Queen: The Complete Works (114 page)

Repertoire:
‘One Vision’, ‘Tie Your Mother Down’, ‘In The Lap Of The Gods... Revisited’ / ‘Seven Seas Of Rhye’ / ‘Tear It Up’, ‘A Kind Of Magic’, Vocal Improvisation, ‘Under Pressure’, ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’, ‘I Want To Break Free’, ‘Impromptu’, Guitar Solo, ‘Now I’m Here’, ‘Love Of My Life’, ‘Is This The World We Created...?’, ‘(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care’, ‘Hello Mary Lou (Goodbye Heart)’, ‘Tutti Frutti’, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, ‘Hammer To Fall’, ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, ‘Radio Ga Ga’, ‘We Will Rock You’, ‘Friends Will Be Friends’, ‘We Are The Champions’, ‘God Save The Queen’, ‘Big Spender’, ‘Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting’, ‘Immigrant

Song’, ‘Gimme Some Lovin”, ‘Tavaszi Szél Vizet Áraszt’

Itinerary:

June 7: Rasunda Fotbollstadion, Stockholm, Sweden

June 11/12: Groenoordhalle, Leiden, Holland

June 14: Hippodrome de Vincennes, Paris, France

June 17: Forêt Nationale, Brussels, Belgium

June 19: Groenoordhalle, Leiden, Holland

June 21: Maimarktgelände, Mannheim, Germany

June 26: Waldbuehne, Berlin, Germany

June 28/29: Olympiahalle, Munich, Germany

July 1/2: Hallenstadion, Zurich, Switzerland

July 5: Slane Castle, Dublin, Eire

July 9: St James Park, Newcastle

July 11/12: Wembley Stadium, London

July 16: Maine Road, Manchester

July 19: Müngersdorfer Stadion, Cologne, Germany

July 21/22: Stadthalle, Vienna, Austria

July 27: Nepstadion, Budapest, Hungary

July 30: Amphitheatre, Frejus, France (
rescheduled from Cannes, 29 August, and Nice, 30 August
)

August 1: Monumental Plaza de Toros, Barcelona, Spain (
rescheduled from 31 July
)

August 3: Estadio Rayo Vallecano, Madrid, Spain (
rescheduled from 2 August
)

August 5: Estadio Municipal, Marbella, Spain (
rescheduled from 4 August
)

August 9: Knebworth Park, Stevenage, Herts

By June 1986, it had been nearly a year, excluding the Montreux Golden Rose Pop Festival, since Queen last appeared on stage, and demand for the band to tour again was becoming overwhelming. Originally, 1986 was to be an off year, much as 1983 had been, because the
Queen Works!
tours hadn’t been the rejuvenation the band needed after the stressful
Hot Space
tours of 1982. Live Aid changed everything, however, and the band became excited once again about performing to an audience. In addition, Queen had become one of the hottest tickets in Europe and the United Kingdom; when venues were announced and tickets went on sale, most shows sold out almost instantly.

As with every tour, the band restructured their set list to incorporate new material and generally reshuffle the old favourites. From the new album, only four
of the nine songs were integrated (‘One Vision’, ‘A Kind Of Magic’, ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’ and ‘Friends Will Be Friends’), while there were surprising inclusions of ‘In The Lap Of The Gods ... Revisited’ (last performed in 1977) and a rock ‘n’ roll acoustic medley of ‘(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care’, ‘Hello Mary Lou (Goodbye Heart)’ and ‘Tutti Frutti’. Gone were the older compositions: ‘Great King Rat’, ‘Stone Cold Crazy’, ‘Somebody To Love’, ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, ‘Killer Queen’, ‘Brighton Rock’ and ‘Jailhouse Rock’ were all omitted to make way for newer material, though ‘Liar’ was used as an instrumental link between ‘Seven Seas Of Rhye’ and ‘Tear It Up’.

The most surprising omission was ‘Somebody To Love’, which had been performed on almost every tour since 1977 and was a highlight of any given show. ‘It’s A Hard Life’, too, wasn’t considered for the tour, and it’s been suggested by fans that Freddie wanted to spend more time entertaining the crowd rather than being stuck at a piano. For the first time in years, ‘Now I’m Here’ was performed straight, with no additional songs inserted to form a medley.

The band started rehearsals for the tour in May 1986 at JVC Studios, taking a day in the middle to film the promotional video for ‘Friends Will Be Friends’ and thereby offering a look at the stage the band would be using for the tour: sixty-four feet in length, with two forty-foot wings, giving Freddie nearly 6000 square feet to run around in.

