David Mallett - Every UK Number 1

The Intro

Under Pressure, that behemoth of a pop track by rock giants Queen & David Bowie, sees both acts trying to outdo each other. Somehow, rather than come out as a sloppy egotistical mess, it became one of the greatest number 1s of the 80s, no matter how many times you might hear it.

Before

Six years previously, Queen had scored the 1975 Christmas number 1 with their most famous single, Bohemian Rhapsody. A lengthy nine weeks there earned them huge fame and meant their next two singles were hits too – in 1976, the lovely You’re My Best Friend went to seven and epic singalong Somebody to Love peaked at two. 1977 brought mixed fortunes, with Tie Your Mother Down only reaching 31. Queen’s First EP was a cash grab that went to 17. But We Are the Champions restored their fortunes, hurtling to two. The rest of the 70s featured some of their most famous songs performing well – most notably the double A-side Bicycle Race/Fat Bottomed Girls (1978) at 11, Don’t Stop Me Now (1979) at nine and Crazy Little Thing Called Love (1979) at two.

The last track I mentioned was the first release from The Game, which was their first LP of the 80s. It was also the first to see Queen introduce synthesisers into the mix for the first time. Other singles from this album included the number seven smash Another One Bites the Dust. They also released their soundtrack album for the camp film Flash Gordon (1980).

The last time we saw David Bowie around these parts wasn’t that long ago at all. Ashes to Ashes, the first track to be released from Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), had been number 1 in 1980. The excellent Fashion followed and peaked at five, before commercial success trailed off with subsequent singles – the title track (number 20) and Up the Hill Backwards (32).

In July 1981, Queen were recording what was to become the LP Hot Space at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland. One of the tracks they were working on was drummer Roger Taylor’s Feel Like, but they weren’t happy with the results. Also at Mountain Studios was Bowie, who lived in Switzerland at the time and was recording the vocals to the title song of the film Cat People (Putting Out Fire). Two of the biggest acts of the 70s met each other and, perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not, they decided to try working together.

Queen and Bowie had lots in common, for a while. Both found fame during the glam period as rock acts that weren’t afraid to be flamboyant, or to experiment either. However, it’s fair to say that although Queen stuck mostly to the rock format, Bowie had been continually experimental as the decade progressed. But both were about to release some of the most straightforward pop material of their careers, but not before Queen continued to make Hot Space, which consisted mostly of disco.

Initially in Montreux, Bowie contributed backing vocals and a spoken word section to the track Cool Cat, but he wasn’t happy with his performance and asked to be wiped from the recording. With Hot Space recorded, they all decided to see if they could create a new song, which included the guitar element from Feel Like. Although Freddie Mercury, Brian May, John Deacon, Taylor and Bowie were all credited for what became Under Pressure, Deacon claimed in 1984 that Mercury was the driving force.

You would think Deacon would be keen to lay claim to one of the most famous bass riffs of all time, but he didn’t. In 1982 he stated that Bowie had created it. However, Bowie said on his website that it had been written before he joined the band in the studio. In recent years both May and Taylor have insisted it was Deacon, but in 2016 May appeared to clear matters up. In an article for Mirror Online, the guitarist said Deacon had been playing a riff in the studio consisting of the same note six times, ‘then one note a fourth down’. Queen and Bowie took a break and went for food and liquid refreshment at a local restaurant. Several hours later, Bowie misremembered the riff that Deacon had been playing, and insisted it was what became the backbone of Under Pressure. He even went so far as to stop Deacon playing, which made matters tense for a while. However, everyone must have come to their senses and seen that, whoever was right, Bowie’s version was a magic ingredient. May also said in the interview that normally at this point, Queen would have gone away and discussed the song’s structure. Bowie wanted to carry on, saying ‘something will happen’.

Review

Bowie was right. Something did indeed happen. Under Pressure is one of the finest number ones of the 80s and one of that holy list of songs that I will never, ever grow tire of. If anything, the lyrics take on added relevance with every passing year. However, how much better would it have been if they’d taken more time on the song? I’m looking at you in particular, Mercury.

It’s strange to see how Queen’s lead singer would be so willing to let this song be mixed and released without him working more on his lyrics. Vocally, he and Bowie are an excellent match for each other, complimenting each other so well and then seemingly battling it out at the song’s finale. But why did he and the rest of Queen settle on his scatting in lieu of more actual words? Bowie later said he felt they could have spent longer on Under Pressure lyrically, and that’s a polite way of putting it.

However, Mercury does just about pull it off – after all, this is a man with such a commanding presence, he had the whole of Wembley Stadium yodelling along with him at Live Aid four years later. And of course, underpinning the whole song is Deacon’s entrancing, ultra-catchy bass riff. The intro is spellbinding, and when the riff and Mercury’s understated scat leads into his and Bowie’s ‘Pressure!’, the hairs on the back of your neck can still stand to attention.

