Queen: Days of Our Lives Page #8

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the studios in Montreux, here.

Mountain Studios was in the casino

by the lake in Montreux.

When they first arrived it was,

like, the top studio in Europe.

We were in the studio in Montreux

and David Bowie lives nearby.

I think we went out for a meal

or drinks or something

and then landed up back in

the studio with the sort of

rough intention of doing something.

We were fooling around and just...

jamming with tracks

and suddenly we said,

"Why don't we just see what we can do

on the spur of the moment?"

Then it's the pressure

of His Majesty David being there

and everybody wanted to look suave

and quick with ideas and stuff.

Deacy of course came up with this

riff - dun dun dun de de dun dun.

"UNDER PRESSURE" BASS RIFF PLAYS

# Bom bom bom buddle der der

# Ding ding ding digger ding ding

He kept playing that over and over

and over again.

And then we went for a pizza

and he forgot it.

Completely escaped his mind!

We got back and I remembered it.

And of course, we're used to playing

together and now we have this

other guy there who's also

inputting, inputting, inputting.

David's idea of putting these

clicks and claps

and then the track just grew.

By that time,

David was very impassioned.

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,

unusual for me.

# Pressure pushing down on me

# Pressing down on you

# No man ask for

# Under pressure

# That burns a building down

# Splits a family in two

# Puts people on streets... #

For the vocals, one of them

was to be locked out

and not allowed to

hear what the other one sang

and they sang anything off the top

of their heads.

# It never rains but it pours

# Um ba-ba bey... #

Fred starts doing his bum-didder-dup

and his bits-and-pieces

and I see out of

the corner of my eye,

I see David sticking his head in,

listening.

Then Fred came down, David went up

and Freddie was quite impressed

that he was counterpointing

to what he did before.

#.. This world is about

# Watching some good friends

screaming let me out

# Pray tomorrow gets me

higher, high, high

# Pressure on people

People on streets... #

And Fred said,

"What do you make of this?"

I said, "It's kind of easy if you stand in

the doorway listening to what you're doing. "

And Freddie turned,

"What the BLEEP"?

# Cos love's such

an old fashioned word

# And love dares you

# To care for the people

on the edge of the night

# And love dares you

# To change our way of

# Caring about ourselves

# This is our last dance... #

The result is very good but it was

a difficult experience, I think,

because people pulling in different

directions, in a sense.

# Under pressure... #

Under Pressure, David Bowie,

the band, me,

I don't think it mixed too well.

# Pressure. #

Shame actually, it's...

I thought it was fabulous, we could've done

some incredible further things, actually.

Well, here we have a total change

of life for all of us, really.

We went back to Munich

to do the next album

and really, I suppose, things

started to go downhill.

It's actually a rather grim place.

It's a studio in the basement of

a huge tower block which is a hotel.

And it's kind of depressing.

A lot of people used to jump off

that building and kill themselves,

off that particular building,

it was well known for it.

We didn't know that until we got

there, so we went a bit nuts.

By that time, we were getting

very finicky about recording

and we spent months there.

After the massive success of

Another One Bites The Dust,

the thinking was we'll make an album

that's slightly more dance orientated.

Not my idea.

Especially in Freddie's entourage,

I won't mention any names

like Paul Prenter, for instance,

loathed guitars and

found that Brian was old fashioned.

Paul Prenter had become

Freddie's personal assistant.

He was a very, very bad influence

upon Freddie,

hence on the band, really.

He very much wanted

our music to sound

like you'd just walked in

a gay club.

And I didn't.

# Back chat, back chat

# Criticising all you see

# Back chat, back chat

# Analysing what I say... #

There were a lot of strains in

the band that'd happen

with four people of that

strength of character.

Everybody had their say and the arguments were

creative and then it would become personal.

Of course!

It was a sort of emotional

roller coaster.

I think less and less time

was spent in the studio.

Get up about three o'clock and go

and have breakfast

and then a bit of work would be

done and then you'd have dinner

and then one of the roadies would

start mixing cocktails and then...

other things would... ahem, happen.

# Give me... #

I'm not saying cocaine

and other drugs

and loose women had anything

to do with that at all.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge!

# Body, body

# Give me your body... #

It turned into a rather exhausting

cycle, I think, in the end.

# Don't talk, don't talk, don't talk

# Baby, don't talk... #

I don't know if I can say this...

Yes, I could probably say this.

We all got ourselves into deep

trouble emotionally in Munich

and Freddie was no exception, he got himself deep

into emotional waters which he couldn't really handle

and was very unhappy

for some of the time.

# Give me your body... #

He was being sucked into places which

really probably weren't good for him.

And I think we all felt that

and realised that he was

in some kind of danger.

# Give me, yeah

# Your body... #

I certainly saw the change

in Freddie...

# Don't talk... #

.. in the club Heaven in 1983.

I said to him, "Have you

modified your behaviour

"in light of 'the new disease'",

which as of yet did not have a name.

And with the sweep of his arms

in a theatrical fashion, he said,

"Darling, my attitude is f*** it,

I'm doing everything with everybody. "

If someone kept a chart

of rock and roll royalty,

Queen would have to be at the top.

Now Queen is back on tour

and perhaps up against their

biggest challenge yet.

Now, most of you know that we've got

some new sounds out last week and...

.. for what it's worth, we're going

to do a few songs in

the funk-black category,

whatever you call it.

Record sales are not

as strong as in the past

and that's left everyone wondering.

I don't like everything that we do.

I like a lot of what we do

but not everything.

It depends on whatever the four

individuals in the group,

what music they're into at the time

and what songs they're writing.

There might be a couple of songs

come out you don't like very much.

I could name a couple!

Well, Hot Space in Queen terms

was pretty disastrous, really.

It didn't appeal to

some of the hardcore Queen fans

who would turn up at concerts with

banners saying "disco sucks".

It's only a bloody record, people get

so excited about these things. I mean...

The band...

It was pretty much on

the verge of falling apart.

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