Transcription
The story behind the recording of "Under Pressure" is conflicting at best. But what started out as a friendly collaboration between David Bowie and Freddie Mercury quickly turned into a battle of wills and egos. Today we're uncovering the behind-the-scenes rivalry and drama between Queen and Bowie when they recorded "Under Pressure." This is the story of how David Bowie turned a casual jam session into a number one single, and how the members of Queen set aside their egos for the greater good of the song.
But before we get started, subscribe to our channel Weird History, leave a comment, and let us know what your favorite Queen or Bowie song is.
[LIGHT ROCK MUSIC]
Sometime around July of 1981, David Bowie found himself in Mountain Studios for the second time. The first time he was there was in September of 1978, when he and Brian Eno recorded several songs for the album Lodger. While Queen was in the middle recording their 10th album, Hot Space, Bowie was booked at Mountain to write and record lyrics for "Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)" over music Giorgio Moroder had already written. Moroder was also in the studio to produce the track. Being in close proximity to each other in such a remote part of the world made it inevitable that the five musicians were going to meet.
According to Peter Hince-- former head of Queen's road crew, and years earlier, Mick Ronson's roadie during the Ziggy Stardust Tour-- Queen's drummer and Bowie fanatic Roger Taylor had invited his idol to the studio out of mutual admiration. When Bowie arrived at the studio to visit the band, it was suggested that Bowie add background vocals to one of the tracks Queen was working on for Hot Space. The track was called "Cool Cat," but Bowie's backing vocals never made it to the final mix. Yes, it was recorded, and you can find a rough lo-fi mix in all of its bootleg glory on YouTube, but Bowie disliked it so much, he told Queen he wasn't satisfied with it and asked them not to use it.
Bowie's last-minute request set back the release of Hot Space, but coincidentally, the aborted collaboration sparked something greater-- that "Cool Cat" session birthed "Under Pressure." When Bowie initially came down to the studio to meet Queen at Mountain Studios and presumably dig into recording of "Cool Cat," everyone thought picking up some instruments and running through a handful of songs would be a very good way to feel each other out musically. They started out doing cover versions of their own music. It's what you like to call a rock and roll moment. Both bands were just messing around playing each other's songs.
Bowie said the jam session was totally spontaneous and peculiar. After playing other people's songs for fun, Bowie said, "This is stupid. Why don't we just write one?" While it's been said time and time again by everyone involved that "Under Pressure" came out of thin air, that's not entirely true. The bones of "Under Pressure" were around well before Bowie swung by Mountain Studios. Roger Taylor actually wrote a song called "Feel Like" which sounds an awful lot like "Under Pressure." If you do a little digging online, you'll find a demo. Neither Bowie or any member of Queen admitted to "Under Pressure" being the byproduct of "Feel Like," but if you compare the two songs, it's safe to assume that, at some point, they were hashing out ideas for an original. A member of Queen mentioned Roger's tune that they had demoed earlier, which was "Feel Like." The only thing missing from the "Feel Like" demo were finished lyrics and John Deacon's now-famous bum-bum-bum bum-bum-bum-bum bassline.
We'll dig into the lyrics in just a minute, but first, let's get to the bottom of John Deacon's hypnotic bass riff on "Under Pressure." Its origins are just about as confusing as the origins of the song itself, but here are just a few versions of that story. Roger Taylor said Deacon created the bassline and that he was incessantly tooling around with the riff during the Hot Space sessions well before the impromptu jam with Bowie. Reinhold Mack, Queen's producer who was at the sessions, corroborates this version. Taylor also remembers that, at one point during the sessions, the musicians broke for dinner of pizza and wine, and when they returned to the studio, Deacon forgot the riff. It was Taylor who remembered the notes and retaught it to Deacon.
Deacon remembers it differently, though. In a 1982 interview with a Japanese magazine called Music Life, he said that Bowie came up with the riff. However, in a 2004 statement on Bowie's website, Bowie said that "Under Pressure's" bassline was already written even before he stepped into the studio. Of course, Brian May shared his version on how the riff came about in a 2016 article he wrote for Mirror Online. May agrees that all five musicians all went out to a restaurant and drank lots of wine. But then the story takes a hard left turn. When the musicians reassembled in the studio, May claims Bowie asked Deacon if he remembered that bassline he had been riffing on before breaking for dinner. May said Deacon began to play back the riff, but Bowie instructed the bass player to stop and said, "No, it wasn't. It was like this." Then Bowie calmly walked over to Deacon and physically stopped him from playing the bassline. At that point, Bowie corrected Deacon-- or instructed, depending on how you look at it-- on how he remembered it, which, according to May, was notably different from Deacon's original riff.
