[Vanilla Ice] I'll tell you what happened. Our Fan Club lady heard it and she went out and found the record, brought it back and played it and said, 'Have you heard this?' I think it sounds like Under Pressure, and we thought, yes he definitely stole 'Under Pressure'. And I said, I don't think it's going to matter, cause no ones going to buy it, obviously, you know, it doesn't sound that good. And then... a couple of weeks later, it was number one in the US and a couple of weeks after that it was number one every place else in the world. So I'll admit my mistake. A big seller, it did very well, and good luck to the guy.........except that he should have given us some credit, and some royalties. But it's been sorted out folks because uhm, we didn't sue him but Hollywood Records did. Hollywood, who'd just spent millions of dollars on buying our catalogue said, ohy- ohy, this guy is pillaging the Queen catalogue, so we're going to make sure he pays, so they did. So now we get royalties on what he did with that track.
We are especially happy as at the time of writing our single with DB and Greatest Hits album are no. 1 in the UK and there ain't no higher than that. Thank you so much - sincerely from the bottom of our hearts and Aston Martins! Oops! Between you and moi it was so satisfying to knock those damned upstarts Police & Ants etc off the top. There's life in these dogs yet you know! P.S. Disregard this if fans of either. PP.S. If you are, you should have your ears syringed and your eyebrows permed.
Well, [David Bowie] lives near our studios in a little town named Montreux, and when we were there he'd often come over and see us, chat, have a drink, and then we just worked on one particular idea - which became Under Pressure - for a whole night, an extremely long night. It was truly collaborative, particularly in the beginning when we were setting down the backing track, everyone was contributing ideas and we were working together quite well. As the evening progressed, it became more and more difficult because we all had different ideas of how it should shape up, and we're used to the four of us arguing together but when there's someone else there who's considerably more pig-headed than any of us, it becomes difficult to even find any kind of compromise, so in the end I sort of let them get on with it, to be honest.
I use Fender bass mainly, which I've used for years. I have one that I use most of the time; a Fender Precision. Just last year I met some of the people from the Fender factory in Los Angeles. They actually gave me one. When you're struggling and can't afford one… but when you're successful, they give you one. It's quite nice; a Fender Precision Special. The old ones just have volume and tone. Now they have three knobs: volume, bass and treble. That's quite nice. I used that guitar on Under Pressure.
This is a very long story. He was quite difficult to work with, because it was the meeting of two different methods of working. It was stimulating, but at the same time, almost impossible to resolve. We're very pigheaded and set in our ways and Mr Bowie is too. In fact, he's probably as pigheaded as the four of us put together. I think it was a worthwhile thing to do. But after Under Pressure was done, there were continual disagreements about how it should be put out or if it should even be put out at all. David wanted to redo the entire thing. I had given up by that time because it had gone a long way from what I would have liked to see. But there is still a lot of good stuff in the song. There was a compromise; Freddie, David and Mack actually sat down and produced a mix – under a lot of strain. Roger was also along to keep the peace to some extent, because he and David are friends.
In certain cases there is some sort of meaning. Just providing entertainment is some sort of meaning. Freddie always grandly dismisses it as being disposable. There's no grand design behind our music. We're basically here to entertain people; hopefully with intelligently made music and not production line music. We like to change. We like to say things, but the lyrics are not profound. Everybody laughed when they asked what Under Pressure was all about. It's quite simply about love, which is the most uncool, unhip thing.
Roger and Freddie and David had been friends for a long time, and he just came in to the studio we were in and we did a jam session. The song itself is mainly David's and Freddie's idea, but we were all included in the credits. It was an interesting experience, because David wrote the bass-line, he's responsible for it. He's a talented man, and that song is one of those that I really like.
Bowie had used the studio to record the Lodger album. He and Freddie and I have been friends for the past few years. Under Pressure was a spontaneous collaboration. We started out just playing some old songs, then worked on a few ideas and liked Under Pressure very much, so we finished it.
That was through Dave Richards, the engineer at the studio. I was in town, in Montreux, doing some other work there, and because I believe that Queen have something to do with the studio on a business level, I think it's their studio or something like that and they were recording there, and David knew that I was in town and phoned me up and asked me to come down, if I'd like to come down to 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, er, peculiar.
On the album, the track was credited to Bowie and Queen, but in fact it was essentially Freddie, although we all contributed. The bass line came from David, it took me a certain time to learn it. But there was also a strong influence from Brian on the middle part. It was an interesting experience which we might do repeat if we have a chance with David and other people.
