VANILLA ICE CLAIMS HE BOUGHT 'UNDER PRESSURE,' QUEEN SAYS 'NOT QUITE'
So, according to '90s flash-in-the-pan rapper Vanilla Ice, he evidently owns Queen and David Bowie's 1981 classic hit "Under Pressure" -- the song he ripped off to use as the hook to his 1990 chart-topper, "Ice Ice Baby." Ultimate Classic Rock reported that Ice -- whose given name is Robert Van Winkle -- appeared on The Dan Patrick Show and explained his ownership of the Queen and Bowie's brilliant work, itting that he was a "jackass" in the early-'90s when he insisted the sample of the classic Queen bass line wasn't the same as John Deacon's -- which led to a pretty major lawsuit. Ice went on to boast: "I ended up actually buying the song. It was actually David Bowie and Queen, so they didn’t have the actual rights to it. So I went to Brian May and bought the song. I actually own the song. Like Michael Jackson owns the Beatles. It was cheaper than a lawsuit. So 'Under Pressure,' 'Ice Ice Baby' -- same difference."
A spokesperson for Queen gave a statement about the ownership to UCR, explaining the slightly more believable: "An arrangement was made whereby the publishing in the song was shared."
- Brian May told us that he struggled with revamping Queen as a live act following Freddie Mercury's death in 1991: "I started to see it from the outside, in a sense, y'know? It was a long grieving process, in a sense, losing Freddie, y'know, and I was resistant to doing anything -- I didn't even want to talk about Queen for such a long time. And then finally, you, you realize the love that is out there, and I thought, 'Well, yeah, if I was out there, I would like to see us go out and do the songs.'" :
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