War & Peace Quote by Brian May

There is something quietly militant about calling a guitar a "weapon" and a "shield" in the same breath: Brian May frames music as both offense and defense, a way to strike out at the world and to disappear from it. That duality fits the Queen mythos perfectly. The band’s sound is built on bravado and spectacle, yet May himself has long read as the studious one, the astrophysics guy who doesn’t seem temperamentally engineered for rock’s usual chest-thumping. The line hints at how performance can function as a socially acceptable mask for people who aren’t natural extroverts.

"Weapon" suggests agency. A guitar lets you make noise big enough to matter, to cut through a room, to take up space without asking permission. It’s also a substitute language: if you can’t or won’t speak your feelings plainly, you can bend a note until it does the speaking for you. But May immediately pairs that with "shield", which flips the romance of the rock instrument. The guitar becomes a barrier between the self and scrutiny, an object you can literally hold in front of your body while the spotlight hits.

The context matters: Queen’s rise was an era when rock performance demanded a certain kind of swagger, and May’s elaborate, carefully engineered tone (homemade guitar, stacked harmonies) was itself a form of control. The subtext is that virtuosity isn’t just showing off; it’s self-protection. Master the instrument, and you can manage the room, even if you’re still hiding in plain sight.