From its inception in the early seventies, Queen was known for its ability to transform itself and bring together diverse and eclectic soundworlds. From glam rock to soul, rhythm and blues to opera – nothing seemed off limits. In 1980, they proved that again, combining the hottest sounds of disco with their signature classic rock sound, they created a track that would captivate generation of musicians and listeners alike — “Another One Bites the Dust”
Queen was formed in London in the early seventies when Freddie Mercury teamed up with a local band called Smile, which featured Brian May on guitar and Roger Taylor on drums. Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara on the East African island of Zanzibar on September 5, 1946. He spent much of his childhood at boarding school in India where he learned to play piano- beginning at age 7. In 1964, his family moved to Middlesex; later, Mercury began studying graphic design at Ealing Art College. May was a student at the Imperial College of London and Taylor was a student at East London Polytechnic while they were performing in Smile and the earliest days of Queen.
When Mercury joined Smile in 1970, he suggested they change the band’s name to Queen. Likewise, May and Taylor gave Mercury his stage name. In 1971, after several rounds of auditions, the band brought on John Deacon on bass. Working out a management and publishing deal with Trident Studios in 1972, the band began working on their self-titled debut album – which would be released the following year. Prior to its release, in early 1973, the band signed with EMI.
Their second album Queen II was released in March 1974 and was their first true hit. It made the Top 5 in the UK. Success across the Atlantic came at the end of 1974, with the release of their third album Sheer Heart Attack, which contained the hit song – a now iconic track – “Killer Queen.” Their audience base was growing rapidly, even if the press was usually critical (oftentimes cruel).
Their 6-minute long magnum opus, “Bohemian Rhapsody” in 1975, brought the band unprecedented success. It remains one of the most important tracks of their history and showcased the dramatic diversity of sound for which the band was becoming increasingly known. The band would round out the seventies with several other hit tracks – all showcasing their impressive ability to incorporate different genres and styles of music into their hard rocking frame. These include the soulful “Somebody to Love” in 1976, and two of the biggest stadium anthems of all time, “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” (both in 1977). Glam rock, old fashioned rhythm and blues, sports anthems and soulful power-ballads, hard rock guitar solos juxtaposed against operatic vocals….what else was left?
Then in 1980, the band brought in yet another influence – disco. With its four-on-the-floor pulsing groove, “Another One Bites the Dust” added yet another sound to the band’s arsenal and transformed the sound of an already epic rock band. “Another One Bites the Dust” was the brainchild of bassist John Deacon. Deacon explained his inspiration came from the Black American music he had listened to growing up: “I listened to a lot of soul music when I was in school…and I’ve always been interested in that sort of music. I’d been wanting to do a track like Another One Bites The Dust for a while, but originally all I had was the line and the bass riff. Gradually I filled it in and the band added ideas. I could hear it as a song for dancing but had no idea it would become as big as it did. The song got picked up off our album and some of the black radio stations in the US started playing it, which we’ve never had before.”
The Black pop influence on Deacon’s bassline is clearly evident through his interviews and simply listening to the sounds that were coming out of bands like Chic at the same time. Bernard Edwards explained that Deacon had even spent some time in the recording studio with them, which is why you might notice there is such a similarity to Chic’s song of the previous year “Good Times”. Whether it was an intentional inspiration or not, Chic’s disco grooves were certainly the sound of the times, and Deacon was enamored by their musical creativity. In “Another One Bites the Dust” this pounding bass riff really does provide so much of the song’s character, so much so that Mercury’s vocals often align directly with it, especially on its iconic refrain “Another One Bites the Dust.” The drum’s dry, tight sound is another unforgettable element of the song. Taylor explained that he stuffed his drums with blankets and tuned his drums as low as he possibly could to get that dry sound that Deacon had imagined.
In Guitar World Magazine in 1993, Brian May explained that the drum sound was a complete departure from what the band was used to envisioning: “John Deacon, being totally in his own world, came up with this thing, which was nothing like what we were doing. We were going for the big drum sound: you know, quite pompous in our usual way. And Deakey says, ‘No, I want this to be totally different: it’s going to be a very tight drum sound.’ It was originally done to a drum loop – this was before the days of drum machines. Roger did a loop, kind of under protest, because he didn’t like the sound of the drums recorded that way. And then Deakey put this groove down. Immediately Freddie became violently enthusiastic and said, ‘This is big! This Is important! I’m going to spend a lot of time on this.’”
Mercury championed the song, which although different than their usual sound, inspired his vocals. The lyrics are often interpreted to have been inspired by the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago in 1929. You can hear the dark foreboding in the song’s first verse:
Steve walks warily down the street
With the brim pulled way down low
Ain’t no sound but the sound of his feet
Machine guns ready to go
In his typical theatrical magnificence, Mercury’s vocals transports listeners to the tension filled space of the story they telling. The second verse, however, doesn’t continue the story. It sounds much more like a domestic dispute, a break up:
How do you think I’m going to get along
Without you, when you’re gone
You took me for everything that I had
And kicked me out on my own
And yet the second verse ends the same as the first, with the sounds of violence:
Out of the doorway the bullets rip
To the sound of the beat
The ambiguity of the song’s lyrics has intrigued listeners, but the fact remains that the singular sound of the song is really what has captivated them. Whether the song is a historical storytelling, a metaphorical explanation of the breakdown of a relationship, or something else all together, listeners could not get enough of the hypnotic groove alongside Mercury’s powerful vocals.
But the song doesn’t end there – it pulls you in with its bass groove, tight drums and Mercury’s iconic vocals, but then Brian May brings in his signature guitar sound. Finally the added effects and backing sounds build the texture of the song, without distracting from its powerful groove. These sounds heighten the intensity especially at key transitional moments.
“Another One Bites the Dust,” along with the rest of their eighth studio album The Game, was recorded at Musicland studios in Munich, Germany in the summer of 1979, and the early months of 1980. It was produced by the band and Rheinhold Mack, who had recently worked with E.L.O. before teaming up with Queen for The Game album. The album was mastered at Sterling Sound in New York.
The album was released on June 30, 1980, and “Another One Bites the Dust” followed as a single on August 22 that same year. The sound of the song was a drastic departure for them (which is saying something, considering the many diverse colors that we find in the band oeuvre). The band credits Michael Jackson for encouraging them to release it as a single. Mercury explained: “John introduced this riff to us during rehearsal that we all immediately thought of disco, which was very popular at the time. We worked it out and once it was ready, played it for Michael. I knew we had a hit as he bobbed his head up and down. ‘That’s it, that’s the gravy. Release it and it will top the charts,’ he said. So we did and it did.”
Topping the charts was just the start. It hit the number one spot in the US, Canada, Spain, and Israel, and the top ten in the UK, Switzerland, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Australia and Austria. It even hit number two on the US Billboard Hot Disco Singles Chart and the Hot Soul Singles Chart. It spent 15 weeks in the Billboard top 10 in 1980 – the longest running hit single of the year, and in 2012, was credited as the band’s top selling single with over 7 million copies sold. It won an American Music Award for Favorite Rock Single and a Grammy Nomination for best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
But the song has inspired so much more than that – it has been constantly covered and sampled, as well as appeared in TV shows, commercials and movies, and like “We Will Rock You” and “We are the Champions” it has also become a popular song for major sporting event, each time continually reintroducing the song to new generations of listeners. In its fusion of some of the biggest sounds of the era (disco and classic rock) it somehow managed to create an almost timeless sound, and establish its impressive legacy in the history of popular music.
Written by Caitlin Vaughn Carlos
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Watch the video below to learn more about Queen’s ‘Another One Bites The Dust’!
