John Richard Deacon (born 19 August 1951) is an English retired musician who was the bass guitarist for the rock band Queen. He wrote several songs for the group, including Top 10 hits "You're My Best Friend", "Another One Bites the Dust" and "I Want to Break Free"; and co-wrote "Under Pressure", "Friends Will Be Friends" and "One Vision".
Deacon grew up in Oadby, Leicestershire, playing bass guitar in a local band, The Opposition, before moving to London to study electronics at Chelsea College. He joined Queen in 1971 on the strength of his musical and electronic skills, particularly the homemade Deacy Amp that guitarist Brian May used to create guitar orchestras throughout Queen's career. From the third album, Sheer Heart Attack, onwards, he wrote at least one song per album, several of which became hits. In addition to bass guitar, Deacon played guitar, keyboards, and piano on Queen's studio work.
After the death of lead singer Freddie Mercury in 1991 and the following year's Tribute Concert, Deacon performed only sporadically with the remaining members of Queen before retiring from the music industry in 1997 after recording "No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)". He has not performed on any of the other projects that the two remaining members, Brian May and Roger Taylor, have put together. He remains involved in the financial aspects of the band.
Deacon was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Queen in 2001 and into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003.
John Richard Deacon was born on Sunday, 19 August 1951, at St Francis Private Hospital, London Road, Leicester, to Arthur Henry and Lilian Molly Deacon (née Perkins). He had an older brother, Robert, who died aged 6 in July 1953, and a younger sister Julie, born in January 1956. His father worked at the Norwich Union insurance company, and in 1960 the family moved to neighbouring Oadby. Deacon was known to friends and his bandmates as "Deacs" or "Deacy".
Deacon took an interest in electronics at an early age, reading magazines on the subject and building small devices, including modifying a reel-to-reel tape deck to record music directly from the radio. He studied at Linden Junior School in Evington, Gartree High School and Beauchamp Grammar School in Oadby, achieving eight GCE O level and three A level passes, all at grade A. He particularly enjoyed soul music.
In 1965, at the age of fourteen, Deacon formed a school band called The Opposition. The band would go through many lineup and name changes, with Deacon eventually leaving the band altogether in 1969 to pursue studies in Electrical Engineering at Chelsea College in London.
Deacon joined his first band, The Opposition, in 1965 at the age of 14. The band played covers of chart hits; Deacon played rhythm guitar using an instrument he bought with money borrowed from the group's founder, Richard Young. He switched to bass the following year after the original bassist was fired for not improving his playing as much as the other members. Deacon also acted as the band's archivist, taking clippings from newspapers of even the advertisements featuring The Opposition. After being in the band for four years, not long after the group cut an acetate of three songs, Deacon played his final concert with the band (then called The Art) in August 1969. He left as he had been accepted to study at Chelsea College in London (now part of King's College London), where he obtained a First Class Honours degree in Electronic Engineering in 1971. Having become a fan of Deep Purple, he saw the group perform the Concerto for Group and Orchestra with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall that September.
Although he left his bass and amplifier at home in Oadby, after less than a year of studying in London, Deacon decided he wanted to join a band. In 1970, Freddie Mercury, Brian May and Roger Taylor formed Queen; Deacon saw them in October that year but was not immediately impressed. Later in the year, he briefly formed a band called Deacon that made one live appearance at Chelsea College.
In early 1971, Deacon was introduced to Taylor and May by a friend at a disco who told him that they were in a band that had just lost its bassist. A couple of days later he auditioned in a lecture room at Imperial College London and became the last member of Queen to join. Deacon was the youngest member of the band. Deacon was selected for his musical talent, his quiet demeanour and his aptitude in electrical systems. A persistent legend claims Deacon was the seventh bassist auditioned, but more recent sources show Queen's bassists were, in order: Mike Grose, Barry Mitchell, Doug Bogie and Deacon. Deacon played his first show with Queen at the College of Estate Management in Kensington in June.
On Queen's first album (1973) he was credited as "Deacon John", to make him "sound more interesting". He asked to be credited under his real name, which was done on all albums from Queen II (1974) onwards.
Deacon's first writing credit came on Queen's third album, Sheer Heart Attack (1974). He wrote "Misfire", a Caribbean-themed song on which he played almost all guitar parts, and co-wrote "Stone Cold Crazy" with the rest of the band. He also played some guide guitar parts on the album, as May was hospitalised with hepatitis when recording started. His second song, written for his fiancée Veronica, "You're My Best Friend", was featured on the group's fourth album, A Night at the Opera (1975), and went on to be an international hit. Subsequently, Deacon tended to write one or two songs for every Queen album, until The Miracle (1989) and Innuendo (1991), which credited the band as a whole.
He wrote the hit "Another One Bites the Dust" (1980) as a dance song based on his early love of soul. The song saw radio play on both black and white US music stations, quickly becoming one of the band's best-selling singles. Deacon would collaborate with Mercury throughout the early 1980s, helping push the band's musical direction towards a lighter disco sound.
Deacon's collaboration with Mercury culminated in the release of the band's 1982 album Hot Space. He played rhythm guitar on the opening "Staying Power" because of his soul and Motown-influenced style, and insisted on playing guitar on his own composition "Back Chat", not allowing May to play any guitar solos because the style did not fit what Deacon wanted; this led to an acrimonious argument between the two. "Back Chat", and the album as a whole, would prove commercially unsuccessful, leading to the band returning to their rock roots in subsequent albums.
By the mid-1980s Deacon had started to play with other bands as well. He performed on the single "Picking Up Sounds" by Man Friday & Jive Junior, a supergroup also featuring Thin Lizzy's Scott Gorham, Bad Company's Simon Kirke and Mick Ralphs, and The Pretenders' Martin Chambers and played with The Immortals, which released the track "No Turning Back" as part of the soundtrack to the film Biggles: Adventures in Time. Deacon played bass on Mercury's single with Montserrat Caballe "How Can I Go On" and also worked with Elton John and Hot Chocolate's Errol Brown.
Deacon considered his songwriting to be of equal importance to his musical skills in Queen. He later said: "If I'd just been a bass player all my life with the band, I wouldn't be as satisfied ... I only consider that as part of what I do".
Deacon was distraught by Mercury's death in November 1991 and this caused a significant reduction in his musical activity. He said, "As far as we are concerned, this is it. There is no point carrying on. It is impossible to replace Freddie." After playing live with Queen three more times: at The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness on 20 April 1992, in a charity concert with Roger Taylor at Cowdray House in Midhurst on 18 September 1993, and at the opening of the Bejart Ballet in Paris on 17 January 1997, performing only "The Show Must Go On" with Elton John on lead vocals – he decided to retire from music. He reappeared only briefly by joining his former bandmates in October 1997 for the recording of the final Queen song "No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)", included on the Queen Rocks album released a month later. Deacon described the cover of "We Are the Champions" by May, Taylor and Robbie Williams – recorded for A Knight's Tale – as "rubbish".