Sorry to be one of those characters who asks a question and then answers it himself :-? but I figured I'd Google it one more time and I lucked out.

This from a Guitar World interview with Brian May in 1993. I hope the Copyright Police don't kick in my door and haul me awayfor including it here:

We Will Rock You

"That was a response to a particular phase in our career when the audience was becoming a bigger part of the show than we were. They would sing all the songs. In a place like Birmingham, they'd be so vociferous that we'd have to stop the show and let them sing to us. So both Freddie and I thought it would be an interesting experiment to write songs with audience participation specifically in mind. My feeling was that everyone can stamp and clap and sing a simple motif. We did that record at Wessex, which is an old converted church that has a naturally good sound to it. There are no drums on there. It's just us, stamping on boards many times with many primitive delay machines and clapping. A bit of singing, a bit of guitar playing and that's it."

Ta
Keith

This past christmas I got a DVD of them live from a concert in the late 70's. They open up with a completely different version of that song that's just a balls out rock song and now I wish that they had recorded that version, cuz it R O C K S!