it as an opportunity to reach a new audience. Eventually, I agreed, but I was reluctant. I didn't feel confident or capable and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the project. It wasn't until we were halfway through that I felt I had anything valuable to contribute. I have a perfectionist streak. So I was able to say, "I don't understand this. Are we explaining this simply enough?" I took on the role of making the book accessible to as many people as possible. I also know about getting things noticed. I came up with the title, Bang!, and the book cover, which features a fanciful bang, a composite lenticular print that will "explode" as you walk past it.

What was it like working on the book?

We had a third collaborator, Chris Lintott, a whizz-kid astronomer from Cambridge. He happened to be at our first meeting and it was immediately clear that he knew a lot more about modern cosmology than we did. I said, we have to include him as the third author. The three of us would meet at Patrick's house in Selsey on a Friday night, do a little gentle writing, have a couple of drinks, then hunt for Patrick's cat, Ptolemy, who is an accomplished escapologist. When we got up the next day we were in the mood for serious work. Patrick shocked us by writing the first draft in two weeks. We all then spent the next two years rewriting it. He was good about it. He didn't mind at all.

Did you enjoy the experience after your initial reservations?

It was wonderful. It was a re-entry into a world I'd loved as a kid. And I now have an inkling of what's going on in today's astronomy.

Did you get as much satisfaction from finishing the book as you would a piece of music?

Yes, I'm at least as excited about the book as an album. My ambition is that this will be a book that people buy and actually read, rather than leave on a shelf. But I don't know whether we've succeeded. It's a giant step. I'm quite nervous - in a good way.

Profile
Brian May is the lead guitarist of Queen. A songwriter and producer, he has put out several solo albums, and Queen's hit rock musical We Will Rock You premiered in 2002. May holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Hertfordshire. His book Bang! The complete history of the universe, written with Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott, is published this month by Carlton Books.

Reproduced by kind permission of New Scientist

view all latest bang! interviews