Queen & David Bowie – Under Pressure
1981 · Directed by David Mallet
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Best comments
1.“The people who disliked this song are Vanilla Ice fans.”
More comments
- 2.“R.I.P. Freddie Mercury. R.I.P. David Bowie. R.I.P. Vanilla Ice's career.”
The story
Two of the biggest names in rock end up in the same Swiss studio, cut a number one, and neither one shows up for the video.
Queen were at Mountain Studios in Montreux in 1981 working on Hot Space. David Bowie lived nearby and dropped in one night, supposedly to sing backup on a Queen track called Cool Cat. Instead they jammed on other people's songs for fun until Bowie suggested writing their own. It grew out of a John Deacon bass riff in one marathon evening, with Freddie Mercury and Bowie trading improvised vocals that stayed in the finished take. Who really wrote that bassline is still a family argument: Deacon credited Bowie, Bowie said it already existed, and Brian May later said Bowie changed it after the dinner break.
With nobody available to film, director David Mallet, who had worked with both acts, built the promo out of other people's footage. Traffic jams, packed commuter trains, riots, crushed cars and explosions, cut with silent films like Nosferatu, Battleship Potemkin and John Barrymore's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Shots of IRA bombings in Belfast got it in trouble with the BBC.
The single came out in October 1981 and went to number one in the UK, Queen's second chart-topper and Bowie's third. Nine years later Vanilla Ice lifted the intro for Ice Ice Baby, denied it, then admitted it, and Queen and Bowie got songwriting credit. Some pressure finds its way back.
