50 years after Queen's first album, Brian May remembers Freddie Mercury

LOS ANGELES: Fifty years on from Queen's debut album, guitarist Brian May reckoned the band would still be rocking the world if ­ Freddie Mercury were still with us.

The guitar legend reveals he still "misses the butterflies" he would feel while watching the flamboyant frontman ­strut his stuff on stage, reports Mirror.co.uk.

"Freddie was a fantastic mate and a great brother," he said. "I liked it when he broke the rules, what he said to the ­audience and the risk he took. I am sure if he was here today we would still be doing it and the mothership would still be steaming around the world, because he lived for music and lived for the band – it was his family."

As per Mirror.co.uk, Bandmates Brian, Freddie, Roger Taylor and John Deacon put out their self-titled first LP on July 13, 1973, on EMI in the UK and Elektra Records in the US.

Rolling Stone magazine hailed it as a "superb" debut – even though it only reached No 32 in the charts. And it set wheels in motion that would see Queen become one of the greatest rock groups of all time with over 300 million in records sold worldwide. Five decades on, and 32 years after frontman Freddie's death from AIDS aged just 45 in 1991, Brian said his memories of his old friend have not faded. "He was very shy but also very social. He lived to the max every second of the day," said the 75-year-old.

"He is so enduring because he was an eccentric genius. He was not a people pleaser. Some may have found him rude but he achieved what he wanted and knew what he was doing. I think there was a period where he felt we might disapprove of his sexuality, and the rest of the world might disapprove."

"I know he struggled with it, but he plucked up the courage to be what he wanted to be. He opened up his heart and he gave it everything he had. He was proud of himself as a musician above all else. If you look back at the history of rock 'n' roll, is Little Richard a man trying to hide the fact he's gay? No. He screamed his passion. Freddie belongs to that genre," he added.