these photo's were taken in Leiden, The Netherlands, 1986
Roger Taylor, John Deacon
A review:
The strangest concert, and the one with its own
kind of magic, had to be the one in Budapest. On the
face of it, it was no different from any of the others all
over Europe; the huge stage was in position in the
city's largest stadium, its vast array of lights making
it seem like a fairy grotto, the smoke pouring from the
wings turning it into a witches' cauldron, awaiting the
arrival of the magicians.
The courtiers to Queen had arrived some days
earlier driving across Europe in 15 huge lorries
transporting the huge 180 foot long stage. It had
taken the road crew of 60 something like two days to
construct, untangling eight miles of cable, setting up
five generators and erecting two giant 60 foot
towers, festooned with searchlights.
Tickets had sold out weeks before and there were
forlorn groups of unlucky people hanging around
outside. The crowd filled every seat and every square
inch of grass in the stadium. They listened to the
supporting groups one of whom performed a bizarre
'Honky Tonk Womari with a backing chorus of 20
women in peasant costume, twirling handkerchiefs,
giving you some idea of what the Hungarians
normally get. Don't even try to imagine what it
sounded like. They waited patiently and excitedly.
Darkness fell, the noise of the crowd rose, the stage
lights flashed even more brightly and the smoke
billowed even more violently - and out of the mist,
Queen came on stage. Freddie Mercury began to
flash like the lights and chase the smoke around the
stage. Roger Taylor crouched behind his drums
pounding out the rhythm, seemingly intent on
smashing them to oblivion; John Deacon's face was
tight with concentration as he played his bass, and
Brian May fought a musical duel with Freddie
Mercury. "One Vision" was an apt title for the opening
number.
It was a familiar and exhilarating sight to every
Queen fan. But it was different for the audience in
Budapest. It wasn't only the first time they had ever
seen Queen, it was also the first time an open air rock
concert had ever taken place in the country, or behind
the Iron Curtain, for that matter. While Queen fans all
over Europe knew how to react, what to expect,
were familiar with the theatricals and the stage show,
the Hungarians were totally unprepared. From the
moment the band arrived in Budapest, travelling
from Vienna down the Danube in the hydrofoil last
used by Mr Gorbachev, they were like people from
another world. On stage, they looked like creatures
from a different planet. The British Embassy was
stunned as well, throwing a party for them, where
sophisticated diplomats jostled each other to get
autographs.
When Queen appeared on stage at the Peoples
Stadium, you could almost hear the sound of 80,000
brains boggling. While their eyes became accustomed
to the kaleidoscope of lights, their ears tuned into
the music and their brains came to terms with
the unusual sight of Freddie Mercury, there was
a moment of stunned and bewildered silence as
the fans - some of whom had even come from as
far away as Russia - tried to decide on the correct
way to react to what they saw in front of them.
For days earlier the local newspapers had been
printing guides to rock concert etiquette, and
cautioning calm. Even Queen themselves, used to
playing before audiences who know their music and
are accustomed to their stage behaviour had been
more than usually apprehensive, not knowing what
would happen. The authorities had pompously, and
nervously announced before the concert that they
were going to be "lenient towards the behaviour of
young people ' at the concert, but the presence of a
few armed soldiers indicated that they, too, didn't
know how people would react (Brian May was to say
afterwards that "it was the band's most challenging
and exhilarating gig").
The Hungarians had assembled 17 cameras to film
this strange phenomenon that had arrived from the
west, even if it never happened again, there would be
proof behind the Iron Curtain that Freddie Mercury
actually existed and the concert had really taken
place,just in case children were to doubt it all in years
to come.
You have to agree that the strange sight of Freddie
Mercury in perpetual motion, the gigantic noise of
Queen in full flight, and the sheer spectacle of the
stage show is a hell of an introduction to rock
concerts (and western decadence, liable to inflame
the passions); but it was only a moment of indecision
and bewilderment. Before long, the audience were
behaving like audiences all over Europe. The familiar
two way drip feed of adrenalin had been set up, the
band fuelling the crowd with energy, and this energy
from the crowd travelling back goading the band into
even greater activity. The power of rock and roll and
the universal love of theatricals exerted themselves,
and soon everybody was singing along with the band,
not frowning but waving. The words "Radio-Ga-Ga"
seem to translate quite easily into every known
language, and 80,000 pairs of hands miraculously
knew how to perform the traditional synchronised
handclap that goes with the song.
Freddie made his final entrance, stripped to the waist, wearing the
jewelled crown of a monarch, his baton doubling as a
regal sceptre. He was swathed in a Union Jack, with
the Hungarian national flag embroidered on the back.
The people of Budapest hadn't seen anything like it
since Peter the Great, but the crescendo of noise
from the band and crowd alike was as exhilarating and
as familiar as it had been all over the rest of Europe.
