Queen and David Bowie’s 1981 collaboration, "Under Pressure", is regarded as one of the most successful cameo pairings of the decade, reports Guitar World. It propelled both acts further into the commercial stratosphere at a time when Bowie was about to dominate stadiums with his latest reinvention, Let’s Dance, and Queen were at the full height of their majestic rock pomp.
As a result, "Under Pressure" topped the charts in several countries, became an essential inclusion in the greatest hits compilations of both acts, arrived right in time for MTV’s launch and then, less than 10 years later, provided a bed for Vanilla Ice to, er, rock the mic like a vandal.
However, in a new interview with Total Guitar magazine Brian May reveals that the track was initially much more guitar heavy and he’s never liked the resulting mix of the song – the outcome, he says, of the somewhat fraught clash of the “awesome creative forces” of Freddie Mercury and Bowie.
“It was all done spontaneously in the studio very late at night after we had a meal and a lot of drinks,” recalls May. “And it was a pretty heavy backing track. When it gets to ‘Why can’t we give love’, we were all working on it together, and it sounded like The Who. It sounded massively chord-driven.
“And I was beaming because I liked The Who. I remember saying to David, ‘Oh, it sounds like The Who, doesn’t it?’ He says, ‘Yeah, well it’s not going to sound like The Who by the time I’ve finished with it!’ You know, in a joking kind of way. But he didn’t want it to be that way.”
Read more at GuitarWorld.com.
