May would recall putting in long shifts at the
Musicland console “at three o’clock, trying to make
something work”. But the lineup played hard too,
albeit separately, with Mercury holding court at the
Old Mrs Henderson gay club while the other band
members repaired to Sugar Shack, a local disco
that would prove hugely influential on their
evolving sound.
“We would take tracks down there after hours
and play them over their system to see how they
worked,” reflected May. “Anything with a bit of
groove sounded good. We became obsessed with
leaving space in our music and making songs that
would sound great in the Sugar Shack.”
The venue’s vibe would spill into the guitarist’s
own Dragon Attack, a funky jam reportedly fuelled
by vodka and tonics.
But more significant
was its thumbprint on
Queen’s biggest hit of
the decade: Another One
Bites The Dust.
While tipping a hat
to the Munich club
scene, John Deacon’s
three-note bassline
was also the product
of both his Motown-
fixated youth and a
chance overhearing of
an early version of US
funk icons Chic’s 1979
Risqué while hanging out with that band’s bassist
Bernard Edwards in New York (“What isn’t cool,”
the American later told NME, “is that the press
started saying we had ripped them off.”).
And while the rest of the band were bemused- May recalling that “[we] had no idea what
Deakey was doing” and that Taylor’s initial
response was “unprintable” – they soon fell into
the groove. Taylor’s drums were deliciously dry
and clipped. May’s funk riffs scritch-scratched
between the warm bassline. Mercury was “so into
what we were doing”, recalled the guitarist, “that
he sang until his throat bled”.
It was a rare moment of synergy in an often
bad-tempered session. Wary of Mack since being
asked to relinquish his Red Special and play a
Fender Telecaster on Crazy Little Thing Called Love,
May now niggled with his producer over the
approach to tracking guitars. On the brink of his
debut solo album, Fun In Space, Taylor seemed
particularly restless, pitching up to sessions with
an Oberheim OB-X – past Queen albums had
pointedly claimed ‘No Synthesisers’ – and
pushing to sing the lead on Rock It (the song
ultimately saw the drummer and Mercury share
vocal duties). “Keeping the focus,” Mack told
iZotope, “was difficult at the best of times with this
mixture of personalities.”
“There were huge rows in the studio,” noted
Taylor. “Usually over how long Brian was taking,
or whether he was having an omelette. We drove
each other nuts.”
“We all walked out at various times,” May
recalled. “You get hard times, as in any
relationship. We definitely did. Usually in the
studio; never on tour. On tour, you always have
a clear, common aim. But in the studio you’re all
pulling in different directions and it can be very
frustrating. You only get twenty-five per cent of
your own way at the best of times. So, yes, we did
have hard times. Feeling that you’re not being
represented, that you’re not being heard. Because
that’s one of the things about being a musician,
you want to be heard. You want your ideas to be
out there. You want to be able to explore what’s
coming to you in the way of inspiration. It was
a difficult compromise to find, but always worth
finding once you did find it.”
Mercury was more succinct on the dynamic:
“Four cocks fighting – lovely!”B
ut for now, the numbers papered over the
cracks. Released in June 1980, The Game
stormed to No.1 on both sides of the
Atlantic, the sense of a reinvigorated band
completed by a leather-jacketed sleeve shot that
retooled these 70s
peacocks for the new
era. Forty-six US dates
climaxed with
Mercury firing
champagne over the
crowd during a three-
night residency at New
York’s Madison Square
Garden; in the UK, the
band christened the
newly opened
Birmingham NEC.
By comparison, it was
inevitable that the
same year’s Flash
Gordon soundtrack seemed a little slight.
“We wanted to write the first rock’n’roll
musical,” Taylor told Blake of the latter. “It was
a very camp film, but I thought our music suited
the film in all its camp awfulness.”
While Another One Bites The Dust reached No.1
in the US, becoming Queen’s definitive Stateside
hit, the lineup hadn’t failed to notice their
rocketing numbers in South America, where the
single’s chart-topping performance in both
Argentina and Guatemala gave Queen a claim to
be that continent’s biggest rock band. In 1981, the
band transplanted their live rig for shows on an
unprecedented scale, shifting some 100 tons of
equipment, even travelling with artificial turf to
protect the hallowed stadium pitches at feverish
shows in Buenos Aires, Mar Del Plata, Rosario and
São Paulo.
Blowing through the continent on a trek that
played to a record paying crowd of 231,000 in São
Paulo, and grossed $3.5 million in total, the
hysteria required an armed convoy – and for each
band member to be issued a bodyguard brought
in from the seamier end of Brazil’s military.
“They were the heavy, heavy police, who
actually kill people at the drop of a hat,” noted
a momentarily serious Mercury.
If Deacon’s Another One Bites The Dust bassline
was the soundtrack of 1980, it would be
challenged the next year by another low-end
groove, as Mercury and David Bowie tested each
other’s talents – and patience – on Under Pressure.
Wine and cocaine flowed in a 24-hour session at
Montreux’s Mountain Studios, but if the resulting
single sounded magnanimous – with both singers
trading lead vocals, many of them improvised –
May remembers otherwise.
“It was very hard,” he said in 2008, “because you
already had four precocious boys and David, who
was precocious enough for all of us. PassionsGETTYQueen circa The Game:
“Four cocks fighting.”68 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
“There were huge
rows in the studio.
Usually over how long
Brian was taking.
We drove each
other nuts.”
Roger Taylor