Bowie and Queen’s anthem to the stress of modern life can be seen as a prediction of the 21st century, which explains just why the song has aged so well. The former’s handiwork is clear, and almost retro by his standards, as we get a little of the unusual wordplay little seen seen by the glam icon since his Berlin period – now don’t get me wrong ‘Pressure, pushing down on me, pushing down on you, no man ask for… puts people on streets’ is not exactly comparable with the cut-up lyrical technique of some of his finest late-70s material, but it’s clear this is him and not Mercury at work.

What makes it all the more frustrating is that Mercury’s few lyrics on Under Pressure work really well with Bowie’s. When he sings ‘Chipping around, kick my brains ’round the floor/These are the days it never rains but it pours’ are an effective compliment to Bowie’s preceding lyrics about the terror of seeing friends struggling under the weight of the world. But then he just scats again. And again. And when he says ‘OK!’, is it a sarcastic quip that everything is far from OK, or just pure laziness? Either way, it’s a bit mind-boggling that everyone was happy to let it stay in the song.

But with Under Pressure, the whole is definitely far greater than the sum of its parts. And back to that finale. From Mercury’s hushed ‘Turned away from it all like a blind man’ is pure brilliance. The way the two superstar singers battle for the last word is awe-inspiring and pop music at its best. Mercury as the questioning optimist, desperately hoping that love will win out. It makes for a brilliant ending. And yet Bowie somehow tops him, reviving the cynicism of his ‘Thin White Duke’ era with the cold cynicism of ‘Cause love’s such an old-fashioned word’. And then, even better, they both seem to predict where Thatcherism will go next, by noting that love means caring for others – the ‘People on streets’ could be the miners that go on strike three years later. Is this song a warning that, as Thatcher later said, there really is no thing as society, because pressure has stopped people loving anyone but themselves? It’s a hell of a lot to contemplate as the finger clicks fade into silence.

After

With neither Queen or Bowie available to star in a video for Under Pressure, it made sense to task David Mallett with the responsibility. The prolific director had created some of Bowie’s most memorable videos, including Ashes to Ashes, as well as Queen’s Bicycle Race. For this single, Mallett compiled stock image of footage that loosely represented pressure, including traffic jams, riots and – controversially – footage of explosions in Northern Ireland, which Top of the Pops insisted on having removed before showing the video.

Under Pressure spent two weeks at number 1 in 1981. In 1982 it became part of Queen’s LP Hot Space. The band would perform the song live many times, but Bowie didn’t until he joined the line-up for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992, where he joined the remaining members of the band along with Annie Lennox fulfilling Mercury’s role. It later became part of his own sets, featuring bassist Gail Ann Dorsey singing Mercury’s parts.

The Outro

In 1990, the song had a revival thanks to the rapper Vanilla Ice. Although he originally claimed not to have sampled the bass and piano on his number 1 Ice Ice Baby (which he clearly had), and then refused to award a songwriting credit or royalties to Queen and Bowie, he later relented. He also later claimed to have purchased publishing rights, which was also bullshit.

In 1999 a remixed version of Under Pressure, known as The Rah Mix, made it to 14 in the singles chart.

The Info

Written and produced by

Queen & David Bowie

Weeks at number 1

2 (21 November-4 December)

Trivia

Births

26 November: Singer Natasha Bedingfield
27 November: Actor Gary Lucy
29 November: Photographer Tom Hurndall
1 December: Actress Kathryn Drysdale

Deaths

3 December: Historian Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith
4 December: Writer Enid Welsford

Meanwhile…

23 November: The 1981 United Kingdom tornado outbreak became the largest recorded tornado outbreak in European history when 104 reached England and Wales
25 November: A report into the Brixton Riots, which hit inner-city London earlier this year, blamed social and economic problems in inner-city areas across England.
26 November: Shirley Williams won the Crosby by-election for the SDP, overturning a Conservative majority of nearly 20,000 votes.

The Intro

After a total of 16 weeks at the top of the charts in 1978, suddenly John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John were served notice. In a real changing of the guard moment, The Boomtown Rats became the first new wave act (and first Irish band) to have a number 1. They commemorated this on Top of the Pops (as seen below) by yawning and ripping up photos of Travolta. Enough of the 50s revival – the groundwork laid by punk finally paid off with Rat Trap.

Before

So what actually is new wave? It’s not as straightforward as explaining psychedelia or punk. It’s basically used as a loose term to describe what punk evolved into. However it dates back to before then.

Music critics like Nick Kent were using it as early as 1973 to describe acts including The Velvet Underground and New York Dolls. Other US acts that came later, including Blondie and Talking Heads, have little to do with punk but are certainly described as new wave.

To me, new wave is an effective way of describing the new underground (soon to turn mainstream) pop acts that wanted to shake up the staid pop scene of the mid- to-late-70s. Not as stylised as punk, they often came from pub-rock acts that brought some much-needed excitement to music.

