finally! After 26 years we know what the 'ahh' groan is at the start of We Will Rock You.
Brian: "Ok - it's the tail end of me counting the stamps and claps in, that fateful day so long ago in Wessex Studios in North London. I don't know if I've described it before but I got into applying loads of different delays, not multiples of each other - prime numbers. A lot of these got applied to the original count, plus the final long delay was from one "boom boom crack" to the next. So you hear "four" delayed into the track in a kind of multiple echo"
At the very beginning, it's:
*bump bump* "Awww--"*clap*
I noticed it the first few times I really listened to the song, and just assumed it was... actually, I was sort of perplexed about it until I just ignored it. But now, FC has again shed the immaculate light upon us...
I prefer the theory about somebody groaning because they were pissed off about the millionth take of the song.
But as usual this new version is so much more boring and therefore is probably true. So goes the way of things.
I've always wondered what that groan really was and it has always fascinated me. Yesterday I read the answer on Brian's page and finally we know what it is. That's one of the good things on Brian's site in my view, to get those kind of answers.