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 Hits 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 Hits 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
|