Brian May, the guitarist for Queen, was influenced by The Beatles, as were many of his contemporaries. The arrival of the Liverpool quintet was like a big boom in popular culture. They snatched 1950s rock ‘n’ roll by the lapels and dragged it into the future with great innovation and foresight. Following their early years’ pop-leaning turns, they embarked on a voyage to an unknown magical land, where they experimented with drugs, production methods, and genres. On this voyage, they reimagined what a band could and should be.

Despite their diminishing relevance in the present, the Beatles changed the course of history. Nobody who wasn’t alive at the time, in my opinion, understands the significance of their efforts. This has resulted in people like Brian May, who had the good fortune to see John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and the rest of the Beatles in their prime, May reflected on those heady moments in an interview, claiming that the Beatles’ “magic” in one song swayed him.

May said in 2020 to Louder Sound that his parents disliked The Beatles when he was a child. “When I was a kid, I wasn’t allowed to go see The Beatles in concert because my parents thought pop concerts were for the wrong kind of people,” he explained. As a result, I never got to see the twentieth century’s largest phenomenon in person.”

But it wasn’t all bad. May remarked that the 1962 song “Love Me Do” was the one that convinced him that The Beatles were “magic.” The Queen Man continued to speak. “But from the moment I heard ‘Love Me Do’ on the radio, I knew this group of guys were special—that they voiced all my hidden joys and yearnings as a teenager trying to fit into the world of the ’60s.”

In that lengthy love letter to the band, Brian May also indicated that he believes John Lennon, the late vocalist of The Beatles, was the band’s most successful member. May believes that while Lennon referred to them as the “perfect rock group to inspire all rock groups,” he was the driving force behind them.

“It is impossible to deny that the four lads’ combination was one-of-a-kind, a piece of magic in a million—the perfect rock group to inspire all rock groups and rewrite the framework of not only popular music but the entire culture of the young,” he stated. But, as time passed, it became clear that John Lennon was at the core of this incredible force.”