February 9, 2024 5:27 pm Posted by Editorial –
In the mid-seventies, the prolific and inexhaustible British music scene offered us the possibility of enjoying two great extremes within the wide range of the world of rock. On the one hand there was the excellence and elegance of a band like Queenand on the other we had the anarchy and punk self-destruction of Sex Pistolstwo worlds that came to collide with their two great swords in front, Freddie Mercury y Sid Vicious. “Freddie, have you managed to bring ballet to the masses yet?” It was the phrase of discord between them.
We go back in time to 1977 and find ourselves in the studios Wessex Sound, in Islington, north of London, where the two bands met. Queen was working on their immortal sixth album, ‘News of the World’while the punk band was preparing its no less iconic debut, ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’. Although the two bands had their reluctance towards each other, Brian May remember that Johnny Rotten era “always respectful”such as publica Loudersound, and they began musical conversations. But Sid Vicious was another story, and Roger Taylordrummer of Queen, does not hesitate to describe him as “fool” e “idiot”as seen in the video that accompanies these lines.
In the summer of that year, as the writer remembers Tony StewartFreddie told her that he had had an identical copy made of a ballet costume from Vaclav Nijinskyand was upset when Stewart took it as a joke, claiming that ballet and rock were similar in terms of staging and that “they are all forms of art”and the writer remembers how Mercury told him that his mission in life was “bring ballet to the masses”.
The publication of these words must have remained in the mind of the Sex Pistols bassist, who broke the harmony in the studio, as he recalls Peter HinceQueen’s roadie at the time, entering the control room while Mercury was working on “Sheer Heart Attack” yelling: “Hey, Freddie! Have you managed to bring ballet to the masses yet?” The response could not have been more typical of the Queen vocalist: “Ah, Simon Ferocious! We’re trying dear, we’re trying”. And immediately Hince says that Freddie grabbed Vicious by the lapels and pushed him out of the room. “I think we survived that test”Freddie smiles at the end of the video about that anecdote.
The story closes with Brian May with his statements to Classic Rock in 2017, in which he regrets that the Sex Pistols could not grow as a band: “I remember Sid Vicious seemed like a kid straight out of school. The whole punk spirit was a bit manufactured by his manager and I never took it very seriously. But I saw real talent and passion there, and it bothered me when that exploded. I thought “Never Mind The Bollocks was just a great rock album, and I would have loved to see them develop as a band.”
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