On their Youtube channel, Queen recently released a video, where they talked about their studio records sessions evolving into live performances.
What Brian May hoped would happen with the song while writing ‘We Will Rock You’, later turned into reality. May explained:
“Well, you kind of hope that they will evolve live. I mean, We Will Rock You, certainly was written with the absolutely clear intention that it would be an audience participation song. And it worked out, I’m happy to say.”
He later explained how the song became incomprehensible:
“But it’s different live. And for a start, there’s no drums on the original recorded version. It’s become a drum extravaganza, which is fine, and the audience do sing it. The stamping and clapping thing has evolved into a completely incomprehensible situation because some people will go bump bump punch, some people go boom, boom, punch, and you know, who knows? I don’t even know anymore.”
May, describing how he comes up with a song idea, said:
But it doesn’t matter because the physicality is there and they sing and obviously it’s a staple. It’s always going to be with us, ‘We Will Rock You’, same with ‘[We Are The] Champions’. So yeah, it’s moments of discovery. ‘Oh, we can do this.’ I love waking up in the middle of the night and thinking, ‘Oh, you know what? We could do this’, you know? And you go in, you ‘Can we try this?’ and then you go ‘Actually yeah that could work, that can pretty much work’.”
According to May, fans of the band helped write ‘We Will Rock You’ with their enthusiasm. During a gig, after the band was done with their performance, the audience sang a song back to them, which inspired ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘We Are The Champions’. The guitarist described in an early interview:
“We did an encore and they went off. Instead of just keeping clapping, they sang [Elvis Presley’s] ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ to us, and we were just completely knocked out and taken aback. It was quite an emotional experience really, and I think these chant things are in some way connected with that.”
Since its release, ‘We Will Rock You’ has got numerous certifications and charted first place for OCC’s ‘UK Singles’.
See the video below.
