Written for fans and inspiring singalongs around the world, ‘We Will Rock You’ has become the ultimate battle cry. By Jason Draper
By the time Queen came to record their sixth album, News of the World, they’d mastered the art of writing crowd-pleasing anthems. Following a chance event at a gig, however, the group sensed a shift taking place: their theatrical shows had brought them an audience, but now that audience was no longer turning up simply to watch; they were becoming part of the spectacle. Fans had sung along to every song during the band’s stop at Bingley Hall, in Stafford, on the A Day at the Races Tour, and went on to regale Queen with an impromptu rendition of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ as the group left the stage. As Brian May later told Absolute Radio, concerts had stopped being a “one-way experience”: the fans “were interacting and changing what we were”.
Seeking to encourage the connection, May decided to write a song tailor-made for audience participation. “I’d gone to sleep thinking, What can an audience do? What could you ask them to do?” he said in the documentary Queen: Days of Our Lives. “They’re all crammed in there, they can’t do much, but they can stamp their feet, they can clap their hands and they can sing. So I woke up with ‘We Will Rock You’ in my head.”
“You couldn’t get a more minimal song”
Setting themselves an extra challenge, Queen sought to create something as rousing as ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ while moving away from the densely produced sound they’d become known for. “We’d always done very complicated, intricate records… that ended up becoming very layered and complex,” Roger Taylor later told Billboard. “You couldn’t get a more minimal song” than ‘We Will Rock You’, he explained. “It’s kind of tribal and primitive.”
Sitting on a drum riser in Wessex Sound Studio, the four bandmates, plus their roadies, assistant sound engineer Andy Turner and even Betty, the studio’s tea lady, recorded multiple takes of the song’s distinctive stomp-stomp-clap beat, using just their feet and hands. Eschewing even the basic instrumentation of bass and drums, May, working with co-producer Mike Stone, then put different delays on each take, resulting in a track that sounded as though it had been performed by dozens, even hundreds of people. “I was really pushing the boundaries of what I knew had been done in terms of creating live sound in the studio,” he told Billboard. “It just gets bigger and bigger and as time goes on it gets sloppy, so it sounds more and more like an audience that’s scattered around.”
Topped off by Freddie Mercury’s commanding vocals and a cutting guitar solo that loops around itself in the song’s closing moments, ‘We Will Rock You’ made its point in a mere two minutes. But with lyrics that addressed the three stages of man – what May would call “the hopeful child, the big brave man in the prime of his life and the old man who has learned to accept his place in the universe” – and an arena-ready chorus that anyone could sing, it would leave its mark on future generations.
“We were becoming aware that we could empower everybody”
Opening News of the World, the song served notice of Queen’s latest transformation and set up the sky-scraping balladry of the album’s following number, ‘We Are the Champions’. Issued as a double A-side in the US, the pairing hit No.4 on the Billboard singles chart, giving Queen their biggest stateside success to date. (‘Champions’ would go to No.2 in the UK, where it was released with ‘Rock You’ on the flip.) Its promo video was as no-frills as the track itself. Featuring the band stomping their way through several takes in the snow-covered grounds of Roger Taylor’s recently purchased home in Surrey, it reflected the DIY spirit of the rapidly rising punk movement. “We caught the zeitgeist of the time, the mood, the punk thing was coming along, and it was kind of our reaction to it,” Taylor told Billboard.
And yet, ‘We Will Rock You’ has transcended genre to become part of the cultural fabric. Inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2009, it remains a perennial chant in sports stadiums around the world, and even became a fixture on the West End, after lending its name to Queen’s award-winning stage musical.
Recalling the time that Queen performed the song at Live Aid, where it was part of a set-closing one-two punch that included ‘We Are the Champions’, Brian May marvelled at its success.
“That was a big moment of realisation for us, that that had broken through to something more than a rock audience – like a public consciousness,” he told Rolling Stone. “I think we were aware of the possibility, but really it was more about our audience, our rock audience. We were becoming aware that we could empower everybody.”
Jason Draper