Queen star Brian May agreed to join My Chemical Romance onstage at the Reading Festival on Friday night (26Aug11) after learning his classic rock group had inspired frontman Gerard Way to return to the event after he was previously booed offstage.
May was the band's surprise guest during it's triumphant return to the festival as Friday's headline act and now Way explains he befriended the guitarist after revealing Queen gave him the courage to return.
The goth rocker tells NME.com, "I wrote an email to Brian... 'There was this story that you played a show in Paris and got booed off and Freddie (Mercury) said, 'We’re gonna come back and be the biggest band in the world'. And, after what happened to us at Reading in 2006, people would ask us, 'Are you gonna do that again?' and I'd go, 'Not unless we're headlining it.'
"So I told him this whole story and how we were gonna go back and could he give me some advice. So we just got talking and I went to his house - I got off a plane, went to his house, went to his jam room, jammed out, did a soundcheck."
But the idea to invite May to join his band onstage was a last-minute one: "I had a feeling that morning, it flipped in my brain. Not, 'Are we ready for this', I almost felt like, 'Is the crowd ready for us?'"
May enjoyed a weekend of big-name collaborations - after joining My Chemical Romance onstage in Britain, he hopped on a plane and joined Lady Gaga for her opening number at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night (28Aug11).