After 15 years, finding enough people who have
never seen Queen live to fill a stadium in 1986 was
quite an achievement. With over 80 million records
sold all over the world, they're not exactly unknowns.
There aren't many bands who could fill Wembley
stadium for one night, let alone two. There aren't
many bands who could draw 120,000 fans to
Knebworth in one of the biggest concerts in pop
history, the largest single paying audience for a UK
rock concert in over ten years. And the historic event
was also marked by probably the biggest trafficjam in
British history. As the fans converged on the historic
15th century house and huge grounds of Knebworth,
the authorities, in their wisdom, chose Saturday,
August 9, to close most of the A1 close to the site.
People still managed to reach Knebworth for a day of
rock (Status Quo flew in from a concert the day
before in Scandinavia, as soon as their set was over
they ran for helicopters which would take them to
another late night gig in Switzerland a few hours
later). The road crew had driven non-stop from the
previous concert Marbella, to erect the stage.
Everybody made it, just (during the concert, a
woman went into labour as a new Queen fan arrived,
later than most).
John Deacon, Freddie Mercury
Darkness had fallen. The security men were
performing the traditional pagan rite of hurling
buckets of water over the long suffering fans who
had positioned themselves at the front of the stage
many hours earlier. A few impatient fans were
already holding lighters and matches aloft in the
ceremony that is supposed to end concerts, rather
than occur mid way through. Backstage, Freddie
Mercury was finishing his traditional 30 minutes of
physical exercises and was running his voice up and
down through the scales. Queen had been on the road
since the beginning of June, and had played to
astonishing numbers of people somewhere, amid the
crowd at Knebworth was the millionth member of
the European audience (perhaps it was the baby...).
Then it was show time. The band were led through
from the backstage area, itself full of friends and
fellow stars who had turned up, for this wasn'tjust a
concert it was an Event with a capital E. Roger John,
Brian and Freddie ran through the smoke towards the
noise of the crowd. The opening chords of "One
Vision" came from Brian's 'fireplace guitar and
Freddie began to run closer still, drawn inexorably to
the deafening roar until he was at the very edge of
the stage looking down at the crowd that stretched
back before him, illuminated by giant searchlights.
With a cry, a snarl even, of "This is what you
wanted - this is what you're gonna get", he leads the
others into "Tie your Mother down" and is off on his
travels, roaming the stage, climbing the giant
catwalks so he can peer down from an even greater
height at the crowd, who are happy to look up at him.
Then he's down again, back among the other three,
back to back, shoulder to shoulder with Brian May as
he postures and poses. All of Knebworth's a stage,
and he's the player-king, the player-Queen.
The band go through their 15 years of hits. The quartet had
decided at the outset when the whole tour was being
planned and discussed, to include most of their
greatest hits - "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Another One
Bites the Dust", "Love of My Life", the whole lot. It's
one of the features that gives the concert a special
atmosphere - the audience seem to know the words
to every song. They know the words so well that
there is no problem as Freddie leads them through the
scales, even though no one seems to be able to get as
high up them as Freddie himself [Kiri Ke Tenawa is not
among the audience :-) ].
The stage goes quiet and is strangely empty. John
and Roger have gone off and there are two stools in
the middle, for Brian and Freddie to sit on as they go
through "Is This the World we Created", the song that
summed up everyone's feelings at Live Aid a year
earlier when many heard it for the first time. There's
a riveting medley of old songs - "Baby I don't care,
Hello Mary Lou and Tutti Frutti", songs that were
around when the band was young, around even
before the four young students first got together to
play. Then it's Brian May's turn, with three members
of the stage crew rushing frantically after him
untangling the lead from his guitar he careers round
the stage playing an intricate solo, the music in time
with his running.
On the music goes; John goes off to change into
shorts as Queen keep up the pace, keep up the hits.
One encore is not enough; the crowd know it, Queen
know it as they wait in the wings, towels around their
sweating shoulders. It's two encores at least. Freddie
is back in his ermine robe, all 40 pounds of sequins
hanging round his shoulders, as the familiar strains of
God Save the Queen ring from the crowd. A master of
understatement, Freddie sings "We Are The
Champions" and fully deserves to wear the crown
that is perched on his head. The crowd yell hopefully
for another encore, but the concert is over. But things
haven't finished. As the crowd leave Knebworth,
there is an exhilarating party backstage, as
flamboyant as the concert. Late in the night, or late in
the morning the party ends. And the tour is over.
Of course it wasn't always like this, John Deacon
remembered the worst moment, and "it wasn't
playing to a half empty hall somewhere or other. That
was part of getting started and we expected it. It
was when we were booked to play two sets and
during the interval the organiser came backstage and
said 'the audience don't want you back, they'd rather
have the disco instead'! "But that was 15 years ago,
when the four students had first got together, Queen
emerging from the ruins of an earlier group, Smile. A
lot of miles have been covered since then, from the
tiny hall in the College of Estate Management,
London - where 80 out of an invited audience of 120
turned up for the first concert - to some of the
biggest rock venues in the world.
