Maybe the most famous piece of trivia about Queen guitarist Brian May is that he built the electric guitar he has used for most of his musical career. It's called the Red Special, and it was constructed with his father when May was 16. So, it's ironic that the only Queen single in which May sang lead vocals, "Long Away," he mainly plays a Burns 12-string guitar. This choice, as much as the song itself, serves as a reminder of May's and the band's relentless creativity.
"Long Away" is the third track on the band's fifth album, A Day at the Races, which was the follow-up to their 1975 masterpiece A Night at the Opera. That album had catapulted Queen to international superstardom on the back of the single "Bohemian Rhapsody." With A Day at the Races, the band opted for a pure more-of-the-same approach, making the album almost an extension as much as a sequel. Both featured the same style of artwork (one in black, the other in white), both took their names from Marx Brothers movies and the pairing of day and night in the titles suggested an almost cyclical link between them.
This linkage extends through May's songwriting and lead-vocal contributions to the albums. His folk-influenced song "'39" appeared as the fifth track on A Night at the Opera, serving as a kind of palate cleanser between the more aggressive, high-concept and baroque compositions that make up much of the rest of that record. May's "Long Away" serves much the same purpose on A Day at the Races.
Opening with a shimmering 12-string riff on one stereo channel, the song sounds far different than the others that precede it on the album. After several bars, May lays down another 12-string track and the rest of the band comes in behind him, operating not in their more traditional, early metal or glam/prog mode, but almost like a holdover from the heyday of the '60s Laurel Canyon sound.
May's 12-string playing has echoes of Roger McGuinn's work with the Byrds, and the vocals that the band develops over this bring to mind the harmonies of the Beach Boys and the melodic sensitivity of the Beatles. May sings the lead, with Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor backing him on the high end, and the whole thing dances along as effortlessly as dandelion pips in the wind. From: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/queen-long-away/
