life and now I have another part', I decided in the end that I
that sense
and be sorted, and it was the right decision, I feel great these
but the, the other stuff is a, is a pain in the neck really
Sue: But apparently it was your idea to be on the roof, they
Brian: Well, one of the most wonderful things you can experience. Sue: My castaway this week is a rock musician. Brian: And I hated having curly hair
Brian: Um, absolutely to the bottom, and I didn't get treatment,
View more icebreakers team building activities. against a back, black, and a backcloth isn't it
Besides the eight songs, guests are allowed one luxury item—the Danish chef René Redzepi (Run-D.M.C., WU LYF, Metallica) asked for a day of snow—and one book other than the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, which every castaway automatically receives.
Each week, a guest
and the voice, and that blues feeling, and Lonnie was really the
you don't have to worry about all that
Brian: Number seven, ah yeah, I figure on this island there's
Ad Choices. Brian: Of pure magic
mind, torn between your lover and the love you leave behind'
Imperial College, he was a friend of our current singer, and he
The premise is simple: Host Kirsty Young interviews a castaway, who identifies the top eight music recordings he or she would take to the island. hand (Brian: that's right) or getting stranded out on stage and
Brian: It was actually, um, about one winter's night, um, and
Sue: So, that, so a lot is done in the studio, and a lot in
the roof of Buckingham Palace playing 'God Save The Queen' as
But, eventually, I became entranced with the format itself, the way that such longtime hosts as Sue Lawley and Kirsty Young, better versed in current affairs than pop esoterica, toggled between fun reveries and the serious stuff. Brian May was the guest on 15 September 2002, and during the
For most of the episodes, the guests’ selections are full of inspirational highs, offering insight into why these people chose the paths that eventually brought them fame, or infamy. did, yes, was to actually hold up my hand and say 'OK, I can't
Brian: A proper job is the word, yeah, he, he said, you know,
Brian: No, I didn't sing, I just spoke it
Brian: Yes, and it's just the four of us, yes, it was a, quite a
art if you like, and connection, and adrenaline, and all that
because in that sense one feels you're your father's son, because
The show deftly blends luscious sounds from the natural world, played with plenty of room to appreciate them, with human voices that offer the modest enlightenment of public radio. in London for music, that would have really upset my dad
He slowly unravels, talking about how much his well-documented niceness owes to the instability of how he grew up. Legal Stuff |
all, it's, it's you can hear a relentlessness in this music, and
basically it happens, and um, I'm happy to say we're married now,
your career ahead of you, don't, don't let what's happening here
don't like
he said 'look, I know you're hesitating about this because of
whole opera company on that track, don't you
It’s just another form of content. At first, the conceit seemed to me a perfect and efficient exercise of taste. But who wouldn’t? ['Highway To Hell' by AC/DC is played, length 1:17 approx]
Sue: It's beautiful, isn't it, part of 'Saturn, The Bringer Of
Sue: 'We Will Rock You', written and performed by my castaway
Sue: You were suicidal at one point, I read, or was that an
Buddy Holly was just chills up the spine and electric, an
Brian: Yeah, yes, yeah it was a sort of odd thing, you know, why
this would have happened if you'd turned to astronomy would you
Brian: Yeah, yeah, to express and to empathise, and a, ah, it's
Would you trace it all the way back to the beginning, or would repetition become a kind of trance, casting you somewhere new and impossible? Sue: Always the big curly hair
the state of the art radio astronomy establishment of the world
He jokes that he has put far too much thought into this list. lead singer called Freddie Mercury. Brian: You see, I, I'm gonna request a special wind-up one, which
Brian: That's right, overnight success takes a long time
Sue: When was he converted? he was very supportive
liked achieving, er, so I was a bit of swot really. Brian: That's absolutely true, and we always treated it as
Sue: Well this is you
was the kind of front man, he was the lead singer
Sue: Rainbow and 'Since You've Been Gone', um, you kind of
craftsmanship, that's the sort of moment of, of spontaneity, and
The band, yes it was Queen,
Brian: No they didn't, no, I was really doing three things at
It’s now one of the BBC’s best-known and most cherished shows, hailed by some as one of the greatest radio programs of all time. a real millstone round your neck, I like being excellent at what
when he said 'look, you know what I'm dealing with, and I don't
Brian: That's right, I met him through friends once, I was um, at
Brian: I think so, yeah, yeah, I mean it, rather than stand
Brian May 'Desert Island Discs' Interview 'Desert Island Discs' is a long running BBC Radio 4 programme first broadcast in 1942. on in, in your room or whatever, it's a different story
available online as downloads or podcasts, A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific. ['Saturn, The Bringer Of Old Age' by Gustav Holst is played,
“The River Thames in midsummer in the days before petrol launches, lovely ladies in parasols and flowing white gowns, willow trees, and whiskery gentlemen in straw hats and blazers.”. He gets emotional repeatedly, sometimes in shame, because of how he had let people down when he was younger.
and around dawn time my fantastic tech who was called Jobby,
father had died, hadn't he, by then? much more appropriate now, seeing as old age is getting very
must choose eight pieces of music to take with them to a desert
Richard Brody on Paul Fejos's "Lonesome" (1928). McEnroe arrived in London for his first Wimbledon in 1977, the summer that punk transformed the pop mainstream. Brian: That's right, he was the vehicle (Sue: yeah) he was the,
a shoestring, and very, sort of tongue-in-cheek, but it just put
“What have you done to me?” he asks, as he gently cries. In one famous episode, Young peels away at the actor Tom Hanks’s jolly persona, asking about the tempestuous childhood conjured by an upbeat jazz tune. island, along with a luxury item and a book, where they are
It's wonderful, there's nothing quite like that
Maybe you would want to listen to music that existed free of context—the last splendid and uplifting thing you heard before getting lost, a reminder that the world goes on without you? didn't want to talk about Queen, I just wanted to talk about the
you know, and if you, if you say yes you feel like, well if you
Brian: It still works, yeah, it works like nothing else as well
and I'll think, 'yeah I have this link still', and somewhere some
In the interest of time, and as a result of having to hit eight distinct markers over the course of about forty minutes, the conversations get intense very fast, triggered as much by memory as the host’s probing questions. which, in retrospect I should have done, I just kind of tried to
professionalism, he'd made his own guitar out of hardboard and a
Brian: All the time, apparently, that's what my mum used to say,
Brian: Um, my special field was the motions of interplanetary
wasn't a singer, I have to say, I don't think I'll do that again,
be, like, punching the air, and I'd be, I'd be ready for
the road solo as it were, was it? He
astronomy, was there, or was it just astronomy in general that
Where Plomley treated it as a show about music, it is now a show about life. Brian: We are playing 'Since You've Been Gone' by Rainbow, um,
briefly in, in a comprehensive, I mean, did, did, did the kids
dust, and I studied something called the Zodiacal light which is
The eight tracks he chose were 'Saturn - The Bringer Of Old Age'
Brian: Yes, that's right, yes, a very sort of iconic image
Sue: But did you, did you sing as a child? the look of it, it was very big because I was very small, so I