It was at this point-- the point of Deacon's Bowie riff-- that the five musicians had something that resembled a song. May said it was pretty late, and normally, Queen would have called it a night and started up again the following day. But Bowie wasn't having any of it. David thought they should just press on instinctively, and that something will happen. Fueled by wine and lots of blow, Bowie was right, and the musicians laid down a rough track based around Deacon's riff. While David Bowie claims "Under Pressure" was written and recorded in one 24-hour session on his website, they actually broke for the night after the five musicians recorded the basic track and their guide lyrics. Before they all left Mountain Studios, they titled the rough mix "People on Streets" because those words appeared among the initial lyrics. Brian May said he was excited about the tune, and thought of some new ideas for it that he wanted to experiment with during the following day's session.
May said those ideas were nixed when he arrived at the studio the next day. David showed up to the studio first and said he wanted to take the track over. Everyone backed off, and Bowie put down a lyric which was now focused on the "Under Pressure" part of the existing lyric. With Bowie officially at the helm, he also retitled the song.
If you think the origin of the bassline to "Under Pressure" is controversial, the evolution of the song's vocals are even murkier. According to Brian May in Is This Real Life-- The Untold Story of Freddie Mercury and Queen, the final lyrics were created evenly between Bowie and Mercury. Some of these improvisations, including Mercury's memorable introductory scatting vocal, would endure on the finished track. Bowie also insisted that he and Mercury shouldn't hear what the other had sung, swapping verses blind, which helped give the song its cut-and-paste feel.
Bowie cheated, though. While it was his idea for the two singers not to listen to each other, Bowie snuck into the control room while Reinhold Mack was mixing at the desk. Mercury was furious and blew up at Mack. "Freddie and David locked horns, but that's when sparks fly, and that's probably why it turned out great." Peter Hince observed the same unspoken strain in the air. "In some ways, I think David took over a little bit, which caused a few tensions, but that's how you get great music."
The tension continued at the Power Station, a recording studio in New York City where, two weeks later, Mercury and Bowie-- along with Roger Taylor and Reinhold Mack-- reconvened for the final mix on the track. By this point, John Deacon and Brian May had given up on the song, and the two didn't even attend the final mix session. During the session, the mixing board broke down, and Mercury and Bowie couldn't agree on anything regarding the song's final form. Mack had to call in Mercury to help him manage all of Bowie's changes, and at one point, Mercury and Bowie even argued about whether or not the entire song should simply be scrapped and rerecorded. The end result was what Brian May called a cobbled-together version of the song-- a quick, rough monitor mix.
[LIGHT ROCK MUSIC]
When Queen released "Under Pressure" on October 26, 1981, it was an immediate hit, their first being "Bohemian Rhapsody" in November of 1975. Queen's timing couldn't have been better or luckier. With the release of "Under Pressure" as a six-month advance single for Hot Space, Queen was able to raise expectations with an iconic rock anthem. But what was ultimately a disappointing album that amounted to nothing more than synthetic dance music, without "Under Pressure," fans accustomed to Queen's pure rock probably wouldn't have taken a chance on the lightweight Hot Space.
Bowie's timing couldn't have been better either, especially since he was close to blocking the release of the song after he said he wasn't happy with the finished version, claiming it stood up well as a demo but required more work, specifically with the lyrics. During the recording of "Under Pressure," Bowie was in the market for a new label. He was reportedly frustrated with RCA, and was thrilled when the label didn't reap the benefit of the song, since it was released on Queen's label, EMI. Thanks in part to the success of "Under Pressure," Bowie signed with EMI the following year.
Due to touring commitments, neither David Bowie nor Queen could appear in the video for "Under Pressure," so David Mallet stepped in to create something that matched the intensity of the single. Mallet-- one of the decade's most sought-after directors and frequent collaborator with Bowie and Queen-- compiled silent movie clips, newsreel footage and images of social unrest. Mallet also included clips from controversial films such as Sergei Eisenstein's Soviet-era Battleship Potemkin, and footage of traffic jams, crushed cars, commuter trains packed with people, towers falling, and civil disturbances. The director's intent was to produce a social commentary on the relationships among humans and how they interact with culture and political influences. They also would've worked well as a film for the Ludovico technique that Alex was forced to sit through during his aversion therapy in A Clockwork Orange.
Unfortunately, the world never got to see David Bowie and Freddie Mercury perform "Under Pressure" on the same stage. Queen performed "Under Pressure" at concerts throughout the '80s up until they stopped touring with Mercury in 1987, while Bowie didn't even revisit the single until the Freddie Mercury tribute concert for AIDS awareness on April 20, 1982, when he performed the song with Annie Lennox and remaining members of Queen.
"Under Pressure" was a song about frustration, strife, and the unpleasantness of the human condition, ironically fueled in part by those very same things. You have to ask yourself, would this song be as good if there wasn't friction between Bowie and Queen in the studio? If all five members of the band got along perfectly, they might have produced something light and silly like "Fat Bottomed Girls" or "Bicycle Race." Instead, we got a rock duet with substance and a message that has stood the test of time.
What do you think of "Under Pressure"? Would it have been as great if Bowie didn't take the reins? Let us know in the comments below. And while you're at it, check out some of these other music stories in our Weird History.