It sounds like a landmark,15 years, as if the tour of
Europe this year had some special, symbolic
significance about it. To many people, inside and
outside the industry, it was seen as an indication or as
proof that the four stars were finally splitting up to go
their separate ways. Just about the only people who
took no notice of this rumour were the four stars
themselves - ''Sure, after all these years we have our
fights", says Brian May, "but we're in a state of
unstable equilibrium. We can't live with each other
and we can't live without each other". Queen saw a
different logic behind the "Kind of Magic" tour. For a
start, this was the year when a new album called,
surprise, surprise, "A Kind of Magic" would come out.
Second, the success and the euphoria generated by
the Live Aid concert a year earlier had revigorated
Queen with a desire to experience the energy drip-
feed again. Just as fans who buy records never get to
see a group if it doesn't tour so a group doesn't get to
see the fans who buy the records if it doesn't tour.
Especially when you've developed, over those 15
years, a stage show that is the most stunning and
spectacular in the world of rock, an extravaganza of
pomp and circumstance that can't be conveyed on
records. They're a band that likes and revels in the
drama of a live performance, a drama that Freddie
describes as "doing battle with the audience. . .
I come off stage feeling as though I've been to
war - and won!"
But tours, the endless travelling are tiring. "We
were going to take it easy in 1986", said John Deacon,
"but Live Aid was so fantastic and we got such an
amazing response that it charged us up all over again".
Don't underestimate the organisation needed to
plan a tour of the size and magnitude of the "Magic"
tour. The detailed planning, once the project was on,
took a full six months to draw up. The huge stage has
to be designed and built, the lighting and sound
experts have to sit down and work out something
new for Queen, something even more extravagant
than the last stage shows. The right venues, in the
right place and at the right time have to be found,
usually the bigger the better. The sites of the
stadiums have to be worked out geographically as
well. allowing easy access for the fleet of lorries and
coachloads of road crew (Budapest, for example,
took place after the Vienna gig, a few hundred miles
away across the border). Queen themselves may
travel by executive jet, with the pilot pointing the
plane in the direction he's told. but it's different for the
gear and the stage. The stage has to be designed so
that it will not only look spectacular but actually fit
the whole variety of venues on the tour as well as
being relatively easy to load and unload from the fleet
of trucks. Supporting groups have to be booked, from
Status Quo for Knebworth to Z Z Labor for Budapest.
There is an 80 page book issued to everybody,
detailing all aspects of the tour with military precision,
the hotels everyone stays at in each town, the times
of planes for each country, the names of the car hire
companies, the times for travelling, and for sound
checks, contact names, everything. It even lists
people's birthdays if they occur on tour, Brian May's
took place in Cologne.
On June 4, thirteen trucks left London, and a couple
of days later the four stars began their movement
across Europe on a trip that would include 26
concerts in 20 cities covering 11 European countries.
The first gig was in Stockholm on June 7, and there
was a lot of tension in the air before the show began.
The nerves were inevitable, normal even, for the
initial stop on a three month tour. The European tour
of 1986 began with "One Vision", and the fans inside
the sold out Rasunda Football Stadium had what
they'd come to hear, the music and the hits that had
kept Queen at the top for 15 years.
The band finished the show, with "We are the
Champions". The first party of the tour the first of
many, was held in a converted opera house, and the
relief that everything had gone without a hitch,
nothing had broken down - not the lights, not the
sound, not Freddie's voice - was palpable and
evident. The next morning. the Swedish press were
ecstatic in their reviews. While the road crews
dismantled the stage and began the journey to
Leiden, in Holland. (see the photo's!)
The level of the response there can
be judged from the unimportant but intriguing fact
that a noise check on the audience, in a rather small
stadium was taken, and it turned out to be only one
decibel less than the noise made by Queen's huge
battery of loudspeakers!!! Sometimes. the battle
between Freddie Mercury and the crowd is very
close indeed...
Brian May
Being midweek, the Leiden gigs were indoors and
Queen then headed for their first ever open air
concert in France, at the Hippodrome. Fans travelled
over from England to hear the Bohemian Rhapsody in
the city of bohemian culture. Many of the travellers
included the band's friends, and at one point the area
backstage looked like the setting for a Summit
conference with a fleet of 19 limousines lined up to
take everyone to the party afterwards!
Then, it was Brussels, back to Holland and on to the
first of the Big Concerts - the 80,000 capacity
stadium in Mannheim, West Germany. Freddie
Mercury had decided, after Stockholm that he
wanted a dramatic special effect for Mannheim. He
decided on an entrance from a giant crane bucket.
