Brian May considered suicide while struggling to cope with his bandmate Freddie Mercury's death.
The Queen frontman's final days before his passing, from an AIDS related illness in 1991, coincided with a period of turmoil in Brian's personal life, as his father passed away and he fretted over the breakdown of his first marriage.
Speaking about how badly his pal's death affected him, the guitarist told The Guardian: "I felt like life was over. I was very close to driving off the bridge several times. Very close. It was Hammersmith Bridge."
Explaining how lost he was at the time, he added: "I lost my dad to cancer around the same time. And my marriage broke up, because I fell in love with another woman (his now wife Anita Dobson). The marriage was probably breaking up anyway, but that was the final catalyst and the breakup was very painful and grisly.
"I felt like I was losing my kids as well; I felt like I was losing everything. I was just trying to grapple my way around in the darkness, and music was the only thing I could cling to; it was a kind of therapy."
The star has been through some tough experiences in recent times too, as last year he suffered a heart attack and had to evacuate his country home due to a wildfire in Surrey, England. This year the difficulties continued as his London home was flooded.
"It's made us feel violated," he said of the experience. "It's what it does to your soul to lose your possessions, to see them swimming about in it. I had to tear up all my old photograph albums, the very first ones I ever had when I was eight years old, to try to save the photographs."
He has now had enough of spending time in London, adding: "It's brutal, it's noisy, it's polluted. Nobody has any consideration. So we're feeling like we want to get out. That is very wounding: I love London, I grew up here. But I don't think I can deal with it any more."
