Brian May insists Axl Rose isn’t as “difficult” as people think.

Although the Guns ‘N Roses frontman axed the Queen guitarist’s collaborations from his band’s 2008 album ‘Chinese Democracy’, Brian insists the rocker has always been “attentive”, and says people shouldn’t think less of him because of his past decision.

He said: “People think of Axl as difficult, but he was always very attentive to me.”

The musician explained that even though he worked with Guns ‘N Roses on some of the album tracks only to find his work was cut when the record was finally released, he was still very much involved in the album’s creation.

He said: “I flew out to meet him and he played me pretty much the whole album. We had a long night, talking, thinking, figuring out potential directions, and then I had a couple of days just trying things out.

“I think I played on two-and-a-half tracks, but they didn’t end up using my parts. They used about 10 guitarists subsequent to that!”

However, Brian has no hard feelings, saying he will never release the original recordings out of respect for Axl.

He explained Uncut magazine: “I have rough mixes of these tracks somewhere in my archive, but I’m not going to let anyone listen to them, out of loyalty to Axl.

“It was fun, to throw something in there to help out a friend.”