Track 3 - “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen (1980)
From the album The Game
Music & lyrics by John Deacon
Performed by:
Freddie Mercury – lead vocals
Brian May – guitar
John Deacon – bass, piano
Roger Taylor – drums
Highest chart positions - US Billboard Hot 100 - #1 (3 weeks); US Billboard Disco Singles - #2; US Billboard Soul Singles - #2; Billboard Year-End Hot 100 - #65
How do you think I’m gonna get along
Without you when you’re gone?
You took me for everything that I had
And kicked me out on my own
Are you happy, are you satisfied?
How long can you stand the heat?
Out of the doorway the bullets rip
To the sound of the beat
In February of 1980, I became the new kid. That was when my parents moved my brother and I from Brooklyn to the suburbs of Long Island, upending everything I knew in my short 9-year-old life to that point. Everything was going to be different: house instead of apartment, public school instead of Catholic school, riding a school bus instead of walking to school, buying lunch in the cafeteria instead of going home for lunch…you get the picture. Plus, the worst thing of all: meeting new kids and having to make new friends. I had a lot of friends at my Brooklyn school and now I would have to start all over with kids who didn’t know me at all and who would probably hate me just for being “new.” I pictured long days in my new room with no friends, nothing to do, and eventually forcing my parents to move back to Brooklyn.
But…I am sort of getting ahead of myself here; our musical trip this week stops in September 1980, not February. We’re going to talk about February and the move to Long Island, but for now we’re going to talk about the fall of that year, and the start of my first full year in my new school as a 5th grader. Surprise, it turns out I was still the new kid. Even though I had made some friends earlier that year when I was a 4th-grader, there were still obviously a lot of kids I had not met yet, and I was about to be thrown in with some that turned out to be somewhat tougher than the 4th grade class that was the entry point to my new school. Truthfully, it wasn’t that bad; I wasn’t beat up every day and I never had my lunch money stolen or anything like that, and now looking back it was fairly harmless stuff that most kids go through at some point. I had my clothes and sneakers made fun of, I was picked last for kickball because I shopped in the husky section and couldn’t run fast, the usual stuff. I guess maybe it bothered me more than usual because I was sensitive and just wanted to fit in so bad and not be “new” anymore. I just needed an opportunity to be cool, and about a month or so into 5th grade, that opportunity presented itself.
Until then, my musical world was dictated by whatever my parents were playing at home and whatever was on the radio. My dad played a lot of Fleetwood Mac, Santana, Doobie Brothers, Billy Joel and Elton John (yes, great stuff…we’re going to talk a lot about this) and my mom played a lot of R&B (Stevie Wonder, The Spinners, The Commodores, Donna Summer…again, great stuff here) and she watched American Bandstand and Soul Train every Saturday, which I listened to in the background while I played with Matchbox cars or action figures. So, needless to say, I had great musical influences when I was a kid…no complaints there. However, among my 10-year-old peers, most of this music was decidedly uncool, for whatever reason. A perfect example was when, during the second or third week of 5th grade, one of my classmates asked me if I liked the B-52’s. I had no idea what a B-52 was, and when I told him this, he continued by telling me that their hit “Rock Lobster” was the best song ever; obviously it turns out I was a bit out of touch. I quickly realized that music was going to be important to fitting in; I loved music, I just had to figure out what was cool and what was not! Easy, right? The path to coolness was just ahead! And as it turned out in those early months of 5th grade, the band Queen was cool. Now, I knew who Queen was; “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” were radio staples and I heard these songs all the time. I was also vaguely aware that Queen was responsible for a song where “Mamma mia, Mamma mia” was a prominent lyric, but did I know at the time that “Bohemian Rhapsody” was a musical and cultural milestone? No. However, I did know that Queen had a new song on the radio that was so big even 5th graders were talking about it. “Another One Bites the Dust” from their 1980 album The Game was a huge hit that fall and hopefully would end up being my “in” with some of the cool kids, and help me shed the “new kid” label.
But before we get to that, let’s get up to speed on Queen in 1980. In the 1970’s, Queen produced some of the most iconic rock songs in history: the aforementioned “We Are the Champions”, “We Will Rock You”, and “Bohemian Rhapsody”, plus “Somebody to Love”, and “Killer Queen”, to name a few. In 1980, they were coming off their 1978 release, Jazz, which contained “Fat Bottomed Girls”, and one of their most popular songs, “Don’t Stop Me Now.” They seemed poised to have a huge breakthrough in the U.S. Queen was already selling out arenas around the world, and while their music often divided writers and critics, it had no bearing on their popularity; their fans loved them. Queen’s music is certainly theatrical; “big” is the best way to describe it. And they were led by the greatest front man in rock history, singer Freddie Mercury. While his four-octave vocal range has been scientifically disputed, no one can argue what a brilliant singer he was, and that he could hold the audience in the palm of his hand during live performances. Guitarist Brian May has said that Mercury could make "the last person at the back of the furthest stand in a stadium feel that he was connected." And the rest of Queen could more than hold their own; besides all being excellent players, guitarist May, bassist John Deacon, and drummer Roger Taylor could all vocally harmonize with Mercury, and all contributed to the songwriting.
