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The Garden of Intellectual Fungus
JIMI BELL
House Of Lords Guitarist—2006-present
The pedal effect at the beginning of “Keep Yourself Alive” is what initially attracted Jimi Bell to Queen. “Right away, that made me aware of Brian May,” he says. The familiar intro to that debut single from the 1973 Queen album is one of the first techniques mastered during his formative years as a guitarist. “When you’re starting out, you pick up on things that are cool, and that was one of those things.”
Jimi, the only other serious contender with Zakk Wylde for the Ozzy Osbourne gig back in 1987, built shredding into a career. But the 50-year-old House of Lords guitarist says people who singularly view that style as indicative of talent tend to overlook what makes someone like Brian May such a unique player.
“He’s extremely melodic,” Bell explains, “and he has an incredible sense of harmony and tone.” Praising his songwriting ability and innovative approach, Jimi suspects Brian had determined his style as early as the first Queen album. “It developed more throughout the records, but he knew exactly what he was doing, right from the first record.”
Queen kindled musical possibilities in Jimi’s mind, allowing for an abundance of musical styles to be incorporated into rock and roll songs. “Brian is really versatile. The little solo in ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love,’ he just plays this real sweet, jazzy solo.”
“He always seemed to have the right note choices. He knows what notes to land on,” Jimi says, explaining that for guitarists, that’s an essential skill. “Not how fast you can play, not how cool you look doing it. When it’s all said and done, you gotta land on the right notes, and Brian knows exactly where to play.”
The elaborate orchestration of a song like “Good Company” illustrates that genius, Bell says. “He made his guitar an instrument—not a guitar—and played parts that sound like violins and cellos.” The average listener might not appreciate that dedication and meticulous craftsmanship, but as a fellow guitarist, Jimi recognizes the labor of love. “You do that because you want to make an amazing record, and because you love to do it so much.”
A session guitarist for the WWE, Jimi was recently commissioned to record music written for use by a sports team. The intricate orchestration of multiple guitar tracks, combined with the wah wah pedal cocked back for a more mellow tone, was very reminiscent of Queen. “It was simple [parts], but layered on top of each other, it was unbelievable.”
Sometimes using a digital delay pedal to overlap notes, Belll doesn’t call it harmonizing. “I always refer to it as ‘a Brian May thing,’” he laughs. That signature sound is something he credits to the Queen guitarist for taking to a greater level. “Echoplex machines have been around forever, but Brian really utilized it.”
He still spends the majority of his waking hours playing guitar, and Jimi credits learning that work ethic from a player like Brian May. Given the chance to meet the master, his curiosity would be to break apart the creative process.
There’s got to be a starting point. Is it one single melody line, and then he builds off that? Or does he have the whole thing in his head, what he wants it to sound like, and then deciphers what each part is going to be?”
Jimi recalls seeing Queen on the Sheer Heart Attack tour—Valentine’s Day 1975, to be exact—but the guitarist was admittedly indifferent back then. “I went just because some friends were going. There was only one band in my life back then, and that was Deep Purple. So, I didn’t appreciate it the way I should have.”
Maturity, both personally and as a player, makes Jimi hear Queen differently today. Brian’s playing affects him in poetic, non-musical terms, like the ending of “Bohemian Rhapsody” that he describes as the sound of a leaf falling gently from a tree. But the complexity continues to intrigue him. “Whenever a Queen song comes on [the radio], I still hone in on the guitar parts, because they still baffle me.”
“That’s the way they wrote songs. Every song was extremely thought out.” Describing bands cobbling tracks together in the studio, Jimi asks rhetorically if Queen would be so nonchalant about their songs. “Never. These [songs] were all thought out, things that took a lot of time to produce. They didn’t have recording equipment like Pro Tools, so everybody had to do their parts and nail them. Just ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ think about all the parts in that song—all the harmony things in the middle section alone—who thinks of things like that! That didn’t take [just] an afternoon.”