Wii Will Wii Will Rock You

[Vickiana Sconyers]

YesI did. I'm kind of annoyed with little old May, frankly. Or, more specifically, I'm annoyed at what he's unwittingly created. You see, I've spent much of my life at sporting events-from University of Alaska Anchorage hockey games to the Super Bowl-and at every arena they won't stop playing piped-in pop music. It doesn't matter if the song is lyrical genius or absolute dreck, or even if it relates to sports. It doesn't matter if the artist is a rock god or a one-hit wonder. If it rocks, we play it, and somehow music has become as synonymous with our games as the $12 Bud Light.

I blame May. Why? Well, there's a list of the most-played songs at American sporting events, compiled by BMI, the music licensing company. In the top spot for 2009 was the ubiquitous "We Will Rock You," which May wrote three decades ago in a hotel room in England. After all these years, it's startling to see that song No. 1 with a bullet. It's so basic and bare, two minutes and one second of two stomps followed by a clap, overlapped by the late Freddie Mercury's thundering vocals. But "We Will Rock You" is more relevant than ever, bumping last year's No. 1, "Pump It," by the Black Eyed Peas, from the top of the chart. And like any song that gets played over and over (and over and over), it can start to get a little tiresome-except, of course, when it's perfectly suited for the moment, like when the home team sacks the quarterback on third and long.

So on an early January night, I fly over the Atlantic, listening to "We Will Rock You" again and again, hoping to unearth a hidden meaning but in the end simply getting it stuck in my head. It's still there when I hop out of a cab to meet May at London's Dominion Theatre, where the musical "We Will Rock You" is in its eighth year. I'm ushered to a private suite and given a "We Will Rock You" program, which I flip through as "We Will Rock You" is being soundchecked. (Now I know why the U.S. military has used the song, played full blast for hours, as an interrogation technique at Guantanamo Bay.) The stomping and clapping is ringing in my ears. So when May walks in, tall and lanky, with long, frizzled hair surrounding his head like a trapper hat, my first thought isn't that I am in the presence of the 39th greatest guitarist in history, according to Rolling Stone, or that May belongs to a Hall of Fame band that's sold more than 300 million albums. I just want to know why the hell he's done this to us.

DO YOURSELF a favor. Go to YouTube and enter "You'll Never Walk Alone," from the Liverpool FC soccer matches in England. Then sit back and enjoy one of the most beautiful moments ever at a sporting event: 45,000 people standing, waving flags and singing in unison. Some fans are woefully out of tune, but everyone in the stadium is howling with the same intensity that the players display on the field, cementing the bond that's supposed to exist between fan and team. Now this is stadium music. Oh sure, the pre-recorded stuff is occasionally piped in at European soccer matches, but deejays don't press play that often. And they're certainly not about to replace a tradition that dates back to the 1960s.

It's different in the States. Deejays here press play all the time, not just to energize crowds (Chumbawamba's "Tubthumping") but also sometimes to quiet them (anything by Susan Boyle). We manufacture tradition, as the Red Sox did in 2002 by playing "Sweet Caroline" during the eighth inning, for no reason except it was popular at other ballparks. Or we scrap tradition altogether, as many NHL teams have done in dumping the organ, once as essential to hockey as skates themselves.

It hasn't always been like this. In the 1960s, the only time music might have overshadowed a game was when a superstar like Tony Bennett would sing the national anthem. But in the '70s, piped-in music became a fixture at our games, and it's been steadily building ever since. Our need for these songs is rooted in a mysterious pathos. Are we shallow? Easily bored? Maybe chanting in unison simply isn't our thing? Or maybe there's just something about music that helps reconnect us to ourselves and to each other, in much the same way that sports does .

Whatever the reason, we cater to our audience. NBA deejays indulge the fortysomething urban crowd with hip-hop. NFL fans, also in their 40s but less diverse, are fed hard rock. NHL puckheads, who skew slightly older, hear mostly classic rock. Baseball draws the most diverse crowd-cheaper tickets plus more games mean a wider base-so major league deejays play something for everyone. The artists, and sometimes even their rap sheets, are irrelevant. For nearly 20 years, Broncos fans celebrated touchdowns with Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part II." (You know, the tune with only one lyric: "Hey!") But in 2006, Glitter was sentenced to three years in a Vietnam prison for child molestation. The Broncos stopped playing the song, but callers hounded the team until "Part II" was returned to the rotation.

