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To conclude publication day – Radio 4 Front Row presenters interviewed Brian May about Q3D at Tuesday’s Press launch, whilst wandering around the exhibits of treasures and imagery.

The programme will broadcast at 7.15pm this evening (25 May), with Brian’s interview airing around 7.35pm.

Be sure to tune in.

Front Row has over 2.5 million listeners per programme. Wow!!

Chcek out complete UNWRAPPING video…

 

Brian May – Unwrapping the “Queen in 3-D book”, FULL LENGTH VERSION  – https://youtu.be/eobYGDOtkN0   – Recorded on or before 24 April 2017

PART 1 –  (contines with remainder below)

Hey Folks

I feel like it’s Christmas because yesterday [23 April] the first copy of Golden Days came along and we were able to actually unwrap it. The album that me and Kerry Ellis have made over the last couple of years.

Today [24 April] arrives in the post this, which is also a very long term project. At least three years we spent on this and I must say I’m thrilled to hold this. It’s very heavy but there’s a lot in here folks. This is “Queen In 3-D” and really it chronicles in snapshots the whole of our history – and in fact almost the whole of my history back to being a kid when I first found the 3-D cards in Weetabix.

So it’s a story of 3-D and stereoscopy, but also of the band that we called Queen and we worked in this band for more years than I can count really.

Finally I can unwrap it, so I thought I would share the unwrapping with you and show you how it works. Okay, no batteries needed.

You can see there’s more than one thing in here. There’s more than just a book. There is an OWL envelope in here and I’ll show you what that all means.

You can see there’s more than one thing in here. There’s more than just a book. There is an OWL envelope in here and I’ll show you what that all means.

So using the fingernail carefully, see if I can get into this thing. There we are. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Feels good, smells good. All shiny and new.

Front cover has a lenticular picture of Freddie on, and that’s one kind of 3-D. Doesn’t need any batteries. Doesn’t need any viewer and you can probably see, even in mono, the fact that it’s, well, 3-D, so should look good in the book shops and this lovely foil stuff is great. You would swear this is embossed because it looks very 3-D in itself, but our lovely people in China have managed to do this on foil.

PART 2

So let’s see what’s in the box. Okay. Will it come out? Yes it will. This is the slip case which we can now discover some stuff with the back telling you all about it, but I’ll tell you all about it, okay.

So first of all I’m gonna show you this thing. This is the OWL stereoscope and many of you will know what this is because we’ve recently, well not recently, but over the last few years put out some books on various Victorian subjects like “Scenes In Our Village” and the “Diableries”, which are these amazing French devils from the 1860s. I was gonna say from France, but they aren’t. No, no.

This an OWL. Same kind of Owl. This particular one has been moulded in spectacular 1986 Freddie Mercury jacket from Wembley Stadium yellow and.. but it works the same as the previous ones have. You find your crest on top – London Stereoscopic Company crest on top. Fold it up and clip it like this. We might give you some close-ups of this later. Fold the eyepieces up in the same way and clip ‘em on like this. (Clip them) together, and there you have your OWL, which you always hold at the back. You never hold it at the front, okay. Hold it at the back and then the thumbs go in these thumb holes here and that’s how you focus. So this will work for pretty much any kind of eye sight. Let’s hope so.

So here’s your OWL. What do you use this for? 

You use it for perusing this unique stereoscopic book about Queen through the ages. Here it is, and you’ll find lots of normal kinds of illustrations here. Now I’ve never opened this before in my life.

<Smells book> Something about the smell of new books, like smell of new vinyl (your nose?). You know smell is a very important sense, so is touch, so is hearing. Thank God for our music but so is visual, and I’ve always been, I think. equally obsessed with the visual as well as wit sounds. Hence I was always carrying a stereo camera.

Here we go. This is not stereo. So far this is just showing you kind of what’s in the book.

Here we have Contents – through the years starting off with How To Use This Book, but I’m going to tell you and you get a picture me as a boy with a camera slung around my neck. I don’t know if you can see that. The camera’s not a stereo camera, but I used it to make stereo pictures because I twigged how it was done with the Weetabix.

So, working through the book – pretty soon you’re gonna come to the first stereo picture that I ever took. My Mum and Dad and stuff… me on a bike, but moving swiftly through, you can see that I was always carrying one of these cameras, with two eyes – the stereoscopic cameras. Hope you can see that – and the the rest of the book is showing you what was captured with those kind of cameras.

Starts off with the early days of Queen with us rehearsing and then the first tour of the USA – Freddie in his Zandra Rhodes outfit – and it works pretty well without the viewer, but you’ll notice that here’s a stereo picture down the bottom. I don’t know if you can see that. This is where your OWL comes in handy. So what you do is – I hope I can show ya’ – you squarely situate your OWL over the top of the stereo picture like this. I can show you – you have to hold it in this position – and you would be holding it by the back and focusing with your thumbs. I can assume you’ve done that, otherwise I can’t hold it up. Can you see that? And then once you focus the viewer, look through and you’ll see a pretty good window opening up on the world of, in his case, about 1974, and heres Freddie. And I think you’re gonna feel like you’re there. It’s quite amazing.

There’s something very special about a snapshot in 3D rather than in 2D. You always feel like you could walk through and touch things that are in it. You would speak to people who are in the picture.

Here’s Freddie, looking very unglamorous. I don’t know what he would think really, but I think, you know, with the benefit of time we all have a sense of humour. Here he is, after a gig, looking very – very wet, because he’s been working very hard and he’s looking at some of these toys that the Japanese fans brought to us.

