The Queen Song Brian May Wrote About Losing His Childhood Cat

Legendary frontman Freddie Mercury might be widely seen as the driving force behind many of rock band Queen’s most memorable hits, but in truth the rest of the band—guitarist Brian May, bassist John Deacon, and drummer Roger Taylor—were just as instrumental in carving out their place on the charts. In fact, Queen is the only band in history to have scored international number one hits with tracks written by each of its band members, leading to all four of the band’s lineup being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. 

Among Brian May’s many contributions to the band’s list of hits is their classic track “We Will Rock You,” which was released as the B-side to Queen’s 1977 global smash hit, “We Are the Champions.” But trawl a little deeper into the band’s back catalog, and you’ll find another of May’s solo songwriting credits in the form of a rather unassuming three-minute-long shuffling piano ballad called “All Dead, All Dead”—a track May later confirmed he had written at least partly in memory of his childhood pet cat. 

The Story Behind “All Dead, All Dead”

Although never released as a single, “All Dead, All Dead” was included as the fourth track on Queen’s sixth studio album, News of the World, in 1977. The band had recorded the album that summer in a flurry of studio activity that followed the completion of their world tour in support of their previous album, A Day at the Races. 

At that time, the punk rock movement—spearheaded by the arrival of the Sex Pistols—was taking over the mainstream music scene, and popular music was embracing a simpler, rootsier sound. In response, Queen pared back some of their trademark elaborate sound on News of the World, producing simpler, stripped-down tracks like the hand-clapping and boot-stomping “We Will Rock You.” And it was against this backdrop that May wrote “All Dead, All Dead.”

“That’s one of my favorites,” May said of the song in a later interview with Guitar Magazine. “[‘All Dead, All Dead’] was one of the ones which I thought came off best, and I was really pleased with the sound. It always gives me a surprise when I listen to it because it was meant to really bring tears to your eyes. It almost does it to me.” 

The lyrics, certainly, are heartfelt and plainly address a sudden and painful loss: “All dead, all dead,” May sings over the piano, “Take me back again / You know my little friend’s / All dead and gone.” 

The Cat Who Inspired “All Dead, All Dead”

The identity of May’s “little friend” in the song remained the subject of nothing more than rumor and fan speculation until long after the album was released, and May began to address the song in interviews. Eventually, he made it clear that the song was at least partly inspired by his childhood pet cat, Pixie, who he admitted was the “closest” thing he had to a sibling growing up. Pixie’s death was May’s first experience of true grief, and it was those feelings that he bottled up and used in “All Dead, All Dead.”

Fittingly, to mark the 40th anniversary of the release of News of the World in 2017, May worked with filmmakers Jason Jameson and Robert Milne to bring Pixie back to life on screen in an animated lyric video for the song released on the band’s official YouTube channel.