The Queen Radio Favorite That Brian May Wrote As a Joke (And Freddie Mercury Suggested Was “Vicious”)

A good bandmate laughs at your jokes. A great bandmate knows when to tell you, “Yeah, that’s funny. But it’s also incredibly good and absolutely song-worthy.” For Queen guitarist Brian May, that bandmate was Freddie Mercury, the rock ‘n’ roll frontman who convinced May that the ‘throwaway’ title he had for a rousing blues riff wasn’t actually a throwaway at all: “Tie Your Mother Down”.

May wrote the foundation of the song in 1970, when he was studying for his doctorate in astrophysics. When he finally presented it to Mercury six years later, he prefaced it with the fact that he had a title that “obviously doesn’t work.” After May told Mercury it was “Tie Your Mother Down”, Mercury looked at him and said, “Why on earth not? Of course it works, Brian. Why wouldn’t you use it?”

Thus, “Tie Your Mother Down” appeared on Queen’s fifth studio album, A Day At The Races, which also featured cuts like “Somebody To Love” and “Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)”.

Freddie Mercury Once Joked That “Tie Your Mother Down” Was “Vicious”

Speaking to Mojo, Brian May expressed gratitude that Freddie Mercury convinced him to follow through with “Tie You Mother Down”. “When I thought about it, I realized it was funny,” May explained. “But it also summed up teenage angst, and that frustration we had as kids with our parents. That’s when the song completely fell into place.”

The same year Queen released A Day At The Races, Mercury joked during a radio interview that May must have been “in one of his vicious moods. I think he’s trying to outdo me after ‘Death on Two Legs’.”

It certainly would have taken a lot for him to do so. “Death On Two Legs” was from the band’s previous album, A Night At The Opera, and even Mercury admitted that he had adopted an entirely new and very shocking personality. “Let’s say that song has made its mark,” he later recalled. “I wanted to make [the lyrics] as coarse as possible. When the others first heard it, they were in a state of shock.”

Comparatively, both to “Death On Two Legs” and the rest of the punk scene dominating the mainstream, “Tie Your Mother Down” was fairly tame. Still, the title’s sentiment matches the brash and bold guitar riff around which the song centers. Although not quite as ubiquitous as some of their other hits, “Tie Your Mother Down” is a favorite amongst Queen fans and Brian May himself.

Photo by Chris Walter/WireImage

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