Nobody is certain who played the first pop song at a sporting event. The "Rock and Roll Part II" tradition dates back to 1974, when Michigan deejay Kevin O'Brien pulled the record from his own collection and started spinning it at Kalamazoo Wings games in the International Hockey League. A few years later, when O'Brien was hired by the NHL's Colorado Rockies (now the New Jersey Devils), he brought the song with him, and it eventually caught on at Broncos games. Now, stadium entertainment is an industry in itself. There's even a trade website called Pro Sports DJs, founded by Sean Bovelsky, the 38-year-old spinner for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Lightning. Only employed sports deejays can log on; 578 are registered, including one from almost every major U.S. pro team. They can learn about popular new songs, or chat on message boards dedicated to their art, like "Clips for Opposing Free Throws" or "Rain-out Songs."

Whether stadium deejays are full-time employees or hired on a game-by-game basis (most are part-timers), their jobs are unique to the table-turning profession. Rather than surprising the crowd with rarities, like a party deejay would, sports spinners aim to reassure fans with recognizable songs. "You have to play stuff that the crowd wants to listen to," says Mavericks deejay Anthony Johnson. For the most part, that means sticking with the safe stuff: Steam's "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" or Europe's "The Final Countdown." The general rule is: Be clever at your own risk. In 2002, Indians pitcher Chuck Finley was in the midst of a messy divorce from Tawny Kitaen, the actress best known for rolling around the hood of a car in the Whitesnake video for "Here I Go Again." Joe Stephen, music director for the White Sox at the time, decided to play the song as Finley entered the game. The Sox fired Stephen shortly thereafter.

Most deejays have a wide selection of situational tunes. Teresa Shear, the Broncos director of game-day entertainment, flashes a music chart that, in terms of its specificity and detail, rivals the playcalling sheet used by head coach Josh McDaniels. The chart features 18 different in-game moments and their appropriate musical accompaniment, from sacks/turnovers (Montell Jordan's "This Is How We Do It") to opponents' TDs (Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It"). Gregg Greene, director of marketing for the Mariners, plays Fats Domino's "I Want to Walk You Home" after a bases-loaded walk. When fists fly during a Sunday afternoon Red Wings game, Ayron Sequeira, Detroit's director of event entertainment, plays U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday." If a Mavs player fouls out at a home game, Johnson sends him off with the Foo Fighters' "There Goes My Hero."

The goal, deejays say, is to gently summon-or blatantly manufacture-a sense of excitement. There are rules, of course, depending on the league. The NFL and NHL allow music only when the game or play clocks aren't running. In baseball, a deejay can spin between innings, during pitching changes and before a batter steps into the box. The NBA actually allows music during game action, at best creating energy and at worst the feeling of an exhibition contest. Says Johnson, "Sometimes fans need to be motivated."

Is that so bad? Heck, armies used to enter battle to drums and bagpipes and bugles. So is it surprising that Atlanta Hawks fans need a spark from Outkast's "Hey Ya!"? Or that Patriots fans cheer louder if Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" accompanies Tom Brady onto the field? If Minnesota Wild crowds have been lulled to sleep, Paul Loomis, manager of game presentation, uses an old standby to wake them up, sometimes as often as six times a game. Only a few bars are required before the Xcel Energy Center is stomping and clapping, with six words thundering from the stands: "WE WILL, WE WILL ROCK YOU."

ONCE MAY and I start chatting, my annoyance with him quickly fades. He's a nice guy, a polite guy, a smart guy. (The 62-year-old guitarist recently earned a PhD in astrophysics.) He's been obsessed with math and music his entire life; at age 16, he built his own guitar, which he named the Red Special. It became his trademark.

May casually followed cricket as a kid in London, but he is not a sports fan. He has no idea that "We Will Rock You" is America's most-played sports anthem, until I tell him. Still, the erudite guitarist-songwriter-astrophysicist, who used to live in Los Angeles and still enjoys visiting the States, has theories why music has become so pervasive at our games. "I'm probably going to get in trouble for saying this, but America seems to have become so full of fear," he says. "America has become a nation looking over its shoulder. People don't seem to trust people anymore. Getting on an airplane in America will make you feel like a criminal. Maybe music is needed to restore that feeling of pride. Sports gives people an escape. It makes them feel strong and powerful and optimistic. Music is a great reinforcer."

Funny thing is, May didn't write "We Will Rock You" to make people feel strong and powerful and optimistic. During Queen's infancy, in the early 1970s, May and his bandmates (Mercury, bassist John Deacon and drummer Roger Taylor) wanted their fans to listen intensely to theatrical, operatic songs like "Bohemian Rhapsody" without singing along. Today, of course, that notion seems so stuffy-so, you know, British. But rock shows were different then, May explains. You paid to hear the singer, not yourself.

3a8082e126