{"id":448211,"date":"2026-02-27T08:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T08:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/448211\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T08:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T08:54:09","slug":"how-john-deacon-gave-imbued-a-queen-classic-with-punk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/448211\/","title":{"rendered":"How John Deacon gave imbued a Queen classic with punk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"John<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Christopher Hopper \/ Elektra Records)<\/p>\n

Fri 27 February 2026 6:00, UK <\/p>\n

Punk<\/a> might have established itself as the abrasive to commercial, mainstream rock back in the 1970s, but the divide between those two very disparate musical worlds wasn\u2019t always quite as binary as the likes of Johnny Rotten might have you believe. <\/p>\n

Particularly during its early days, when the scene was void of any musical talent above simple barre chords, punk was the complete antithesis of the big-budget flamboyance of mainstream rock. In typical fashion, though, it didn\u2019t take long for the music industry to infiltrate punk, signing the likes of the Sex Pistols and The Clash to major record labels<\/a> and making a marketable product of the previously subversive scene. With that shift, punk\u2019s influence began to bleed over into chart rock, too. <\/p>\n

Few bands typified the sound, look, and attitude of that mainstream realm back in the 1970s like Queen. Initially following in the footsteps of hard rock harbingers, by the mid-point of the decade, the Freddie Mercury-fronted outfit had already explored a vast range of influences within their own work, including a few notable run-ins with the punk revolution. <\/p>\n

During one famous incident<\/a>, recounted by Mercury during a 1980s interview, Queen recorded News of the World in the same studio as the Sex Pistols recorded Nevermind The Bollocks, leading to a rather confrontational encounter in which the singer disparagingly called Sid Vicious \u201cSimon Ferocious,\u201d which went down about as well as you\u2019d expect with the bassist. <\/p>\n

That encounter certainly highlighted the different worlds which these two groups occupied, but it was not the only time that Queen collided with the world of punk \u2013 in fact, one of the band\u2019s most recognisable anthems owes a core part of itself to that abrasive inspiration. <\/p>\n

As lead guitarist Brian May recalled to Guitar World<\/a> back in 2024, punk\u2019s influence crept into Queen\u2019s 1980 track \u2018Another One Bites the Dust\u2019 thanks to John Deacon. \u201cThere are all sorts of things that might not be the things you expect,\u201d the guitarist shared. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, on \u2018Another One Bites the Dust\u2019, I didn\u2019t play the rhythm; John played that. He played it on a Stratocaster, I think,\u201d May explained, \u201cHe was very much influenced by the punk guitarists, which I\u2019m not so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having Deacon play rhythm on that track completely transformed the sound of the song, and of Queen in general, worlds apart from the big-haired hard rock flamboyance of their 1970s output. Although the single hardly sounds as though it was lifted directly from a Damned record, or any punk outfit, really, the guitar playing is certainly distinct from the band\u2019s previous works. <\/p>\n

Not only does the single reflect Queen\u2019s unending penchant for musical discovery and experimentation, incorporating a variety of different sounds and scenes into their operatic output, but also just how quickly punk was able to infiltrate the mainstream. <\/p>\n

What had begun in 1976 as a total rejection of the mechanics and head honchos of the music industry was, by 1980, being used as inspiration for chart-topping hits like \u2018Another One Bites The Dust\u2019, even though a band like Queen would never overtly identify themselves as punk. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Christopher Hopper \/ Elektra Records) Fri 27 February 2026 6:00, UK Punk might have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,109098,128,1006,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-448211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-john-deacon","tag-music","tag-queen","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}