Brian still has several 1615s and they were a staple of live shows from 1977 to 1986, most notably for use during Love Of My Life, ’39 and the rhythm part in the first section of Crazy Little Thing…

BM: “It’s nice, stable and didn’t give much trouble tuning-wise. On the record, Love Of My Life is very piano-based and we wanted to do it live, but it would have been fiddly on the piano. So I suggested to Freddie that just he and I should do it and I picked up the 12-string. I kind of evolved ways of making it do what I wanted, so it became the guitar I used for that song.

"I string it upside down, with the lighter strings on the treble side.That means that when I’m picking with my fingers rather than the thumb, I’m picking the high strings, so you can play tunes on it a bit more easily.”