This is Queen The Greatest,
and this week we celebrate one of the
biggest collaborations in rock history.
It’s Queen and David Bowie’s
Under Pressure.
By 1981, Queen had bought the famous
Mountain Studios in Montreux –
and it was during one recording session
there, that Studio Engineer Dave Richards
made an impromptu phone call.
[David Bowie] "They were recording there
and, David knew that I was in town,
and phoned me up and asked me if I’d
come down, if I’d like to go down
and see what was happening.
So I went down and these things happen,
you know, suddenly you’re writing
something together and it was totally
spontaneous, it certainly wasn’t planned.
It was peculiar."
[Roger Taylor] "Well, I think the process
was we were all drunk, and in the studio,
and we were just for fun we were playing
all sorts of old songs.
I remember a couple of old Cream songs,
and whatever came into our heads
and I think David said
"look, hang on a minute,
why don’t we write one of our own?”
[Freddie Mercury] "We were fooling around
and then just sort of jamming with tracks
and suddenly we said 'why don’t we
just see what we can do
on the spur of the moment?’"
[Mack] "Then there's the pressure
of his majesty, David, being there,
and everybody wanted to look suave
and quick with ideas and stuff."
[Brian May] "Deacy of course came up
with this riff, ding, ding, ding,
de de, ding, ding."
[Mack] "Bom, bom, bom, de, le, dah, dah."
[Roger Taylor] "Ding, ding, ding,
de de, ding, ding."
[Mack] "He kept playing that over and
over and over again."
[Roger Taylor] "And then we went
for a pizza and he forgot it.
Completely escaped his mind.
We got back and I remembered it."
[Brian May] "And of course we're used to
playing together and now we have
this other guy there, who’s also
inputting, inputting, inputting."
[Roger Taylor] "David’s idea to put
all these clicks and claps,
and then it just, the sort of track grew."
[Brian May] "And by that time David
was very impassioned with it and
he had a vision in his head I think.
It’s quite a difficult process and
somebody has to back off and actually
I did back off which is unusual for me."
The result of that long night
was Under Pressure, and
when released in October 1981,
gave Queen their second UK number 1,
and became a massive hit across the globe.
Due to touring commitments, the band
were unable to make a promo video –
and so Director David Mallet captured
the essence of the track in a beautifully
crafted montage of archive footage.
The song became a permanent feature
in subsequent Queen shows,
and was one of the stand out moments
at the Freddie Mercury Tribute concert
where David Bowie and Annie Lennox
joined Roger, Brian and John
for a truly spine tingling performance.
Without doubt one of Queen’s biggest hits
and it was no surprise when readers of
Rolling Stone Magazine recently voted it
as one of the greatest music
collaborations of all time.