"THERE WAS SO MUCH BLOW"
Take "a few bottles of wine", white powder racked out on gold discs, stir in some clashing Big Singer Energy and voilà, you have Under Pressure, the Queen song they can't quite believe they made happen "Five egos in the studio could be a bit much," discovers MARK BLAKE.
Duel personalities: Mercury and Bowie gear up for the pressure drop.
Photography by Aad Spanjaard, taken from ‘Unseen Queen – The Dutch Shows and More, 1974-1986’, available at www.rufuspublica
DAVID BOWIE ONCE DESCRIBED HIS AND QUEEN’S collaborative UK Number 1 hit as “spontaneous and peculiar”. A bit like the song’s two lead singers, then. Bowie and Freddie Mercury went way back; not that they ever discussed it publicly. In spring 1969, the unknown, pre-Space Oddity Bowie played a lunchtime gig at Ealing art school, where Freddie Bulsara helped him build a stage out of tables in the college refectory.
Two years later, at a stall he was managing in London’s Kensington Market, Freddie tried to sell Bowie a pair of platform boots. By summer 1981, though, the scales had tipped. Bowie was in creative limbo after Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) but Queen had recently topped the US singles chart with Another One Bites The Dust.
Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
Queen and Bowie ran into each other at Mountain Studios, Montreux, where Queen were working on Hot Space, and Bowie was recording Cat People (Putting Out Fire) for the erotic horror movie Cat People. One night, Bowie sang backing vocals on Queen’s new song, Cool Cat, and decided to stick around.