Midway through the rehearsals, Roger sat down for an interview and hyped the upcoming tour effectively: “We are going to play on the biggest stage ever built at Wembley, with the greatest light show ever seen. I think we are probably the best live band in the world at the moment, and we are going to prove it. No one who comes to see us will be disappointed,” adding humorously that the general effect would be “bigger than bigness itself. It’ll make
Ben-Hur
look like The Muppets.” It’s hard to disagree with him: while tours by U2, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd in the later part of the 1980s would take excess to a whole new level and overshadow the Magic tour, Queen’s final tour was the biggest of its day.

Unfortunately, America missed out on the tour yet again: sales of ‘One Vision’ and
A Kind Of Magic
hadn’t been encouraging, and the band weren’t willing to take such a massive stage set-up from coast to coast. Surprisingly, Japan was not included in the itinerary either, nor was Australia or New Zealand. There were rumours that the beginning of 1987 would see the band back on stages around the world, but there’s considerable evidence that Freddie knew that the Knebworth concert would be his last. “I think it was somewhere in Spain,” Brian explained in 2003, “there was a little argument that broke out, and John got quite iffy about something, and Freddie turned around and said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be doing this forever, this is probably the last time’, and that was a bit of a jolt. I didn’t know if that was an instant response or if there was something else on his mind ... I think he really knew what he was going to be dealing with.”

Support throughout the tour alternated between The Bangles, Fountainhead, Big Country, Chris Rea, Status Quo, The Alarm, Craaft, Gary Moore, Belouis Some, Level 42, INXS and Marillion. (In Mannheim, Marillion’s lead vocalist, Fish, joined Queen on stage during ‘Tutti Frutti’, providing additional vocals, while Brian repaid the compliment in Cologne by appearing during Marillion’s set on ‘Market Square Heroes’.) Fans, however, would grow impatient during any given support act’s set and start throwing items at the stage in an attempt to speed up the process. Perhaps the most unique support band on the tour was Z’Zi Labour in Budapest, who performed a version of The Rolling Stones’ ‘Honky Tonk Women’ backed by a chorus of women dressed in peasant costumes.

The tour started on 7 June in Stockholm and was received rapturously, though the set list was marginally different from how it would end up being: ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ followed ‘I Want To Break Free’, and ‘Friends Will Be Friends’ wasn’t yet performed. (It would be introduced in Holland and was given a full rendition for the first two performances there; the remainder of the tour featured a heavily abridged version.) For the remainder of the dates, the standard set list would be changed around little. Apart from occasional performances of ‘Big Spender’, ‘Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting’, ‘Gimme Some Lovin” – as well as one-offs in the form of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’ and the traditional Hungarian folk song ‘Tavaszi Szél Vizet Áraszt’ – the band played it safe and stayed the course. Surprisingly though, ‘Jailhouse Rock’, which had been performed on at least one date per tour in the past, wasn’t performed at all this time.

The shows progressed through Europe during June and early July, hitting all the usual hot spots prior to playing Slane Castle in Dublin on 5 July. Unfortunately, during this first show back on home ground the band were forced to stop after ‘Seven Seas Of Rhye’ due to a drunken fight, causing Freddie to roar his disapproval
at the crowd; Brian was later hit in the head with a beer can, almost refusing to perform the encore as a result. Thankfully, the following night’s show in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne went better than expected, with the show sold out within an hour and all proceeds donated to the Save The Children Fund.

The next two dates were Queen’s genuine homecoming, and have been regarded, perhaps through a veil of sentimentality, as the band’s finest shows ever. These Wembley concerts almost had to be cancelled, however: Queen’s pre-built stage was so huge that it wasn’t able to fit into the venue, but after a major reconstruction, the road crew were able to come up with an alternate design that worked more comfortably. For these two shows, during ‘A Kind Of Magic’, four oversized inflatable dummies were let loose into the stadium as an added effect. While Brian and Roger’s dummies were dragged into the audience, John and Freddie’s floated away in freedom, with the vocalist ending up in a bemused family’s garden several miles away.

The first night was partially filmed as a camera test for the following night: Queen had decided to film and record both shows for a planned live video and album. (The video wouldn’t be released until 1990, and the album would follow two years later, while ‘Is This The World We Created...?’ from the first night and ‘Hammer To Fall’ from the second were included on
Live Magic
in December 1986.) The second night was also broadcast as a radio and television simulcast on 25 October. The show, titled
Real Magic
, was watched by 3.5 million people and was even broadcast in America during Westwood One’s Superstar Concert.

After the second concert, the band appeared at Kensington Roof Gardens in London for an after-show party, giving an impromptu performance as Dicky Hart And The Pacemakers (with Samantha Fox and Gary Glitter assisting on additional vocals), providing rollicking renditions of at least ‘Tutti Frutti’ and ‘Sweet Little Rock And Roller’, though the full set is not known.