We were friends from a long time back and we were in Montreux, in Switzerland. We own a studio there, so we're working there and he lives there. He just happened to be there, and he kept coming to the studio, listening to our tracks, and we were jamming to some of his old songs, and one day we were having dinner and after that we were going back into the studio to carry on with the session, and it just happened: he just said “oh, why don't we just fool around and get something started and see what happens?” And, you know, started playing the piano, and the rest of the band were there and we started putting something down and Under Pressure started to build.
The first of the two sessions for Under Pressure was twenty-four hours and the second, a couple of weeks later and 4,000 miles away in New York when Freddie and Bowie finished off the track at the Power Station, was a session which lasted another eighteen hours. Under Pressure came about purely spontaneously. Bowie, who was living in Montreux, heard that Queen were in town and just called round to the studio. Roger and Bowie got on very well anyway, although the lyric and title idea came from Freddie's and David's collaboration. The impromptu jam session soon assumed the 24-hour marathon shape I've described. I was overjoyed in New York when Freddie took up my suggestion of the two-octave vocal slide which I had noticed being so successfully used on another current chart disco track.
David was living in Switzerland, where we were recording in a studio we owned at the time in Montreux. He basically just popped in to see us. Freddie had met him before. We all had a little chart and then went straight in the studio and started playing around. We played a few old songs and then something new started to happen and we said, “Okay, let's try and record this.” It was a truly spontaneous thing. We felt our way through a backing track all together as an ensemble. And then David brought up an unusual idea for creating the vocal. He was kind of famous for writing lyrics by collecting different bits of paper with quotes on them. And we did a corresponding thing as regards writing the top line for the song. When the backing track was done, David said, “Okay, let's each of us go in the vocal booth and sing how we think the melody should go - just off the tops of our heads - and we'll compile a vocal out of that.” And that's what we did. Some of the original bits even made it onto the record. Freddie going “b-b-b-boom-ba,” that scat singing stuff, was part of the initial track he went in and did off the top of his head. Odd, isn't it? That's why the words are so curious - some of them, anyway. There was a point where somebody had to take control, and I think it's fair to say that David took the reins and decided that he wanted to rationalize the lyrics and them say what he felt they should say.
The story of this song is complex, really: we just happened to be in the studio, really, with David. He just dropped in and we started off jamming, playing around, and I think we went out for some food and we thought, “oh, wouldn't it be fun to kick around some original ideas?” John came up with the riff which starts it all off. We all got into it - suddenly I remember putting in the heavy chords stuff. And then it came to the point of, “What is this song about and what's the melody line?”, and David came up with the idea of us all going in one after the other and singing what we thought the tune should be - I think he'd already done this with some other people prior to that. We sat down and chose bits of everything, it was really done in an odd way – I know David was very into it at the time, the idea of putting newspaper clippings together as well to make lyrics was one of David's things - so that gave you the tune and, really, at that point, David started to feel very strongly about what he felt the song was about so he wrote a set of lyrics. First of all it was called People on Streets, but then he wanted to revise it and it became slightly more abstract, it became Under Pressure.
It wasn't the best recording we ever made but it was one of the best songs we ever did, I think. It was a really ace song and I loved it, thoroughly enjoyed it, and it sort of endured quite well - I hear it quite often on the radio and I love the last section.
It was evolved in an unusual way, which David really brought to the table, wherein we worked on the backing track together, and we sort of, felt our way through it. But once we had a backing track which we liked, David's idea was to get everybody to go into the vocal booth and just sing the first thing that came into their heads. And what would then happen would be, we would compile it and see if it suggested the way the song should go, and some of those takes from Freddie survived to the final vocal, strangely enough, including this bit, I think, and the sort of, ad-libbing bits. But then, it was David who really got up a couple of days later and decided what the song should be about. So the song kind of, does sound like a jigsaw puzzle, but I think it works amazingly well. Some great hooks. It's one of the songs which doesn't seem to date as well I must say. It always has something to say.
A true collaboration between ourselves and David Bowie in one very long night in Montreux, in Switzerland. It was originally actually called People on Streets, and he suddenly decided that it should be called Under Pressure, which I think is a better title on reflection, really. And I remember that when he and Freddie were trying the lead vocals, just trying whatever, the other one wasn't allowed to hear what the one singing was actually doing, so they were sort of, doing it blind, and then it was a sort of, cut-and-paste thing after that, wasn't it? Sorting through what the ideas that they'd had individually. It has a great heart and soul, this song. It's one of my personal favourites.
