The strange feud between Queen and Sex Pistols
Although punk was informed by some of glam rock’s most prominent proponents, including Roxy Music, David Bowie and T. Rex, there was a notable gulf between the genres. The former, as spearheaded by Sex Pistols, was recognised for punchy, simplistic compositions and an attitude to fill the gaps. The latter was more colourful, opulent and much less politically inclined.
The punks most famously locked antlers with the complexities of prog-rock, but a feud between Queen and Sex Pistols ensured a heated handover as glam took its final bow and punk revved its engine in December 1976.
Approaching the first Christmas of the British punk era, Queen was booked to appear on the popular talk show Today. However, just days before the show, Freddie Mercury decided he must visit the dentist as he hadn’t been in 15 years. The only slot he could book clashed with Queen’s TV gig, and so the band pulled out for the sake of its frontman’s gnashers.
With a slot to fill, Today booked in the UK’s biggest rising punk rockers instead. This marked the Sex Pistols’ first interaction with Queen. Incidentally, they had just finished recording what would become their second single at the time, ‘God Save the Queen’. The song was, of course, written in reference to the Royal Family, but the sentiment might as well have been addressed to Mr. Mercury.
Between March and August 1977, Sex Pistols recorded the remainder of the material for their debut album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, at Wessex Sound studios in London. In the adjacent studio, Queen was busy recording their album News of the World.
The Sex Pistols frontman, John Lydon, recalled bumping into Mercury’s group in a 2017 interview with Rolling Stone. “Next door, Queen was recording one of their albums, and Brian May asked me if I would do some backing vocals on their album,” Rotten revealed. “I don’t remember which song; it’s not the ‘Galileo’ one. But I went in, and it was amazing to hear the way that Freddie [Mercury] recorded every line separately – sometimes just a word – and then they’d edit them”.
Lydon recalled being dumbfounded by Queen’s attention to detail. “Bloody hell, I got one take, and that’s it; I’d get two if I made a mistake. I eventually realized that the music will overcome, regardless of the alleged rules and regulations that were always being thrown at us.”
Speaking to Classic Rock in 2017, Brian May recalled that Queen wasn’t particularly fused with the punk movement, but drummer Roger Taylor was their punk-nominated correspondent. “I think Freddie, John [Deacon] and I were very much in our own world, but Roger was very aware of what was going on [with punk]. He sort of crystallized the whole punk attitude, and there’s no doubt about it, the guy had amazing charisma.”
Although May had no quarrel with Lydon, he noted that bassist Sid Vicious was a “moron” and reiterated elsewhere using the word “idiot”.
Queen’s aversion to Vicious was hinged upon a row between him and Mercury. In his 2011 book Queen Unseen, Peter Hince, a longtime Queen roadie, remembered the altercation. “One afternoon when Queen were working in the control room, Sid Vicious stumbled in, the worse for wear, and addressed Fred: ‘Have you succeeded in bringing ballet to the masses yet?’ (A reference to a quote Fred had made in the music press),” he wrote.
“Fred casually got up, walked over to him and quipped: ‘Aren’t you Stanley Ferocious or something?’, took him by the collar and threw him out. So much for the mean edge of punk,” he added wryly.
According to Queen biographer Daniel Nester, Mercury playfully flicked the safety pins on the front of Sid’s leather jacket and commented, “Tell me, did you arrange these pins just so?”
In a 1980s interview featured in Georg Purvis’ book Queen: Complete Works, Mercury also reflected on the spat. “I called him Simon Ferocious or something, and he didn’t like it at all. I said, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ He was very well marked,” the singer remembered. “I said, ‘Make sure you scratch yourself in the mirror properly today, and tomorrow you’re going to get something else.’ He hated the fact that I could even speak like that. I think we survived that test.”
Although the incident between Mercury and Vicious stirred palpable friction between the two bands, the hatchet was well and truly buried with the troubled bassist’s death in 1979. In 2017, May appeared on Jonesy’s Jukebox, the Los Angeles radio show of the former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones.
“You made an album which changed the world,” the Queen guitarist told his counterpart, “and I think we did as well [with News Of The World]. To me, Never Mind The Bollocks is a great album. Pure music, apart from all the social arguments. It’s a great album, a great rock album, and the sounds are great, the production’s great, the songs are great.”
Listen to ‘God Save the Queen’ by Sex Pistols below.