Following a date in Manchester, the band’s UK concerts were finished for the tour (except for Knebworth, which was added in haste after tickets for the band’s home country sold out quickly). They returned to Germany for a date in Cologne which marked Brian’s thirty-ninth birthday; he therefore threw in a snippet of ‘’39’ before ‘Love Of My Life’. ‘Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting’, a rare song to be played during the Magic tour, was also performed following ‘Tutti Frutti’, but, sadly, these songs, in addition to the remainder of the show, will never be seen: Janos Zsombolyai, director of the band’s show in Budapest, overtaped it later because of the cost of VHS tapes.

This concert had originally been scheduled for 25 July, then moved to the 26th, finally taking place on the 27th. Footage of Queen and entourage arriving in Budapest by hydrofoil (via the Danube) was filmed and later released on
Live In Budapest
, along with additional video footage of each band member let loose in the city. The band were visibly overwhelmed at the positive reception they received; as a display of their appreciation, after ‘Love Of My Life’ Freddie joked, “Now comes the difficult bit...” Brian then played the introduction to a traditional Hungarian folk song, ‘Tavaszi Szél Vizet Áraszt’, with Freddie reading the words from his hand.

After leaving Hungary, the band then trekked to France and Spain, encountering scheduling conflicts in both countries. The band’s first appearance in Barcelona was notable in that, during a television interview, Freddie claimed that his favourite vocalist was Montserrat Caballé and that he would love to record with her; this was the impetus for their collaboration,
Barcelona
, the next year.

The date in Marbella was due to be the final show of the tour but ticket requests in the UK were so strong that promoter Harvey Goldsmith added a date at Knebworth Park. The show was filmed and recorded; the majority of songs on
Live Magic
were taken from it, but it has never been released in its entirety. The show was marred by the death of a Status Quo fan, who was stabbed and was unable to receive proper medical attention before bleeding to death; on a more positive note, an expectant mother went into labour during the show and gave birth on the grounds in an ambulance on the way to St John’s Hospital.

The show has been considered the best of the tour because of the sheer enthusiasm both band and audience exhibited, though some have speculated that Freddie may have known that this would be Queen’s final tour and wanted to go out on top. “That was a fun tour, I remember it being particularly good,” Roger said with the benefit of hindsight. “And it was nice, because we were doing very big places, which is quite hard in Europe: we were doing big outdoor stadiums in most places, and when they weren’t available, we would do big indoor stadiums, and they were all full, which was great.”

A. COMPILATION ALBUMS

A number of Queen compilations have appeared over the years; instead of attempting to name every last one, what follows is a simple guide to the standard compilation albums. Promo albums and overseas albums have been ignored.

GREATEST HITS

EMI EMTV 30, November 1981 [1]

Elektra 5E-564, November 1981 [14]

EMI CDP 7 46033 2, 1986

Parlophone CDPCSD 141, 1994

Hollywood 7 2061-62475 2, October 2004 [42]

1981 UK track listing:
‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (5’56), ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ (3’37), ‘Killer Queen’ (3’02), ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’
(edit)
(3’26), ‘Bicycle Race’ (3’03), ‘You’re My Best Friend’ (2’52), ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ (3’31), ‘Save Me’ (3’49), ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ (2’45), ‘Somebody To Love’ (4’58), ‘Now I’m Here’ (4’15), ‘Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy’ (2’55), ‘Play The Game’ (3’32), ‘Flash’
(edit)
(2’51), ‘Seven Seas Of Rhye’ (2’50), ‘We Will Rock You’ (2’02), ‘We Are The Champions’ (3’02)

Bonus tracks on 2004 US CD reissue:
‘I’m In Love With My Car’
(edit)
(3’12), ‘Under Pressure’
(live version, Milton Keynes Bowl, June 1982)
(3’39), ‘Tie Your Mother Down’
(live version, Milton Keynes Bowl, June 1982
) (3’50)

1981 US track listing:
‘Another One Bites The Dust’ (3’37), ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (5’56), ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ (2’45), ‘Killer Queen’ (3’02), ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’
(edit)
(3’26), ‘Bicycle Race’ (3’03), ‘Under Pressure’ (4’01), ‘We Will Rock You’ (2’02), ‘We Are The Champions’ (3’02), ‘Flash’
(edit)
(2’51), ‘Somebody To Love’ (4’58), ‘You’re My Best Friend’ (2’52), ‘Keep Yourself Alive (3’47), ‘Play The Game’ (3’32)