Queen Evolve Another One Bites The Dust On The Greatest Live

Bruce Henne | 06-30-2023

(hennemusic) Queen explore how they evolved their 1980 hit, "Another One Bites The Dust", for the concert stage on the latest episode of the weekly series The Greatest Live.

Never satisfied to simply standing on stage and recreating their studio recordings note-for-note, Queen have always seized the opportunity to improvise on even their biggest hits.

Queen's live musicianship means no song is set in stone. Improvs erupt, outros are jammed out, arrangements are bent out of shape and audiences are brought into the mix as backup singers - all with Freddie Mercury effortlessly controlling the impulsive push and pull.

Nowhere is Queen's free-form approach to performance better demonstrated than in this week's archive footage from the first of their two nights at Wembley Stadium in July 1986, in which the band settles into an impromptu groove of fan-favourite single "Another One Bites The Dust", allowing Mercury to demonstrate his mastery at playing with a crowd.

When John Deacon first presented his iconic bassline at Munich's Musicland Studios, it was deceptively simple: just three notes played on a single string, but already pulsing with potential.

"I listened to a lot of soul music when I was in school and I've always been interested in that sort of music," Deacon told Bassist & Bass Techniques. "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. I could hear it as a song for dancing but had no idea it would become as big as it did."

Watch the band's 1986 performance of "Another One Bites The Dust" at Wembley Stadium here.