Brian May has admitted he had a moment of "catching his breath" when his iconic guitar was dismantled in order to be replicated. The 77-year-old Queen legend famously handmade his guitar - christened the Red Special - with his father Harold, who died in 1991 at the age of 66. Father and son began the work in 1963 and completed it in 1964. As such the instrument has great sentimental value as well as being a piece of music history.

However, as Queen found success, Brian found himself in the unenviable position of having to hand it over to guitar craftsman Greg Fryer in order to have replicas made in the mid 90s. Asked if it was nerve wracking Brian said: "You mean when he took my guitar to bits and had it in pieces all over the workshop? I did have a moment of catching my breath because that had never happened since I made it," he admitted.

"But I quickly learned to trust this guy. He’s an amazing craftsman and he took infinite care. He had to take it all to bits to take all the measurements he needed.

"When he finished, he put the new guitar into my hands, and if I closed my eyes I couldn’t tell it wasn’t mine. It’s amazing," he told Guitar Player magazine in an interview.

Brian's guitar, which started out as a personal project as he couldn't afford to buy one, is now one of the most famous in the world.

However, although his father helped him build it, it led to an 18-month estrangement between the pair after Brian decided to use it to pursue a career in music.

“My dad felt that he’d sacrificed a lot in order to give me a good education, to give me the opportunity to get a ‘proper’ job. And he felt I chucked it all away to become a pop star. He thought there was not a snowball’s chance in hell of us getting anywhere, and he was right. The chances were against us. But we had this insane belief, we had some talent, and we were very lucky,"

“I remember saying to my dad: ‘You helped me do this. You made the guitar with me, for God’s sake, you can’t be that upset about it.’

"But he was. He didn’t see it as a life pursuit. He changed his mind eventually, much later,” Brian recalled in a 2021 interview with The Guardian.

The pair were reconciled in 1977 when Brian flew his parents to New York on Concorde for Queen’s Madison Square Garden show. In true English fashion father and son shook hands backstage and that was the end of the matter.