Queen is known for having foot-stomping anthems that the audience can sing along to, and according to guitarist Brian May, that was very deliberate on their part — although not at first.
“It wasn’t common to have a participatory concert experience with the audience when we started it off," May shares in a new interview with Vulture. "You didn’t go to a Led Zeppelin concert and sing along. It wasn’t cool. Black Sabbath, you didn’t do that. So when people started doing it for our songs, our first reaction was, 'Why don’t they just listen? What’s going wrong here?'"
But May says the band soon realized, “This is new. This is a phenomenon. It seems we shouldn’t be fighting this. We should be embracing it." And that's exactly what they did.
“I went away and wrote 'We Will Rock You' trying to imagine what an audience could do if they’re all crammed in and can hardly move,” he says. He notes that song and the Freddie Mercury-penned “We Are The Champions" were “deliberately angled at allowing the audience to be part of the show.”
“From then on, we became a band that was absolutely dedicated to making our shows an interactive experience,” he says. “The funny thing is that it’s become common now in all kinds of music. So it’s something I feel proud of.”
And fans will get a chance to be part of Queen's show when they hit the road with Adam Lambert on their Rhapsody tour, starting October 4 and 5 in Baltimore, Maryland. A complete list of dates can be found at queenonline.com.
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