Queen’s Brian May is once again sharing some behind-the-scenes info on his 1983 side band, Star Fleet Project, which included, Eddie Van Halen, Alan Gratzer, Phil Chen and Fred Mandel.
In the third mini doc about the project, May discusses their time in the studio, admitting, “I didn’t know if it was going to work. I really didn’t.”
“You know, we didn’t gel immediately, but it didn’t take very long before we did,” he says, explaining that the best thing about it was they felt “no pressure because there was no end product.” “We didn’t say, ‘We’re going to make a record here’,” he says. “It’s just like, ‘Let’s have some fun and see what we can do’.”
When it comes to being in the studio with Van Halen, May admits he “was in awe” of him. “It would be easy to kind of go down the road of being jealous and resenting someone who can do something that you can’t do, but for some reason that doesn’t really happen with guitar players,” he says. “So although I felt like I’m in the presence of a god here, there was also this feeling of pure joy, pure joy of being in the room with that guy.”
May will celebrate the Star Fleet Project’s 40th anniversary with the release of a new box set, Brian May + Friends: Star Fleet Project, on July 14, which features several outtakes from the sessions.
He says about the set, “You can hear us feeling our way and gradually gaining confidence and locking in and becoming a really tight unit, which was amazing.”
Brian May + Friends: Star Fleet is available for preorder now.
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