Another One Bites the Dust

Alright Zoo Freaks, here comes a real floor-shaker from the lads in Queen, spinning right now on THE ZOO. Another One Bites the Dust off their 1980 album The Game is pure bass-driven fire, the kind of groove that locks in and won't let go. This one came from John Deacon, the quiet bass player who usually kept to the back while Freddie took the spotlight. Deaky had been hanging around with the disco kings from Chic over in New York, soaking up the way Bernard Edwards laid down that thumping line on Good Times. Edwards himself later told the New Musical Express that the Queen record happened because their bass player spent some time hanging out at the Chic studio, and he was fine with the inspiration even if some folks tried to flip it around. Deacon admitted in interviews that he always wanted to push into black music and disco territory, something a bit funkier than the usual Queen rock roar, and he started with just that bass riff and the cowboy phrase about biting the dust.

He had a whole set of western-style lyrics written out at first, little stories about gunfights and falling hard, but he was too shy to show them around. Once they cut the track at Musicland Studios in Munich with producer Reinhold Mack, the music came out heavier and more menacing than those lighthearted cowboy words, so Deacon scrapped most of them and rewrote three new verses to match the drive. Freddie Mercury took to it like a hawk spotting prey. Brian May recalled how Deaky put the groove down and Freddie got violently enthusiastic, saying this is big, this is important, I'm going to spend a lot of time on this. May has said more than once that Freddie sang the vocal until his throat bled, pushing hard because he wanted it to sound exactly the way John heard it in his head, something raw and street-level instead of the usual operatic flair. Roger Taylor was not sold at first, especially on the idea of putting it out as a single, and he later told Mojo magazine he was never against the song itself but against releasing it that way, having already tried a bit of that style on Fun It from the Jazz album.

The push that sealed it came from an unexpected corner. After a show at the Forum in Los Angeles, Michael Jackson came backstage, sat in the corner nodding along, and told the band they had to release this one, that it was fantastic and would hit hard. Roger has recalled telling him he was mad, that it would never be a hit, but Jackson kept at it, saying this is the gravy, put it out and it will top the charts. Freddie later gave credit to Michael for steering them toward a song that could make even the cats dance. Once it dropped in August 1980, with the video shot at Reunion Arena in Dallas, it exploded. It hit number one in the States for three weeks, climbed to number two on the soul and disco charts, and stayed on the Billboard Hot 100 for 31 weeks total. Sales piled up past seven million copies worldwide, making it their biggest-selling single ever at the time, and it crossed over so hard that some listeners swore the singer must be black. Brian May has looked back and said they kind of became the biggest band in the world at that moment.

Not everyone was cheering. Some fundamentalist preachers claimed if you played the chorus backwards you could hear a message about smoking marijuana, the usual backmasking panic that hit plenty of rock records in those years. Queen’s label denied any hidden intent, and the only real reverse element was some piano treatment. The song almost landed in Rocky III, but Sylvester Stallone swapped it for Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger. It still became a sports anthem and a CPR training favorite because the beat sits right around the right tempo. Deacon played nearly everything on the recording except the vocal and some of Roger’s drum loop, including rhythm guitar that Brian has compared to Nile Rodgers. The whole thing proved Queen could fill dance floors as easily as arenas, opening doors that led them further into funk on later records.

To understand how a song like this could come from a band that started as glam rock theatricals, you have to go back to the early days when these four were just students piecing it together. Brian May and Roger Taylor first teamed up in a group called Smile with Tim Staffell in the late sixties around London. Brian had built his own guitar, the Red Special, with his dad, and he put up a notice looking for a drummer in the Mitch Mitchell or Ginger Baker style. Roger, studying dentistry at the time, got the gig. When Staffell left in 1970, Freddie Mercury, then still Farrokh Bulsara, stepped in. He had been a fan of Smile, studied art at Ealing, and he pushed the name Queen on them, saying it was wonderful and people would love it even with the double meaning. He also took the stage name Mercury around then. They played early gigs, including a charity show in Truro that Roger’s mum helped set up, while all of them finished college degrees. John Deacon joined in 1971 after answering an ad, bringing his electronics background and a solid bass style that locked everything down. They rehearsed hard for a couple of years with almost no gigs, living on faith and fumes, before cutting their debut album in 1973. Brian has said they got ignored and then slagged by the press for ages, which toughened them up. By the time of Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at the Opera they had broken through, but that foundation of four different writers and styles is what let Deacon bring a pure funk groove into The Game years later.

You can dig deeper into all of it on the official Queen website, where they keep the history and news rolling. Catch them on Facebook, Instagram, and X for the latest from the camp. Fans who want the full club experience, with magazines, conventions, and member events, should check the Official International Queen Fan Club, still going strong after more than fifty years as one of the longest-running in the business. Keep the volume up, Zoo Freaks, because this bass line still hits like it did the first time it hit the airwaves.