Brian May has ruled out touring with Queen again.
The 79-year-old guitarist decided last year his time on the road was done because he is ready for more “freedom” and time to spend with his wife Anita Dobson and their extended family.
Asked if there’s a future for Queen, he told the Times newspaper: “I made a decision 18 months ago that I didn’t want to tour again.
“A close family friend died when we were in the States, so I said to my tour manager, ‘I’ll just nip home for a few days and come back.’ She looked me in the eyes and said, ‘You know you can’t do that.’
“I love to play, I love to travel, but the trade-off is sacrificing your freedom. I have a wife, grandchildren and a lot of astrophysics I want to do, so I’m thinking maybe 50 years is enough.”
But fans shouldn’t be too disappointed because he and bandmate Roger Taylor are keen to create some sort of “immersive experience”, though Brian has “serious misgivings” about the role AI would play in the project.
Roger said: “We do want to do something fairly revolutionary. Not as ABBA did, but along those lines.”
Brian added: “Last year I went to the Sphere [in Las Vegas], my juices started flowing and I sketched out a whole Queen show.
“I think an immersive experience is still on the cards and it could conquer time and space, but currently you can’t make it without AI and I have serious misgivings about that…
“It’s trashing our future. We all like AI. It helps us write emails. It’s even saved a few lives. But the harm it is bringing to the world is immense.”
Brian pulled the plug on a video for his recent song My Angels Are Calling after the directors created it with AI.
He said: “AI would have stolen the angels from some artist, so they had to go.
“We’re facing a moral dilemma: you can’t hide from this thing, but it’s turning us into a very different civilisation and personally I’m terrified. These tech billionaires do not have our interests at heart.”
Frontman Freddie Mercury died in 1991 and at the time, his bandmates never expected to carry on.
Brian said: “Quite the opposite. We always said that if any of us went, that was the end.”
But an album worth of unreleased recordings, Made In Heaven, was released in 1995, which led to them continuing as a live band, with Free’s Paul Rodgers initially taking on lead vocals before Adam Lambert came on board in 2011.
Brian said: “Then we were in a place we never thought we’d be in again: playing arenas.
“It always feels like conquering the world. But you’re not really conquering it: you’re just getting out there.”