David Bowie 's collaboration with Queen on the single "Under Pressure" is one of the most remarkable in music history and yielded one of the most famous songs in the world, but the songwriting process wasn't always amicable.
In 2016 interview with the Mirror , Brian May recalled the iconic night when the five rock legends came together to compose the fateful track. The collaboration happened by a stroke of luck. Queen was working in a studio in Switzerland and Bowie had a house not far away, so the star decided to visit them.
Since they were all musicians, it didn't take long for the group to decide that the best way to get to know each other was by playing music together. According to May, they were all drunk and playing old songs until Bowie suggested they do something new. "We all collaborated on something," recalls Brian May. "But what really got us excited was a riff that John [Deacon] started playing."
The riff in question was what later lifted Bowie and Deacon's spirits. At one point, the group realized they were hungry and went out to eat and drink more. When they returned, no one remembered exactly how the bassist had played it.
“'What was that riff you played, Deacy?'” Bowie asked. “'It was like this,'” John Deacon replied. “'No, it wasn't. It was like this,'” Bowie insisted. David's insistence didn't please Deacon, according to Brian May, who referred to this episode as “a tense moment.” “Anything could have happened,” he recalls. “Deacy didn't like someone telling him what to do.”
According to Brian May, things calmed down and all the members were instructed by Bowie to go into the studio and sing the first thing that came to mind, "without ideas and without notes." The next day, David Bowie asked to take control of the song's lyrics because he knew what it should be about.
“We all took a step back and David wrote lyrics that focused on the ‘Under Pressure’ section, which already existed,” May says. “It was unusual for us to relinquish control like that, but David was having a moment of genius – it’s a very revealing lyric.”