So the book goes on through the years and here, a little self-portrait, so you can see what I’m doing. Again the stereo camera is here. But w go through the days – we do Japan – we do Europe – we do England – we do Australia. Lots and lots of stuff – and some nice onstage pictures in 3D of course, and some nice offstage pictures. Some of my favourites are things like this, where we’re in a photo session and playing about basically, but here’s Freddie looking very relaxed and the quality of the illustration is as high as we could get it in a print – it’s much higher than the normal artwork book you’ll fine, so hopefully you will enjoy and be able to forget the fact that you’re looking at a picture at all. You’re just looking through a window at something which happened long time ago.

I’m gonna find one of my favourites of Freddie here. There’s some good onstage stuff captured, in this case, by a fan who had a stereo camera at the time. Pretty lucky that. It’s quite an interesting collection. And here’s some more. These were captured by more professional people, photographers that I lent the stereo camera to. Particularly nice one of Freddie here. But some of the offstage stuff is equally – ah here’s the cover shot – you see that, … you can see – the offstage shots of Freddie are really nice and of all of us. Some of John and we don’t hear much about John, but you’ll hear about him in this book. Roger playing around… us on a boat trip in Scandinavia someplace, and again nice to just flick through the book like this, but even better with your OWL because the OWL will bring it to life. And there’s Freddie as large as life.

So that’s about it really. Here’s the book, “Queen in 3-D”. It’s out May the something-or-other.. About a month’s time. May the what? – 25th or something – something like that. I’m being prompted. So you have to wait a little bit longer for this but I hope it’s worth he wait. We’re gonna launch it around the around the beginning of May and hopefully this will be something which you’ll all enjoy for a long time to come.

God bless y’all.

Bri

SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE
20 May 2017

Watch tomorrow’s cover star Brian May talk exclusively about life with Queen, his new book “Queen in 3D” and his fondest memories of Freddie Mercury.

• Pick up your copy of The Sunday Times tomorrow 21 May for major article on the book.

A brief interview with Brian May about the new Queen In 3-D book.

https://www.facebook.com/SundayTimesMagazine/

BRIAN MAY:

I’m here to talk about The Sunday Times Magazine, because they are featuring my book this weekend – “Queen In 3-D” which is about two and a half years in the making.

Course my head is full of election stuff at the moment. It’s hard to put that to one side. I’m desperate to get that horrible fox-hunting woman out of 10 Downing Street.

But here is the book. What’s in the book? Well – all kinds of stuff. Forty years of Queen on the road. I’m gonna pick a few pictures just to speak about and to give you an idea what’s in the book.

Opening the book at page 88. we have a very nice picture of Freddie – and I didn’t even know I had this over the years. The picture was taken in 1976 and this is kinda early days for us. It’s about “A Night At The Opera” time when it’s beginning to break through, and this is a typical pose of Freddie if you like, except that he’s not posing. It’s an intimate moment, which I’ve captured here. He’s preparing to go on stage and in those days we were very glam and there was a lot of makeup applied, especially to Freddie’s face.

Here’s the OWL. Here’s your stereoscope, and this is what you do. Place it over here and look here. The feeling of being there is very powerful.

Not every picture in the book is stereo. There’s some private pictures which are mono, which I just had to include because they’re so evocative.

This is a great page. It’s a favourite of mine. It’s 1977. We’re on tour in the winter in the USA. It was always winter. It was always snow, and we are freezing to death sort of posing as rock stars outside our private plane, but, you know, having a great time also. And you can see Freddie kind of all huddled up here.

Not every picture in the book is stereo. There’s some private pictures which are mono, which I just had to include because they’re so evocative.

This is a great page. It’s a favourite of mine. It’s 1977. We’re on tour in the winter in the USA. It was always winter. It was always snow, and we are freezing to death sort of posing as rock stars outside our private plane, but, you know, having a great time also. And you can see Freddie kind of all huddled up here (chuckles) in his jacket, which wasn’t really up to the occasion.

Freddie was always fun. He was always lateral thinking and on stage and on tour there were really very few changes(?), because the aims were very clear, so we got on very well on tour – not so much in the studio. There were a lot of kind of disputes in the studio, mainly musical, but on tour it’s very clear. We have a certain preparation time, we go on stage, we entertain for 2 hours solid and we give them everything we have – and it’s fun.

This is another touring snapshot, if you like. This time we’re on tour in Europe, and it’s a nice three-dimensional picture of Freddie but the 4th dimension is that he’s taking a picture of me at the same time. Freddie loved his cameras. He loved his Polaroid thing because it was instant. He could take pictures of all his mates and immediately give them all away. Freddie was a very generous person, and again, you can enjoy it like this in 2-D in the book and you can flick through and read the anecdotes, but with this – with your OWL – you can zoom in in 3-D and you can see him, and, my God, it’s like you could touch him. And there he is snapping away at me. So here’s Freddie, and he liked his instant photography and we liked seeing him do it.”

The book has risen all the way to position 23 in overall books on Amazon, since this morning’s interview with Brian on Chris Evan’s show (hits up to 15 million listeners) – it was initially at 21,000 odd!

Rise and shine tomorrow 8.20am to hear Brian May on The Chis Evans Breakfast Show (BBC Radio 2)

#QueenIn3D #SneakPreview

Here’s a peek inside the first Queen In 3-D package to have landed at LSC HQ.

You can’t miss the very vibrant special edition Freddie-Mercury-Wembley-Stadium-Jacket Yellow OWL!