Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/the-untold-truth-of-the-duet-that-almost-never-happened/
Some of the most famous songs in rock history were mapped out for months, tested in front of focus groups, or fought over by committees of producers. This one wasn’t. It came together in a converted cinema in the Swiss Alps, born from a chance visit that could easily have ended with a polite handshake and nothing more.
What actually happened over those hours in the summer of 1981 involved clashing personalities, a nearly forgotten bassline, and at least one moment where the whole project threatened to collapse before it ever reached a record store shelf.
A chance encounter in the Swiss mountains
In July 1981, Queen was working on their tenth studio album, Hot Space, at Mountain Studios in Montreux, a lakeside facility on the shores of Lake Geneva that the band loved so much they eventually bought it outright. During their most prolific decade in the 1970s, Queen spent much of their time songwriting at the small Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland, and they loved the space so much that the band bought the studios. David Bowie happened to be living nearby, in the town of Vevey, and was booked into the same building.
Bowie was at Montreux’s Mountain Studios recording his vocals for the Cat People movie theme song with co-producer and co-writer Giorgio Moroder, with Queen working in an adjacent room on their own record. It wasn’t a planned superstar summit arranged by managers or record…
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Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-07-14 12:41:00
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