The equipment was transported out from England,
Freddie got into the bucket which then rose into the
air. A muffled and rather panicky voice was heard to
yell "Get me out of here", and the Germans, and
everybody else in Europe never got to see this
dramatic special effect....:-(
The concert was broadcast live on German Radio
and many a listener must have been mildly startled to
hear the sound of the capacity audience in a guttural
rendition of the British national anthem. There's
nothing quite like the excitement of a huge concert,
either for the audience, or for the band: "Playing in
front of a huge crowd is not alienating'', explains Brian
May, "it's got a certain kind of magic and the adrenalin
really starts to flow".
Germany was a great success. with ecstatic
crowds mobbing Queen in Berlin (and excited
mosquitoes biting them on stage!), and thousands
turning out in Munich even though the nation is in
mourning after the defeat, earlier in the evening of
the World Cup team at the hands of the Argentines).
The route back to the English speaking world is via
the bicycle stadium in Zurich (where the French
arrived to present Queen with a gold album, for the
success of "A Kind of Magic").
And then the first of the two Stately parts of the
tour Slane Castle in Ireland. 95,000 people poured into
the grounds when the gates were opened at 9 in the
morning, a full nine hours before Queen were due to
appear four hours even before the first supporting
group was due on stage. Because of the lack of
lighting on the Slane site, the show had to finish early,
but things got chaotic, to say the least. People even
came up river in canoes, trying to get in the Slane back
way. At times the scene from the castle parapets
resembled a medieval painting, with exhausted and
dishevelled people sprawled on the ground,
exhausted, drunk, dead to the world. By the time the
familiar smoke billowed out from the stage, some
people could only say they were there when Freddie
began to sing, but they couldn't claim to have actually
heard him. He even had to stop the show after ten
minutes, things in the crowd had got so chaotic.
The show was being recorded on a mobile 24 track studio,
but someone staggering past the equipment pulled
out a cable.
The next concert, at St. James's Park, Newcastle
had a special significance because Queen donated the
night's take to the local Save the Children fund. There
were quite a few kids from the project in the VIP
seats at the ground, and after visiting some of the
SCF activities in the area, Brian dedicated "Is This the
World we Created", with sad aptness, to the Fund.
It was also special because it was the largest concert
that Newcastle had ever seen.
But all roads on a European tour lead to Wembley.
Large as it is, Wembley Stadium, is not the biggest
stadium in the world, but in many ways it's the most
important, the Wimbledon of rock. There aren't that
many groups who can fill it once, so the knowledge
that it was full for two consecutive nights was a proof
and a demonstration to the four members of Queen
of their power
If it's of any interest, the architect's plans for
Wembley Stadium are wrong. They are, in fact, four
feet out. This may not matter much to a fan, but it
nearly spelt disaster for Queen. Working to the plans,
a special stage had been built, designed to fill one
complete end of Wembley, and working against the
clock the crew found it was precisely four feet too
long. This wasn't the only problem at Wembley. The
local authority are famous for their stringent
regulations, and they refused permission for the gas
torches that when lit flared out from the side of the
stage (to make sure that Queen didn't use them on
the second, and final concert, they even posted a
guard on the gas cylinders all night!)
But God must be a Queen fan :-). On the Saturday it
poured all day, drenching the 72,000 crowd and Status
Quo as well. But it miraculously stopped for a while
when Queen came on [not permanently, though - He
doesn't like all their numbers :-) ]. Freddie got wet as well
as the band moved out from the covered part of the
stage. to the front, as the lights were turned on the
crowd. Four huge inflatable dummies of the group
were released into the aic. Two were hauled down by
fans but two floated up to land in someone's garden
miles away.
If the atmosphere at the concert was special
because it was Wembley, the party afterwards was
special because it was after Wembley. The group took
over the Gardens night club, high over London with a
huge roof garden filled with exotic food and strange
sights. Members of the bandjoined other rock stars in
impromptu jam sessions, and John Deacon didn't
leave for home until 9 in the morning. [wow! :-) ]
After Wembley, it was another football stadium,
Maine Road, in Manchester By now the tour was
becoming a blur for the group and when they played
'Now I'm Here; they were beginning to wonder where
Here was. Back to Europe, to Germany, to Vienna, on
to Budapest, to France again and then Spain. The
pressure was really showing by Madrid. Put four
people in close physical and emotional proximity for so
long and there's bound to be pressure. There was a
glorious backstage fight in Madrid when nearly
everything in the dressing room was destroyed. So
too was a myth - everyone believes that rock stars
destroy television sets in their rooms when they are
angry. Well, the television set was the only thing that
wasn't wrecked in Madrid! Madrid, on to Marbella-
and back to England. And Knebworth. The end of the
tour.
A Kind of Magic had spread over Europe and it
was all over.....
