Show Notes
Guitarist, songwriter, studio owner, guitar designer, Brian May collaborator, and professional bad record deal survivor Arielle stops by the show this week.
We get into how a shy, Queen-obsessed kid with doctor parents ended up moving to Hollywood at sixteen, landing at MI, meeting Brian May at a tiny bookstore, and eventually working with him on the West End production of We Will Rock You. From there we talk about touring with Eric Johnson, turning a Frankenstein “one guitar to rule them all” project into the Two-Tone model with Brian May Guitars, and why she keeps coming back to that original weird orangish color scheme.
Arielle also tells one of the gnarliest label stories ever heard on this podcast. We dig into the contract that owned her name and guitars, the lawyers who were not on her side, hiring a litigator she could not afford, being followed by a private investigator, going bankrupt just to get her art back, and how she rebuilt by slowly carving out her own path.
On the practical side, Arielle shares hard-earned advice for anyone trying to make a living in music right now: focusing on what you are actually extraordinary at, treating your art like a business, knowing when to say no, not chasing managers and labels before there is anything to manage, and remembering that in 2025 you often do not need a label to reach people. We also talk about fame being weirder than glamorous, Brian May and Eric Johnson as actual humans, a Metal Zone myth involving “Cliffs Of Dover,”
Check out all her stuff on her website HERE https://imarielle.com/
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