Before “Ice Ice Baby” became the most ubiq­ui­tous ear­worm of 1989, its sam­pled groove drove a song record­ed 8 years ear­li­er, Queen and David Bowie’s bril­liant col­lab­o­ra­tion “Under Pres­sure.” Sty­lus mag­a­zine—who declared Queen bassist John Deacon’s three-note riff the num­ber one bassline of all time—called the song “pos­sessed of under­stat­ed cool […] min­i­mal and pre­cise.” And if some­how you’ve nev­er heard it, have a lis­ten; you’ll sure­ly agree. Bowie and Fred­die Mercury’s trad­ed lines and melod­ic scat­ting build to pow­er­ful crescen­dos then pull back into deeply mov­ing har­monies. Lyri­cal­ly the song com­petes with any­thing writ­ten by either artist. As it turns out, Queen and Bowie wrote the song in a day, or as Bowie has it, “one evening flat.” “Quite a feat,” “for what is actu­al­ly a fair­ly com­pli­cat­ed song,” he wrote in response to a fan’s ques­tion on his offi­cial web­site.

Bowie remem­bers that “the riff had already been writ­ten by Fred­die and the oth­ers” when he joined them in the stu­dio in Mon­treux, Switzer­land. In fact, “Under Pres­sure” evolved out of anoth­er song entire­ly, “Feel Like,” writ­ten by drum­mer Roger Tay­lor, which you can hear above in a very rough demo record­ing. A great many of the ele­ments are there—Brian May’s restrained gui­tar work, Taylor’s midtem­po clock­work drum­ming, and many of the vocal melodies that would end up on “Under Pres­sure.” But that icon­ic bassline is miss­ing, as is, of course, the lat­er song’s oth­er big star. You can see the influ­ence Bowie had on the the­mat­ic direc­tion of the new song. “Feel Like” is a clas­sic Queen lament over lost love, “Under Pres­sure” an apoc­a­lyp­tic cry of both fear and empa­thy.

And that bassline? Every­one recalls that John Dea­con him­self came up with it. But Dea­con, ever mod­est, cred­it­ed it to Bowie in a 1984 inter­view. In either case, Dea­con appar­ent­ly for­got the riff, and May had to remind him of it—a fun­ny moment you can hear above in a record­ing of stu­dio ses­sions for the song. Bri­an May recalls that Bowie lived near the stu­dio and that they “went out for a meal or some drinks or some­thing.” This may well be, but he doesn’t tell us that Bowie orig­i­nal­ly joined the band in the stu­dio to sing back­ing vocals for an even­tu­al­ly scrapped R&B song called “Cool Cat.” An ear­li­er Open Cul­ture post fea­tur­ing the iso­lat­ed vocal tracks from “Under Pres­sure” (below) quotes both Tay­lor and May’s descrip­tions of what was, some­what con­trary to Bowie’s under­state­ment, actu­al­ly a 24-hour-long ses­sion, pow­ered by wine and cocaine.

Their rem­i­nisces, record­ed in Mark Blake’s book Is This the Real Life?: The Untold Sto­ry of Fred­die Mer­cury and Queen, also inform us that Bowie and Mer­cury “swap[ped] vers­es blind, which helped give the song its cut-and-paste feel.” Though the band sounds light­heart­ed enough in the stu­dio ses­sions, the song­writ­ing, May remem­bers, was fraught with ten­sion. “It was very hard,” he said in 2008, “because you already had four pre­co­cious boys and David, who was pre­co­cious enough for all of us.” Bowie, says May, “took over the song lyri­cal­ly” and insist­ed on pre­sid­ing over the final mix ses­sion, which “didn’t go well,” accord­ing to Queen engi­neer Rein­hold Mack. For his part, May has said he would “love to sit down qui­et­ly on my own and re-mix it.”

While he hasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly fol­lowed through on that desire, May and Roger Tay­lor did con­tribute a dance mix of “Under Pressure”—the so-called “Rah Mix”—to 1999’s Great­est Hits III (hear it above). The remix was a top 20 hit, but I, for one, think it’s impos­si­ble to improve on the orig­i­nal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Gui­tarist Bri­an May Explains the Mak­ing of Queen’s Clas­sic Song, ‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

“Drums, eh,” says Kei­th Richards in answer to a fan ques­tion on the sub­ject. “With­out it you’re kin­da nowhere.” He’s got a point. An ace drum­mer can be the spine, mus­cle, and even soul of a great band. Pound­ing, swing­ing, and smash­ing away behind showy gui­tarists and flam­boy­ant front­men, drum­mers some­times have prob­lems being seen, but nev­er heard. But while John Bon­ham or Kei­th Moon nev­er got lost in the mix, it’s a rare thing to hear them out of it. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of rock band video games and iso­lat­ed tracks post­ed to Youtube allow us to lis­ten to the nuances of drum grooves we may feel we know by heart, such as Bonham’s dri­ving beat behind Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love.”

In a pre­vi­ous post, we brought you a rough mix of the song and Jim­my Page describ­ing its cre­ation. Page want­ed Bonham’s drum track to “real­ly stand out, so that every stick stroke sound­ed clear and you could real­ly feel them.” It cer­tain­ly does that. The drum track above is all about feel­ing. As a result of the record­ing tech­niques of the time, writes producer/engineer Bob­by Owin­s­ki, drum tracks tend­ed to sound “like a sin­gle instru­ment,” since they were record­ed with only two or three mics cap­tur­ing the space around the kit, rather than the sound of indi­vid­ual pieces. “Still,” Owin­s­ki writes of this track, “there’s plen­ty of pow­er in [Bonham’s] kick and snare, because he played them hard!” In addi­tion to his pow­er, Bon­ham is known for his laid-back groove, due to his ten­den­cy for play­ing slight­ly behind the beat, a qual­i­ty Youtube drum instruc­tor Ter­ry Keat­ing of Bon­zoleum ascribes to “tem­pera­ment.”

