I bow to no man or woman in my admiration for David Bowie. The word genius is liberally tossed around these days, often to people who appear to be virtually talentless, not the Thin White Duke. He bestrode the world of rock music like the colossus he was. I like, and sometimes love, almost everything he ever made, my favourite album of which was Young Americans. But I got very close to abandoning him in 1981 when he made a record with Queen.
I try to avoid talking about, never mind listening to, anything by Queen. Having been lured in initially by Keep Yourself Alive, which I thought was a decent song until it was wrecked by the stacked backing vocals which became a grim staple of the band’s ghastly sound, I soon learned the error of my ways. Seven Seas Of Rhye, a mish-mash of lyrical gobbledegook and the grim faux rocker Now I’m Here alerted me to the direction of the band, the grotesque Bohemian Rhapsody sprayed out of my radio like aural diarrhoea. By 1975, I absolutely loathed Queen. I have hated them even more throughout the succeeding years.
Then, as the band’s star was mercifully beginning to fade, as they broke the embargo on apartheid South Africa by playing the white man’s Vegas in Sun City, they made a poorly received album called Hot Space, which I’d forgotten about until I was researching a few basic facts for this blog. But there was one track on the album that seemed to excite people, Under Pressure. Reason? Queen co-wrote it with David Bowie. Hmm, I thought. Maybe it’s not that bad after all, then? But it was that bad after all
To be absolute disgust, the song has just appeared on BBC 6 Music as part of Lauren Laverne’s Six of the Best feature on her excellent new mid morning show and I was tamping. Of course, 6 Music does play grim music sometimes, but surely never Queen. Yet there it was, in all its lack of glory:
“Mm-noom-ba-deh. Boom-boom-ba-beh. Doo-boo-boom-ba-beh-beh.”
What?
“Mm-ba-ba-beh, mm-ba-ba-beh. Dee-day-da, ee-day-da. That’s okay.”
No, it isn’t.
“Ee-doh-ba-buh, ee-da-ba-ba-bop. Mm-bo-bop, beh-lup. People on streets, ee-da-dee-da-day. People on streets, ee-da-dee-da-dee-da-dee-da.”
Oh, do stop.
