In the ongoing civil war of rock and roll, where musicians battle over their opinions on Covid, a new warrior has entered the fray. Brian May, famed guitarist for Queen, sat down for an interview with The Independent, where he didn’t hold back on his opinions about how his native country of England has handled the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent vaccine roll out. He also took a shot at the man he deems his “hero,” Eric Clapton.
In the interview, he gives Clapton a little bit of love before he makes it clear that the anti-vax people, Clapton included, aren’t on the right side of science:I love Eric Clapton, he’s my hero, but he has very different views from me in many ways. He’s a person who thinks it’s OK to shoot animals for fun, so we have our disagreements, but I would never stop respecting the man. Anti-vax people, I’m sorry, I think they’re fruitcakes. There’s plenty of evidence to show that vaccination helps. On the whole, they’ve been very safe. There’s always going to be some side effect in any drug you take, but to go around saying vaccines are a plot to kill you, I’m sorry, that goes in the fruitcake jar for me.
For the record, May is an astrophysicist and wrote a thesis entitled, “A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud.” So suffice it to say that the man has a grasp on science, even if it’s in a different field.
May’s comments stem from Clapton’s most recent headline-making news; Clapton announced a couple weeks ago that he would not play venues that required vaccination to attend the concert, citing that he has the right to cancel the shows. It’s not the first time this year that Clapton has railed against vaccines and provisions put in place by other companies. In May, when Clapton received his first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, he wrote in a letter (published on social media by anti-lockdown advocate, Robin Monotti Graziadei) that he feared the adverse side effects may result in him never being able to play again. (Fortunately, this was presumably not the case, as Clapton is now threatening to cancel shows for other reasons.)
That’s a little intense and vague, but, you know, protest songs just aren’t what they used to be. The single was a bit ill-fated before it was released. Before its debut in December, the duo announced the single together in late November, but instead of buzz, it was more of a reminder that Clapton’s most recent bout with controversy was hardly his first.
People have begun unearthing racist comments made by the singer back in the 70s. The silver lining there is that there ended up being some really solid music come out of Britain at the time that railed against anti-immigrant and racist notions. The bad news is, of course, that Clapton can’t seem to find himself on the right side of history.
Anyway, for those keeping score, Van Morrison and Eric Clapton are the anti-lockdown kings of rock and roll, and Sebastian Bach and Brian May ain’t got time for fruitcakes because they want to get back on the road. May rock and roll never die.
