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dianaallvarez · 3 years

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Queen live at Birmingham National Arena in Birmingham, UK - August 31, 1984 (Part-1)

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This is the first of three nights in Birmingham, perhaps the best all-around show of the European tour.

A fan who attended one of the three Birmingham concerts recalls the announcer during the final minutes leading up to the show:

"The show will begin in 5 minutes"

"The show will begin in 4 minutes"

"The show will begin in 3 minutes"

"The show will begin in 2 minutes"

"The show will begin in 1 minute"

Then right at zero, the lights went out and the Machines intro started to play. What a way to build the intensity.

Freddie, clearly happy to be back on the road, after the opening numbers, says, "It's nice to be needed all these years!"

Brian plays a nice little progression before Now I'm Here, but Freddie, impatient as always, tells his guitarist, "Give me a fucking D," just so they can get the song going.

The keyboard and guitar solos are now played separately, which is how they will remain for the rest of the European tour. Spike Edney would usually reference Machines during his solo spot using a vocoder.

The lights go out during Hammer To Fall at one of these three shows. The song is now played earlier in the set (where it would remain for the rest of the Works tour), as the band feel that three new songs in a row is a bit much.

At the end of the show, Freddie says, "Good night, you wonderful people. You can come again any time!"

According to the July '89 issue of Record Collector, all 7 UK shows were properly recorded by the band. However, sources close to the band have since stated that this is not true.

This is amusing:

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Fan Stories

“I was lucky to see Queen for three nights back to back on what were three awesome concerts. I travelled up from Carmarthen, West Wales with a friend to stay with my Auntie in Worcester on Friday night. Caught the train into Birmingham station and chilled out until the doors opened. I had a ticket two rows from the front and couldn't wait for Queen to hit the stage. While I was queing up to enter the arena some guy was asking for "any spare tickets". I was not going to give my ticket away to anybody as I had waited 5 years to see my idols!! The atmosphere in the arena was electric as the crowd waited for Queen to hit the stage. The support act were General Public fronted by the guy who use to be in The Beat. They were pretty awful and went off around 8.30pm. I WAS NOW READY FOR THE REAL THING. 30 minutes went by and realised that it would not be a 2 hour show as they had to be off stage by 11. At last the lights went out at 9.10 and on they came. What a sight! Machines roared over the speakers and then they tore the place apart with Tear It Up. I was totally blown away by the sheer sound and presence of four rock gods doing their thing and was totally spellbound for the next 110 minutes. Let me say that this was rock and roll at its brilliant best. The set list was truly awesome and they played a lot of their early stuff - Liar, Keep Yourself Alive, Somebody To Love, Killer Queen - too many to mention and when they played Stone Cold Crazy / Great Kings Rat / Brigton Rock I just went crazy and could'nt wait for the encores. Hammer To Fall was totally brilliant and I remember Freddie grabbing a hat from a crazed fan as he had a hammer on it and playing around with it when Spike did his guitar entry for the final part. CLTCL went on forever with Spike and Freddie enjoying themselves at the piano and to cap it off, Freddie posturing around in an outrageous wig for Break Free and WWRY. By the time Champions came and went it was the end of a truly memorable and epic night. A night which I'll never forget and this was only the first night! On night 2 & 3 the set was the same except for Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting and Sheer Heart Attack as an encore on Saturday and Jailhouse Rock on Sunday. After the first show on Friday I was on such a high that we missed the final train back to Worcester and went back by taxi. I drove to the gigs on Saturday & Sunday. This has to be my favourite Queen tour in terms of satisfying the die hard fans. All their early songs from their early albums and a totally awesome stage act. A fantastic way to spend a weekend. Without doubt the greatest live act you're ever likely to see. I was only 21 at the time - I'm now forty and still have fond memories of these truly sensational shows. Please read my story about the Magic Tour '86.” - Steve

Part-2

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dianaallvarez · 3 years

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Part 1: The Queen Tapes

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Stargazing Guitarist Brian May Turns the Telescope on himself and Talks About What He Sees

by Mick Houghton

Circus Magazine recently concluded an exclusive series of interviews with Queen, in London with correspondent Mick Houghton and in the States with Circus’s Wesley Strick. in this issue, Brian may explores some of the Queen’s (and his) roots and the evolving circumstances that made them into England’s foremost touring band.

