Is Sid Vicious the “big disgrace” referred to in the Queen song ‘We Will Rock You’?
It’s become almost cliché, but punk’s meteoric impact and the ‘year zero’ it created meant some of the most established and commercially successful acts of the era lost street credibility virtually overnight. Double-denim AOR, stadium spectacle, and ten-minute drum solos were out, replaced with zines, pogoing, and learning three chords to start a band, but you know all this. While bands like Yes or Emerson, Lake and Palmer died a death practically overnight, others were shaken out of their complacency and decided to toughen up their sound.
The Rolling Stones spiked with the release of the 1978 album Some Girls with a rawer urgency and a little disco for good measure, and Pink Floyd injected some sonic grit into their space-jazz on the angsty Animals. Neil Young, meanwhile, never one to be intimated by the developing trends of popular music as his Geffen years demonstrate, embraced punk’s hard edge wholeheartedly with his Rust Never Sleeps, earning the epithet ‘The Godfather of Grunge’. Another rock monster that took the punk revolution in their stride was, somewhat remarkably, arena behemoth Queen.
At the time of recording News of the World, Queen was still aiming for anthemic power designed with a stadium audience in mind. Guitarist Brian May, featuring in the 2011 Days of Our Lives documentary, recalled conceiving ‘We Will Rock You’ after watching a Liverpool football game . He said: “I went to bed thinking, ‘What could you ask them to do?’ They’re all squeezed in there, but they can clap their hands, they can stamp their feet, and they can sing,” he noted. “In the morning, I woke up and had the idea in my head for ‘We Will Rock You’.” Released as a double A-side with ‘We Are the Champions’, Queen’s musical grandeur clearly wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Charismatic frontman Freddie Mercury hadn’t exactly endeared himself to punk’s street-level iconoclasm. No doubt guided by good intentions but oblivious to a clumsy paternalism, Mercury infamously had reported to “want to bring ballet to the working classes” during an interview with NME. “What a cunt” was The Jam’s Paul Weller’s curt response. Highfalutin hijinks aside, Queen soaked up enough of punk’s ephemeral flame, eschewing the theatrical symphony pop as heard in prior records for a more hard rock approach with News of the World, the ripper ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ playfully nodding to the new wave that was lighting a fire beneath the mainstream. They even often played a ‘fast’ version of ‘We Will Rock You’ well into the early ’80s.
During the ‘We Will Rock You’ sessions, the Sex Pistols were also in Wessex Sound Studios recording their seminal debut, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols LP. A drunken Sid Vicious decided to interrupt a take, asking Mercury if he’d “brought ballet to the working classes yet?”.
“Not yet, dear,” he quipped back. “I called him, I dunno, Simon Ferocious or something, and just pushed him out. I think… yeah, I think we passed that test,” noted Mercury in a later interview, drummer Roger Taylor less charitably remarking that Vicious was “a moron… an idiot!”
Johnny Rotten, not known for his magnanimity, was reportedly far more playful in his interactions. According to Wessex engineer Bill Price, Rotten was rather keen to meet Mercury, crawling across the floor to reach him whilst recording a piano take, briefly saying hello and crawling back. May too recalled corridor encounters and polite discussions over music.
Is Sid Vicious the “big disgrace” as lambasted on ‘We Will Rock You’? Well, quite possibly. According to Queen biographer Daniel Nester, “Freddie rose from his chair and began to playfully flick the safety pins displayed on the front of Sid’s leather jacket. ‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘Did you arrange these pins just so?’ When Sid stepped forward in an attempt to intimidate Freddie, the singer simply pushed him backwards and inquired, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ Sid immediately backed down.”
No matter how punk you are, it’s always foolish to square up to a man with a handlebar moustache in a white tank top. “Buddy, you’re a boy make a big noise, playin’ in the street gonna be a big man someday” could well be aimed at Vicious directly, but also a broader statement towards punk itself, asserting with confidence that Queen wasn’t going anywhere.
