Written by Vegetarian Star on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 in Male Musicians.
We almost missed it. This month would have marked the 62nd birthday of Queen singer Freddie Mercury, who passed in the early 90s.
You don’t have to be a Queen fan or even old enough to have any memories of the band to recognize songs such as, “We will rock you,” at ball games or “Bohemian Rhapsody,” covers by various musical acts.
While most people think of Freddie as the frontman, guitarist and vegetarian Brian May also had a stake in songwriting, creating the lyrics to “39,” a song mixing space and time travel with science fiction.
“It’s a science fiction story. It’s the story about someone who goes away and leaves his family and… because of the time dilation effect, when you go away, the people on Earth have aged a lot more than he has when he comes home. He’s aged a year and they’ve aged 100 years. So, instead of coming back to his wife, he comes back to his daughter and he can see his wife in his daughter… a strange story.”
May has always had a love for science and not too long ago, went back to school to complete his thesis “A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud” at Liverpool John Moores University. The university was so impressed, they made him a chancellor and now he partakes in serious brainy duties such as graduation ceremonies and giving input on academic faculty positions.
He told NME of his accomplishment:
“It really doesn’t matter how old you are or what stage of your life you are in, it is never, ever too late to start learning. I proved that by completing my PhD, 30 years after I started it. As Chancellor, I hope that my personal experiences will act as an inspiration for others.”
When he was awarded this position, he said he was going to celebrate “with a delicious vegetarian roast and a glass of choice dessert wine”.
Dessert wine, huh? C’mon. You really didn’t expect the chancellor of a university to kick it with a keg, did you?
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