For me it was a great pleasure. I think [David Bowie] is one of the most talented people I've ever worked with or met and he just sings so well and has got such presence and he's got an incredible catalogue of wonderful songs and a huge range and imagination and it was just a pleasure.
I think the process was we were all drunk in the studio, and just for fun we were playing all sorts of old songs - I remember a couple of Cream songs - and whatever came into our heads, and I think David said, “look, hang on a minute, why don't we write our own?” I think he started on piano. We got this backing track down, and we got the riff and we got the bass thing together, so we had this pretty good backing track, and Freddie and David would go in and have a go and just sing what came into their heads but one wasn't allowed to listen to the other, and it was quite amusing and this sort of went through the night and then we had this sort of strange track the other day.
David Bowie and we guys from Queen came from the same country, of course… and quite close by, in London, at that. But we only hooked up properly because of a coincidence. We all happened to be in a sleepy little town called Montreux in Switzerland at the same time. In the 70s we worked at the small studio there, Mountain Studios, with David Richards, and liked it so much we bought it, and continued to work there until Freddie's passing many years later. David Bowie had actually settled in Switzerland to live, very close by, and since we already knew him a little, he popped in to say hello one day while we were recording. Now time dims the memory a little, but the way I remember it we all very quickly decided that the best way to get to know each other was to play together. So we all bowled down into the studio and picked up our instruments. We had fun kicking around a few fragments of songs we all knew. But then we decided it would be great to create something new, on the spur of the moment. We all brought stuff to the table, and my contribution was a heavy riff in D which was lurking in my head. But what we got excited about was a riff which Deacy began playing, 6 notes the same, then one note a fourth down. Ding-Ding-Ding Diddle Ing-Ding, you might say. But suddenly hunger took over and we repaired to a local restaurant for food and a fair amount of drink. A couple or three hours later, we're back in the studio. “What was that riff, you had, Deacy?” says David B. “It was like this,” says John Deacon. “No it wasn't,” says Bowie - “it was like this.” This was a funny moment because I can just see DB going over and putting his hand on John's fretting hand and stopping him. It was also a tense moment because it could have gone either way. Deacy did not take kindly to being told what to do, especially by physical interferences while he was playing! But he was good-natured, and it all went ahead. Then we began playing around – using the riff as a starting point. Now normally, if it had been just us, we probably would have gone away and thought about it, and started mapping out a song structure. David said something like “We should just press on instinctively. Something will happen.” And he was right. It did. I put a little tinkling guitar riff on top of John's bass riff (David later was adamant it ought to be played on a 12-string, so I overdubbed that later at some point). And then we all mucked in with ideas to develop a backing track. The track had something that sounded like a verse, then a quiet contemplative bit, which built up ready for a climax. I managed to get my heavy riff in here. I remember saying ... “cool - it sounds like The Who!” At which point David frowned a little and said “It won't sound like The Who by the time we're finished!” When it came to mixing the track, I, (uncharacteristically, since I was usually the last one left in the studio of a night), opted out altogether, so that there were fewer cooks to spoil the broth. Roger hung right in there – and Roger, who had been a fan of Bowie from way back, was very instrumental in making sure the track got finished. In fact it didn't get mixed until a few weeks later in New York. That's a whole different story, but I wasn't there, so all I know is that Freddie and David had different views of how the mix should be done, and the engineer didn't completely know how the studio worked! So it ended up as a compromise... a quick rough monitor mix. But that was what became the finished album track, and a single too, which made a mark all around the world. Never predictable, never classifiable, immensely lateral thinking and fearless, he stands as one of Britain's greatest musical creators. I'm certainly proud to have worked with him. RIP David.
We have a lot of songs I like and I wouldn't really put one of them above all the others. I do have a special fondness for Under Pressure because it was great fun and I loved everybody and we had so much fun and personal satisfaction making that record and it has something to say as well. Favourites, I have lots.
Queen and David Bowie is a story in itself. At the time I wasn't happy about the mix. Looking back, I still think it's a very special song.
Under Pressure I still love. I enjoyed working with Bowie and wish we'd done more together, though I'm not sure everyone enjoyed it as much as I did.