Bonham’s style con­sist­ed main­ly of cre­ative uses of triplets, so much so that McSweeny’s had a good laugh about his con­stant use a sim­i­lar pat­tern. One of my favorite drummers—crankiest man in rock Gin­ger Baker—also dis­par­ages Bonham’s play­ing, as well as that of anoth­er alco­holic drum star, Kei­th Moon. But Gin­ger Bak­er doesn’t tend to like any­one, and Moon’s play­ing, while maybe not vir­tu­osic or espe­cial­ly dis­ci­plined, was, like his per­sona, insane. Drum Mag­a­zine describes Moon’s style as “trib­al, prim­i­tive, and impul­sive, with him often stomp­ing the bass drums and pound­ing his wall of toms like a mad­man” (clear­ly Moon inspired the Mup­pets’ Ani­mal). Moon’s many kits often con­sist­ed of dou­ble bass drums and dou­ble rows of toms, and he played them as hard as pos­si­ble almost all the time. Hear him above thrash­ing with aban­don through “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

Seem­ing­ly miles away from the mad­ness of Kei­th Moon, Rush’s Neil Peart is a high­ly tech­ni­cal drum­mer with impec­ca­ble on-the-beat tim­ing and a drum set­up that has grown so exten­sive and com­pli­cat­ed over the years that he almost dis­ap­pears into its depths. Peart’s play­ing com­bines the pow­er and sta­mi­na of Bon­ham with com­plex pat­terns whose rhyth­mic dynam­ics shift sub­tly sev­er­al times through­out each song. Check out the iso­lat­ed drum track for “Tom Sawyer” above as a clas­sic exam­ple of Peart’s tech­nique and you may see why he’s classed as one of the all-time best rock drum­mers (though I wouldn’t class him as one of rock’s great­est lyri­cists).

Although I’m an admir­er of Neil Peart’s drum­ming, I can’t say I’m much of a Rush fan. Police drum­mer Stew­art Copeland feels the same. In an inter­view with Music Radar, he jokes about “pull[ing] Neil’s chain at every pos­si­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty” for the self-indul­gent excess of drum solos (though Copeland game­ly played one dur­ing David Letterman’s “Drum Solo Week” in 2011). Copeland talks about “a time when bands like Rush were the epit­o­me of what The Police were the­o­ret­i­cal­ly against, which was an overem­pha­sis on musi­cal­i­ty.” Nonethe­less, Copeland is one of the most musi­cal of drum­mers, mak­ing use of odd time sig­na­tures and polyrhyth­mic syn­co­pa­tion to cre­ate a thor­ough­ly unique and instant­ly rec­og­niz­able style (which has even inspired neu­ro­science stud­ies). The drum track above comes from “Next to You,” a song on the band’s debut album, dur­ing their decid­ed­ly anti-Rush phase. While the song itself is uptem­po punk rock, Copeland’s Gene Kru­pa-like drum­ming, heard in iso­la­tion, presages the unusu­al quirks to come as the band stretched out into jazz and reg­gae ter­ri­to­ry.

The sheer num­ber of bands Foo Fight­ers front­man and for­mer Nir­vana drum­mer Dave Grohl has drummed for is impres­sive, and a tes­ta­ment to his machine-like speed and tim­ing. Drum­mer and Port­landia star Fred Armisen may be Grohl’s biggest fan. “Every drum part he does is a mas­ter­piece,” says Armisen, “He’s nev­er just heavy for heavy’s sake or rock for rock’s sake—it’s all so musi­cal, with an incred­i­ble sense of dynam­ics. Every gen­er­a­tion has their drum­ming guy, and Dave is ours.” Even Kurt Cobain, nev­er one to over­praise, once called Grohl “the best drum­mer in the world.” Maybe a bit of hyper­bole, but Grohl’s damned good, even at his most straight­for­ward, as above in his pound­ing drum­beat for “Smells Like Teen Spir­it.” Grohl’s pow­er­house play­ing isn’t the most ver­sa­tile. He had some trou­ble adjust­ing to qui­eter envi­rons, and Cobain near­ly banned him from the band’s leg­endary “Unplugged” per­for­mance for his too-aggres­sive play­ing in rehearsals. Nonethe­less, when it comes to punk, hard­core, and seri­ous rock, Grohl’s the man.

I can’t resist end­ing with the iso­lat­ed track of what maybe be my all-time favorite drum part, Ringo Starr’s wild­ly funky busi­ness at the end of “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er.” Some of the drums here are over­dubbed, with sev­er­al dif­fer­ent per­cus­sion parts blend­ed with Starr’s full-kit freak out. Starr has tak­en a lot of com­plete­ly unde­served flak for his sup­posed lim­i­ta­tions as a drum­mer, but as Samuel Belkin writes at The Exam­in­er, “his lat­ter day drum pat­terns are […] often sophis­ti­cat­ed, and always idio­syn­crat­ic […] nobody has ever been able to sound quite like Ringo.” Ulti­mate­ly, in my book, what dis­tin­guish­es a tru­ly great drum­mer from thou­sands of tech­ni­cal­ly pro­fi­cient play­ers is a qual­i­ty no one can teach or emu­late: Per­son­al­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

7 Female Bass Play­ers Who Helped Shape Mod­ern Music: Kim Gor­don, Tina Wey­mouth, Kim Deal & More

Lis­ten to The John Bon­ham Sto­ry, a Radio Show Host­ed by Dave Grohl

Kei­th Moon’s Final Per­for­mance with The Who (1978)

Hear the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks for The Bea­t­les’ Cli­mac­tic 16-Minute Med­ley on Abbey Road

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.