Queen meets Bowie in summit session
David Bowie may not be the first musician who's dropped in on
Queen at the band's hideaway studio in Switzerland, but he's probably the most famous. For
Queen, the visit from the Thin White Duke paid off with more than good public relations -
it garnered the band a hit record, "Under Pressure (Elektra).
"We were sequestered in Montreux, really locked away in the studio," recalls
blond drummer/vocalist Roger Taylor. Along with his partners Freddie Mercury, Brian May
and John Deacon, Roger was working on songs for the next Queen LP in the band-owned
Mountain Recording Studios. "Carmine Appice had come to visit one day; also the
Pretenders' drummer. Martin Chambers." These two guests confined their participation
to that of quiet onlookers. But when David Bowie arrived in September, the chemistry was
quite different, and before long the five rockers were all playing together.
"Bowie had used the studio to record The Lodger album," explains Taylor.
"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."
Cowritten by Bowie and the four members of Queen, the lightly-rocking "Under
Pressure," with its joint lead vocals by Bowie and Mercury, was released in advance
of my other new songs as a bonus track on Queen Greatest Hits, one of the few hit
collections to do justice to the concept. The inclusion of the new tune and
"flash" (from Flash Gordon) necessitated changes in the master of Greatest Wits
that Queen had prepared for release more than a year ago.
"They held it back because of the success of The Game and the Flash soundtrack,"
notes Taylor. The single-pocket album, finally released in late October, contains so many
genuine hits (from 1973's "Keep Yourself Alive" to "Under Pressure")
that the first side alone plays nearly 26 minutes - as long as many whole Us of the
mid-'60s.
"At least there are enough hits on this album," offers Taylor, who's wary of
such packages because of the shoddy way they're usually handled. "Some people have
put out greatest hits albums with three hits and nine fillers." Queen has had 14 real
ones in America. "We have to release more than one version of the record," Roger
adds with a smile, "since some countries have almost a completely different selection
of hits." Overseas smashes that aren't on the U.S. album include "Love of My
Life," "Save Me" and "Tie Your Mother Down."
"These Queen songs are pure escapism," mustachioed singer Mercury says of
Greatest Hits' contents. "There are no hidden messages in our songs. We like to write
songs for fun, for modern consumpton. People can discard them like a used tissue
afterwards. Would I call it disposable pop? Yes."
The "disposable pop" of Queen's previous records earned each member of the band
680,000 pounds (about $1,500,000) in the year that ended September 1979, making .Taylor,
Mercury, Deacon and May (who manage and pay themselves) the highest-paid executives in
Great Britain. It took them nine years of hard work and some serious re-shaping of career
goals to reach that level of success. Before he joined Queen, Roger Taylor was headed for
a life's work not in music, but in science.
Born July 26, 1949 in Kings Lynn, England, Roger Meadows Taylor began his university
career in dentistry before switching to biology. His family encouraged his
extra-curricular interest in music, for Roger sang and played guitar as well as
percussion. In 1970, upon meeting the other three members of the group that became Queen,
he began to write, rehearse and gig in the bars near Shepperton, Middlesex. The four built
Queen to a point where it could hold its own on double bills with - such gland-rock giants
of the mid-'70s as Mott the Hoople.
Taylor's English good looks, subdued speaking manner, steady drumming and high harmonies
were the perfect foil to Freddie Mercury's outrageous stage prancing, Turkish appearance
and powerful lead voice; Roger helped give Queen a sense of balance. He's written such
Queen favorites as "I'm in Love with My Car" (in real life, he drives an Aston
Martin Valenti) and has helped the band sell some 55 million records worldwide. Taylor
lives near Guildford, Surrey with his French girlfriend, Dominique, and their infant son,
Felix. Roger consistently places among the top three in the Best Drummer category of the
yearly Circus/Shure Readers Poll, and he's the only member of Queen with a solo album (Fun
in Space) to his name.
While he has an almost full-time commitment to Queen, Taylor hopes that the solo LP and
the session with Bowie will lead to further special projects. "Bowie's one of the few
people we'd ever want to work with," he says, acknowledging that Queen won't rule out
future sessions with the Duke. Taylor expects the new album to be finished in time for a
mid-'82 release, at latest. That way Queen will have plenty of time to tour this year in
places more accessible than Caracas or Buenos Aires to U.S. fans.
"The songs I'm submitting for the album are designed to be straightforward rockers
with stage potential," Roger insists. Anything else will have to be saved for the
next solo project". We must be able to play Queen songs live anywhere in the world,
or there's little point in doing them. When it came to making the soundtrack for Flash
Gordon, we honestly didn't know where to start!" Though he did write a love theme for
Flash and Dale Arden, Taylor prefers straight-ahead songs like "We Will Rock
You," to which even Brazilian kids sang along when Queen played there on its
"South America Bites the Dust" tour last March.
English journalist Ray Connolly remembers the strange and somewhat scary mood in Brazil:
"While dozens of grossly heavy plain-clothed policemen guarded the group. Queen went
into the vast saucer of Sao Paula's Morumbi Stadium and bewitched 130,000 fans. The police
had their guns fucked nonchalantly into belts the way one only ever sees in the
movies."
"We were treated all right, by God," says Roger, "though it was tough on
our road crew. There's a lot of crime and a lot of grime in Brazil, but the audiences were
incredible. They knew every word of 'Love of My Life.' They gave us a taste of what to
expect in '82, when we'll probably play the United States again."
Greatest Wits broke the American Top 30 in its first week of release. As a hint of the
invasion to come, its acceptance bodes nothing but good fortune for this most regal of
English bands.
Richard Hogan |