It’s interesting to note that often decades are said to not ‘begin’ until several years after they have, ie, the 60s started with The Beatles in 1963, the 70s began with glam in 1973. If so, you could argue the 80s began several years early thanks to new wave. There’s certainly a very welcome injection of excitement and quality in the number 1s I’ll be reviewing from here on in for some time to come. Even as early as 1978 though, some bands didn’t like being referred to as new wave. XTC’s single This Is Pop took aim at the concept – to singer-songwriter Andy Partridge, his group were simply a new pop band.

The Boomtown Rats began as The Nightlife Thugs in Dún Laoghaire, Dublin in 1975. Guitarist Garry Roberts and keyboardist Johnnie Fingers had decided to form a band and recruited Bob Geldof, a former New Musical Express journalist, as singer, plus bassist Pete Briquette, guitarist Gerry Cott and drummer Simon Crowe. Roberts hated their name and threatened to resign unless they changed it. Geldof came up with the name that stuck – he’d been reading Woody Guthrie’s autobiography Bound for Glory, in which Guthrie mentioned a gang of children called The Boomtown Rats.

The Irish music scene was moribund at the time and The Boomtown Rats shook things up with exciting performances of covers by The Who, Bob Marley and The Rolling Stones. Thanks in part to Geldof’s media contacts, by the summer of 1976 the band were performing in the UK and were signed to Ensign Records soon after.

In August 1977 The Boomtown Rats released debut single Lookin’ After No. 1 and they were an instant hit. It reached two in Ireland and 11 in the UK. A month later came their eponymous debut album, which also spawned Mary of the 4th Form. It peaked at 15 here. The Rats transformed from a pub rock band to one heavily influenced by Bruce Springsteen thanks to Geldof’s songwriting. And it’s worth noting that their producer was a young Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange – future husband of Shania Twain. Producing The Boomtown Rats was his first taste of success, with much more to come.

Second album A Tonic for the Troops came out in 1978 and they continued to do well, with She’s So Modern reaching 12 and Like Clockwork made it to six. Which left one more single to come.

Review

Despite the importance of Rat Trap as a sign of pop morphing once more into something new, it’s rather forgotten about. Obviously, Geldof’s later career as one of the men behind Band Aid/Live Aid has overshadowed anything The Boomtown Rats did but I Don’t Like Mondays is much better remembered than this track. And I can kind of see why.

While listening for research it occurred to me the only thing that’s ever stuck with me from this song (and I can imagine it’s the case with everyone else) is the sax refrain, played by Alan Holmes. It’s a great opening, before the song settles down and starts to sound rather similar to Squeeze’s Cool for Cats, also recorded in 1978.

Rat Trap is the tale of bored teenagers Billy and Judy and the track is clearly indebted to Bruce Springsteen both lyrically and sonically. Billy and Judy are bored of their lives and longing for escape. It’s epic in scale and you could also argue it’s progressive rock in the way it changes tack into several different sections. Yet I guess the main difference is the simplicity of the different parts and the youthful energy is more indebted to punk than prog. Scanning the lyrics, there’s some great stuff, especially in the second verse:

‘Billy don’t like it living here in this town,
He says the traps have been sprung long before he was born,
He says “Hope bites the dust behind all the closed doors,
And pus and grime ooze from its scab crusted sores”

And yet, yes I can think of a fair few new wave songs from around this time that might have been more deserved than Rat Trap. I’ve listened to it again several times and it’s one to admire and interest rather than really love. It was perhaps a case of ‘right place, right time’, with young record buyers deciding enough was enough and deciding to get behind anything that could get rid of that bloody Grease film.

The Outro

The video featured The Rats reading Rat Trap by Craig Thomas, which didn’t actually have any link to the song other than its name. It was directed by up-and-coming filmmaker David Mallett. In 1978 he made this, Bicycle Race by Queen and Blondie’s Hanging on the Telephone. Over the next few years he made some of the most imaginative videos for some of the greatest pop of the era, particularly with his work for David Bowie. We’ll be hearing more from those two.

The Info

Written by

Bob Geldof

Producer

Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange

Weeks at number 1

2 (18 November-1 December)

Meanwhile…

20 November: Buckingham Palace announces Prince Andrew is joining the Royal Navy.

23 November: Birmingham nightclub Pollyanna’s lifts its ban on black and Chinese revellers, after a one-year investigation by the Commission for Racial Equality concluded the nightclub’s entry policy was racist.

29 November: 22-year-old Nottingham Forest defender Viv Anderson becomes England’s first black international footballer, appearing in their 1–0 friendly win over Czechoslovakia at Wembley Stadium. Six months previous he had become the first black player to feature in an English league championship winning team and was also on the winning side in the Football League Cup final. And yet here I am 43 years later writing in a week in which several black England players were bombarded with racist messages after missing penalties in the Euro 2020 final.

30 November: An industrial dispute closes down The Times newspaper until 12 November 1979.