John Deacon using popping technique

I believe John played rhythm guitar on AOBTD too - the end funky part.
Brian mentioned that he could never get it right live.

Yes, he did. Brian played guitar on 'Dust' but it was reduced to a few power chords and possibly the harmoniser bit. Rog played the drum loop and the rest was all John: guitars (at least three different ones), bass, piano and synths. Now... the handclaps... those could've been anyone.

^^^^ Although they'd worked very well under the Queen banner both live and recorded its amazing how fragmented they could be in the studio. Bites The Dust being a case in point, but also at the extremes Body Language and most recently Roger's comment that Fighr From The Inside was really a solo track not really a Queen song and so hadn't been considered as a possible for the forth coming tour!

John was probably the best one at playing funk, and had more feel for it. Also they didn't think it would be a hit when they were working on it. They were probably happy with just letting John do it the way he wanted it.

John used popping on a lot of songs actually. For sure, Get down make love, Cool Cat and Football fight.