As the story goes, John Deacon came up the bassline to “Another One Bites the Dust” after hearing the band Chic in the recording studio, specifically the song “Good Times”. Next time you have a few minutes, listen to the songs back-to-back and form your own opinion; they sound similar, but they are not the same. Deacon was definitely inspired by Chic’s Bernard Edwards’ syncopated bassline, but he didn’t “steal” it. Edwards was quoted in an interview with NME, “that Queen record came about because that Queen bass player…spent some time hanging out with us at our studio.” To be fair, Chic’s music inspired countless riffs and grooves by other bands which turned into hits; we’ll talk more about that down the road. Anyway, Queen recorded the song during The Game sessions, and at the urging of Michael Jackson, who heard it performed live, released it as a single in the summer of 1980. And according to Brian May, they really didn’t have much of a choice. Radio stations everywhere were playing the song; not just rock radio, but R&B and disco stations also had it in heavy rotation.
So, like I said before, even 5th graders on Long Island in 1980 were listening to “Another One Bites the Dust”, and when I heard it on the radio, I liked it immediately. What was there not to like? To 10-year-old ears, it sounded very rebellious; the funky bassline, the cool lyrics (“Steve walks warily down the street, with the brim pulled way down low…”), and Freddie Mercury to his credit, adding a little audience participation in the middle, with hand claps, and “Hey Hey”’s. It was decidedly cool, so when the topic of Queen came up during lunch in the cafeteria one day, I saw my chance to maybe stop being the “new kid.” We were all talking about how great the song was, and then someone said they wanted the black leather jacket Freddie Mercury was wearing on the album cover, and then someone asked what the name of the album was, then someone said The Game, and then out of nowhere, I said, “Yeah, I have it!!”
I didn’t have it.
Them: “What??! You have the whole album?” “How did you get it?” “Is it good??”
The questions didn’t stop, and I’m sure that day I experienced flop sweat for the first time, but I pressed on…
Me: “Yeah, it’s pretty good! I have the tape…I bought it with my allowance. Maybe I could bring it in next week!”
And the lies kept coming and the hole got deeper…
Them: “Yeah, bring it in and we can listen during recess…and maybe on the bus! I’ll bring in my radio!”
Wow was I in trouble now. Not only did I not own The Game, but now I had to convince my mom to drive me to the record store and maybe even give me some money to buy it over the weekend so I could bring it in to school next week or my deception might be revealed, and these kids would never be my friends. Before we were dismissed for the day, one of the kids I rode the bus with reminded me, “Don’t forget the Queen tape, Serino.” (PS, I don’t think anyone called me by my first name until after I graduated high school, and even then, it’s been spotty.)
So, I went home, trying to come up with a plan to get this tape by Monday. I checked my funds and at the time I probably had five bucks in my dresser drawer. “How much do tapes cost??”, I thought. My guess was that my five bucks would not be enough. I decided to worry about getting the ride to the record store and figure out the money later. I would have to ask my mom; there was no way I was asking my dad because it would be “no” before I finished asking the question. As soon as he heard “take me to the store”, he would just say no without hearing the rest. I could be about to say, “Please take me to the store because they’re giving away gold bars today,” and he would have still said no. My mom on the other hand would definitely ask a lot of questions, but at least she would consider it. It probably went down something like this:
Me: “Can you take me to the record store so I can buy a tape?”
Mom: “What tape?”
Me: “Queen, The Game”
Mom: “What’s Queen?”
Me: “That’s the band”
Mom: “Why do you need it?”
Me: “For music class?”
Mom: “What?? They want you to buy a tape? I’m calling the school.”
Oh man! Why did my generation’s parents always want to call the school?? I have never once wanted to call my kids’ school!
Sorry, digression…Anyway, I will spare you the rest, but finally my mom relented, and even gave me the rest of the money, making me promise not to tell my father. That Saturday afternoon in late October of 1980, Queen’s The Game was mine, securely in the white and orange bag from Record World. I grabbed my little tape recorder when I got home, popped in the cassette, and listened. I discovered I really liked The Game, from beginning to end. I listened to it several times that weekend to get familiar with the songs so I would appear to know them well, like I had owned the tape awhile. Looking back, should I have felt bad, keeping up the deception? At the time, all I wanted was to fit in. If this was the way I had to do it, I guess it was OK, but it’s amazing to look back at the stuff we’ve all probably done to fit in and be accepted.
