Welcome back to Queen The Greatest,
a year long celebration of
fifty of Queen’s most remarkable songs,
performances and achievements.
In this episode
we continue our celebration of
a song that is arguably
one of their finest –
“We Will Rock You”.
With its instantly recognisable rhythm
and memorable lyrics,
it’s no surprise this song has become
one of the band’s
most popular and deservedly resides
in the Grammy Hall of Fame.
In this special interview
for Queen the Greatest,
Brian shares a few more secrets
about the songs fascinating evolution…
[Brian May] “I wanted the song to
be non-standard, I wanted it to
be exceptional in every way.
So I wanted to break all the rules
and normally the guitar solo
comes in the middle,
and then you get back
and have the last verse
and wind the thing up.
I didn’t want that,
I wanted the whole song to
be there and then comes
the guitar solo out of nowhere.”
[Brian May] “And I could hear
something in my head
but I wasn’t really sure what it was.
And in my memory,
I think I only went in there once,
I just did one take.”
[Brian May] “I just went in there,
and I wanted to be spontaneous,
I didn’t want it to be planned.
So I got them to play the whole track,
so I was playing along
with the whole track in my head
but not making any noise,
because the noise was going to come.
So I’m all ready and then when
it comes to my bit I do the big…”
[Brian May] “…the big C chord
which changes key,
so it changes key for this solo
and it’s never coming back.
So there’s a kind of, there’s an event
at the end of the song which is
irreversible if you like.
So it changes to the A chord and
I found this way of kind of playing
an A chord down here,
but also playing it up top but still
using the open strings.
It makes that strange
kind of bell like sound,
and I enjoyed doing these kind of
little chordal things.“
[Brian May] “And I just fished around,
I could feel something inside
and I didn’t really know what it was,
I was just playing along
to the feel of what was coming
through my headphones.
So I went back in and listened to it,
and the bit that I really liked
was something I’d stumbled upon
by accident.
That one little riff stuck in my head and
I thought that’s the way
to end the song.”
[Brian May] “So we copied the tape,
we snipped it out with scissors,
or actually probably the razor blade,
put three versions of that together
and that’s what you hear
at the end of the track.
I didn’t actually play it three times,
I just played it the once
and we duplicated it
and put it on with sticky tape.
That’s what you’re hearing.”
[Brian May] “So if you listen to those
last three phrases on We Will Rock You,
the original recording,
you will hear the three phrases
which are all the same,
and you hear a kind of
scratch between them.”
[Brian May] “And how did that happen?
It’s because I’m coming from
the bottom up to the top
to play that thing.
So, naturally, if I’d been playing it,
it wouldn’t be there.
It’s a little secret if you like.
So you’re hearing the scratch
of something that
never happens between the three…
You see, this is very geeky information,
but somebody’s going to go
‘ah OK, I can hear that’. “
[Brian May] “Those little scratches,
I liked.
All those little imperfections –
you know when you do something
and you get what you want,
but you also get a little bonus of
something you didn’t expect.
I thought,
‘Yeah, I like that little scratch,
it’s going to be with me.’
I remember having that feeling
it’s going to be with me
for the rest of my life,
and it has been.
We Will Rock You
is with me everywhere I go.”
[Brian May] “I had no idea of
how far it would go, no.
And there wasn’t that much confidence
in the studio around me in the sense that
not everyone was convinced
this was going to work.
And they weren’t convinced people
were going to play it on the Radio.
Turned out that they did,
which is nice.”
[Brian May] “But, yes,
the thing I suppose
I’m most proud of is the fact
it became part of public life,
so when everyone goes,
anyone goes thump, thump, clap
in any form whatsoever,
that’s what it is.
And people kind of …
the greatest compliment is when
people think nobody wrote it,
they just think it’s always been there,
archetypally.
So We Will Rock You has become like,
I don’t know,
something which is traditional
and goes back to the Stone Age,
and that makes me happy.”
[Brian May] “And it brings joy,
it brings people together
and that’s probably the best thing of all
because We Will Rock You and
We Are The Champions
were conceived in that way,
in that sense to
try and bring people together,
and everytime I hear this happening
at a football match or a sports fixture
anywhere around the world I think
‘yeah, it kinda worked.
It worked. It brings people together,
it makes people feel like they have
some kind of power by coming together’.
That’s a good feeling for humanity,
I think, togetherness is a great thing.”