{"id":550315,"date":"2026-03-28T11:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T11:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/550315\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T11:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T11:26:10","slug":"stone-cold-crazy-by-queen-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/550315\/","title":{"rendered":"Stone Cold Crazy by Queen: the story behind the song"},"content":{"rendered":"

For three decades, from the early 70s onwards, Mike Grose worked for the Grose family haulage business in St Austell. Most people who met the unassuming Cornishman would be surprised to learn that he was once the bass guitarist in Queen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the evening of Saturday June 27, 1970 the then 22-year-old Grose, drummer Roger Taylor<\/a>, guitarist Brian May<\/a> and vocalist Fred Bulsara played their debut gig as Queen, at Cornwall\u2019s Truro City Hall. \u201cAnd the first song we played was Stone Cold Crazy,\u201d Grose recalled in 2014.<\/p>\n

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Stone Cold Crazy might not have been released as a single, but it\u2019s the very essence of 70s Queen: loud, silly, bombastic and fun. Although it didn\u2019t appear on record until Queen\u2019s third album, 1974\u2019s Sheer Heart Attack, it was conceived by the future Freddie Mercury<\/a> before Queen existed.<\/p>\n

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In the summer of 1969, Fred Bulsara was struggling through his final term at Ealing Art College and fantasising about becoming a pop star. He already knew Brian May and Roger Taylor through fellow art student Tim Staffell, who sung and played bass in May and Taylor\u2019s trio Smile. Freddie was Smile\u2019s number-one fan and occasional roadie. And he desperately wanted to be their lead singer.<\/p>\n

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\"Queen\n<\/p>\n

Queen in 1974: (from left) Freddie Mercury, Roger Taylor, Brian May, John Deacon (Image credit: Jorgen Angel\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

In the meantime he talked his way into another band, despite having never sung on stage before. In August 1969 Bulsara joined the hard rock trio Ibex. Two months later, after seeing Led Zeppelin at London\u2019s Lyceum, he convinced Ibex to change their name to the much heavier-sounding Wreckage. Stone Cold Crazy was supposedly written around this time.<\/p>\n

Stone Cold Crazy was one of Freddie\u2019s frenetic ideas.<\/p>\n

Brian May<\/p>\n

In May 1970 the gods smiled and Bulsara replaced Staffell in Smile. His first suggestion was that they change their name to Queen. Meanwhile, Taylor brought in his friend Mike Grose, who moved from Cornwall to the group\u2019s shared house in Barnes. Grose remembered rehearsing Stone Cold Crazy, among other early Queen songs, in the back garden that summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cStone Cold Crazy was one of Freddie\u2019s frenetic ideas,\u201d May said in 2014. \u201cBut the original was much slower.\u201d The guitarist suggested speeding up the bluesy riff, resulting in something that sounded not unlike Led Zep\u2019s Communication Breakdown.<\/p>\n

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\"Queen&rsquo;s\n<\/p>\n

Queen\u2019s Freddie Mercury and Brian May in 1974 (Image credit: Ian Dickson\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

The gig at Truro City Hall was in aid of the Cornish branch of the Red Cross, of which Taylor\u2019s mother, Winifred, was a fundraiser. Winifred had actually booked Smile. But the sparse audience who paid their seven shillings and sixpence (about 40p) were instead confronted by the newly crowned Queen, in matching black velvet trousers, and the future Freddie Mercury strutting and posing as if he was playing Wembley Stadium. In fact Freddie\u2019s posing was more accomplished than his vocals. \u201cHe sounded like a rather powerful bleating sheep,\u201d said Taylor.<\/p>\n

Yet within days of the gig, Fred Bulsara was telling everyone that he now wished to be known as Freddie Mercury and that Queen were going to conquer the world. Mike Grose, however, wasn\u2019t so sure, and soon moved back to Cornwall and a steady job in haulage.<\/p>\n

Bassist John Deacon joined Queen in February 1971, after which the group bagged a deal with EMI. Their debut album, Queen, was released in November 1973, followed by Queen II four months later. But there was no sign of Stone Cold Crazy on either.<\/p>\n

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During recording sessions for the next album, Sheer Heart Attack, Brian May was hospitalised with a duodenal ulcer. His bandmates carried on without him, and crowded around his bed in King\u2019s College Hospital to play him tapes of work in progress. Stone Cold Crazy, one of the few 70s Queen songs credited to the whole group, eventually showed up on side two of the finished album.<\/p>\n

The first song we played was Stone Cold Crazy.<\/p>\n

Mike Grose<\/p>\n

In many ways the song distilled everything that made 70s Queen so great \u2013 but in just 2:16 minutes. The attacking riff, manic harmonies and comic-book lyrics were signature moves that Queen would expand on and use to build bigger hits.<\/p>\n

Although Brian May has confessed to having \u201cno idea what it\u2019s about\u201d, it\u2019s hard not to wonder whether Stone Cold Crazy was partly about the young Fred Bulsara. There are elements of the art student who told everyone he was going to be a pop star in the song\u2019s cartoonish hero, \u2018dreaming I was Al Capone\u2019 and \u2018walking down the street, shooting people that I meet with my rubber Tommy water gun.\u2019 For all their noise and braggadocio, Queen didn\u2019t really do death and destruction.<\/p>\n

Queen – Stone Cold Crazy (Live at the Rainbow \u201874) – YouTube
\n\"Queen<\/p>\n

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Tellingly, when Metallica\u2019s James Hetfield performed Stone Cold Crazy with May, Taylor, Deacon and Tony Iommi at 1992\u2019s Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, it became \u2018my fully loaded Tommy gun\u2019. The same line was present in Metallica\u2019s achingly macho version on 1998\u2019s Garage Days Inc covers album.<\/p>\n

May and Taylor, meanwhile, were inspired by the song that announced Queen to the world, albeit via a town hall in Cornwall, after rediscovering it on the 2014 box set Live At The Rainbow \u201974. When the band toured that year, their setlist included Stone Cold Crazy and other songs that had lain dormant since the mid-70s, all revived by frontman Adam Lambert, whom Brian May credited for having \u201cwoken us up again\u201d. After all this time, it\u2019s reassuring to know that Fred\u2019s imaginary Al Capone with his rubber Tommy water gun still roaming the street again.<\/p>\n

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 202 (September 2014)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For three decades, from the early 70s onwards, Mike Grose worked for the Grose family haulage business in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":["post-550315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}