This will, this will shock you! Queen hated fans singing along at shows
IT’S the ultimate rock anthem that famously generated a 70,000-strong singalong at Wembley Stadium for Live Aid in 1985.
But the man who wrote We Will Rock You – Queen’s Brian May – has revealed the band used to hate it when audiences sang along at their concerts.
He says it was only when they realised they couldn’t stop fans belting out their tunes that he decided to embrace the idea and write We Will Rock You as a perfect sing-along hit.
Guitarist May said Queen just wished fans would shut up and watch their shows – as followers of other big 1970s groups did. He added: ‘I think we were quite irritated by it! We thought, “People, just listen, we’re working really hard, so bloody well listen!”’
Queen’s attitude changed one night at a concert when the crowd sang every word to every song and he decided to write a song that would ‘harness this kind of energy’.
He told Total Guitar magazine: ‘I thought, “What can you ask an audience to do if that audience is all crammed in together?”
‘There’s not much they can do except stamp their feet and clap their hands, but they can also sing. And if they can chant, what would they chant? And with that, I could hear it in my head: “We will, we will rock you!”’ He said the rest of the band originally had misgivings about the song and he worried whether it could be a success. But he added: ‘As soon as I heard Freddie [Mercury] singing it, I started to be more confident, because he sounded like a kind of rabble-rouser.’
The band went on to write other sing-along hits such as We Are The Champions and Radio Ga Ga.