Monday morning arrived, and I made sure the tape was in my knapsack, ready to show it off to my classmates. Sure enough, they remembered and when they asked, I proudly displayed it and let them know we could play it outside during recess. Later that afternoon, we gathered around a radio with a tape player (probably not big enough to be a “boombox”, but close), and we listened. Funny thing though…after “Another One Bites the Dust” played, everyone lost interest. It’s the third song on the album, and when the next song started, someone said, “Rewind it, play it again.” So we did, and then soon after, my tape was ejected and handed back to me, and that was the end of that. My big “cool” moment was over before it started. So, what does this mean? Am I “in” yet? Am I still “new”? I put the tape in my pocket and walked back towards the school building, confused and wondering if I had impressed them or if I had gone through a lot of trouble for nothing. Maybe it seemed that being accepted was more about just being who you are, and not lying about what you had or didn’t have.
But I still had the tape, and if I’m being honest, I really did love it. The Game was the first album I feel like I discovered on my own, and that wasn’t influenced by my parents’ choices. As the years went by, obviously that would happen a lot more, and shape my tastes in music and everything else. The Game and “Another One Bites the Dust” was just the beginning. And 5th grade did eventually improve; I made friends, ended up playing hockey in a neighborhood league, and before long there were other “new” kids for the “old” kids to be concerned about. Pretty soon, I just blended in. But was I ever “cool”? Who knows? Haha 😊
Thanks for stopping by! The video for “Another One Bites the Dust” is not that great, but here it is anyway….
Next time…the artist whose mom was on the 70’s sitcom The Jeffersons, performing the song I seriously think I’ve heard the most in my lifetime.
P.S.
“Another One Bites the Dust” ended up being the number one single in the US for three weeks, from October 4th to October 18th, 1980, and selling 7 million copies, the best-selling single of Queen’s career.
One year later, in October 1981, John Deacon would also be responsible for coming up with another famous bassline, for the song “Under Pressure”, who Queen performed with David Bowie.
Queen would go on to release six more studio albums before Freddie Mercury’s death in November 1991, from AIDS related illness. They experienced a resurgence in popularity after Mercury’s death, and “Bohemian Rhapsody” ended up on the Billboard charts again, after it made a very prominent (and highly entertaining) appearance in the movie Wayne’s World. I remember that winter and spring of 1992 very well, when “Bohemian Rhapsody” was once again on the radio all the time, along with a lot of other Queen music.
If you’re just starting to listen to Queen, I would recommend starting with A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races; you could also download their Greatest Hits I & II or Classic Queen. However, some of my favorite Queen songs are the ones you don’t hear on the radio a lot: “Tie Your Mother Down”, “Hammer to Fall”, “Dragon Attack”, and “Stone Cold Crazy” are some good examples and worth listening to. Here’s a Spotify playlist to get you started.
I recently watched the BBC documentary “Days of Our Lives” on YouTube; it’s two parts and it’s probably the best documentary about Queen I’ve seen. Brian May and Roger Taylor narrate most of it, and I think it gives the most accurate story of Queen’s career and of Freddie Mercury. I highly recommend it.
I also recommend Somebody to Love, a 2017 biography of Freddie Mercury. In addition to being a story of Mercury’s life, it also discusses the origins of the AIDS crisis, and Mercury’s intersection with it. It’s a great listen, you can find it on Audible here.
Care to see how your voice stacks up against Freddie Mercury’s? Google and YouTube teamed up in 2019 to develop the FreddieMeter; read about it and access it here. No, I have not tried it, and no, I probably will not!
Now about the 2018 movie Bohemian Rhapsody; I have seen it multiple times including twice in the theater. For the most part I think it’s good, but my opinion of it has changed after all those viewings and reading more about Queen. The filmmakers altered parts of the story significantly, and I realize that will happen whenever biopics are made so that the story can be compressed or simplified. But in this instance, I think it might have been a better film if they stayed truer to the actual events, especially the ones surrounding Live Aid and Freddie Mercury’s illness. Those events are key to the story and should have been told as they occurred, rather than altering the facts to make the story more dramatic and interesting. Aside from that, Rami Malek’s portrayal of Freddie Mercury is totally immersive and amazing to watch, and the other actors who portray the members of Queen (Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy and Joseph Mazzello) were also excellent; I just wish they could have all been in a different film. At least the payoff of the Live Aid performance at the end is worth it; however, nothing compares to the real thing…here’s Freddie Mercury with 100,000 fans in the palm of his hand at Wembley Stadium during Live Aid…enjoy!
See you next time…
JS
3/20/2022