The release of ‘A Day At The Races’, theit fifth and perhaps most successful LP for Elektra, heralds Queen’s American preeminence.

Next issue, Freddie Mercury.

It’s strange, because the people who were in The Others at school then, were kind of rebels who weren’t interested in the academic side and were disapproved of by the establishment. I admired them because they got on with what they wanted to do, which was play music. The Others was Brian’s May first rock group; they made a single in 1964 “Oh, Yeah”.

I was very much the academic then, partly through inclination and partly through upbringing, so, while I played in various groups, none of them ever got anywhere because we never actually played any real gig or took it that seriously. i was envious of those people at the time for making the break, yet now they’ve got all gone back to respectable jobs or studying- computers, dentistry, one of them was working for EMI- whereas I did it the other way round after completing my studies.

In a way, their experience, although they were really messed around by their managers, made me want to commit myself molre because it was a world I wanted and knew i had to deny myself at the time. It was two or three years after that before Smile, my first serious group,[ ]…

…[ ] got going, but by then I was equally involved academically and felt it was a waste of time not to see it through, having come that far (in Astronomy- on the movements of interplanetary dust). As you know, even now, my PhD virtually complete, but there’s no way I can finish that, given the pressures and commitments of Queen. The fruits of that endeavor have come out, though. The papers have been published and are available to the scientific world, so it isn’t wasted. The only reason to complete it would be to get a piece of paper saying that I’m a Doctor. That’s not very crucial, is it?. Whereas with Queen, I’m stiil in the position where I’ve got to pursue it to its conclusion, if there is a conclusion.

It’s hard to see what that could be. There’s the concrete terms like measuring it by success, but those aren’t the reference points to choose. I guess there will come a point. when I feel we, or I, or both aren’t progressing. Then I’ll have to think seriously about what I’m doing. It’s like my progress as a guitar player has slow down considerably in terms of actual technique, but where I’m advancing is in the ideas and general feel for what I’m doing. And then there’s the sense of an audience which grows up on you, which is something you never bargain for at first when you just playing for yourself from some internal drive. Once you discover people are actually listening, it becomes a completely different world. Playing to people becomes worthwhile in its own sense, so the fact that my music still gives other people pleasure has become a major factor in my continuing.

I suposse it seems like there’s a rule that Freddie (Mercury) and I divide up most of the albums in terms of writing and give John (Deacon) and Roger (Taylor) one song each, the way Beatles’ albums seemed to be planned, as some suggest. John is probably the slowest writer, he is newer to it, but at the same time he’s written a hit in America, which I haven’t and that’s great. Roger has more material than the group’s done but it just a question of choosing material to give the albums the right balance. There are no hard and fast rules.

The creative balance has shifted to become more of a group thing. With the enormous time that we spend in the studio it’s inevitable that a lot of the time all the group aren’t there together, so the contributions that we make have become more complementary. I think this is a very important time for the group, where it would be easy for us to go off and do each’s separate thing but our strengh, and of any group, is that we realize how to use each other in a complementary fashion. That’s the most important thing we have.

It’s a very delicate balance, though, very precarious like a marriage, because knowing people that well, you could be destructive as well as constructive. I’m very conscious that the balance could be easily upset even by something from the outside which threatens the band internally. That’s why it worries me if the media concentrates on me or Freddie to the exclusion of the others.

John and Roger as so crucial to everything we do, they are not only the rhythm section. Nothing is farther from the truth. It’s like John is the quiet one, all the press releases and so on always say that, and it’s true, but in many areas he’s the leader more and more these days. I visualize that the balance will change further internally as time goes by… adjust to individual changes. It probably comes across to our hard core followers, but the danger is with our mass audience who, say, only buy the singles, and don’t understand the group. I’d like everyone to be aware of the group as a whole.

Queen were very late developers. Like, I was contemporary with the people of The Others, that we were talking about, who had a recording contract in 1964. We started late in the big world of music. We were not let loose on the public until a lot later. We were playing pretty interesting material in the late Sixties. i could play you tapes of Smile which have the same general structures to what we’re doing now. There was no way to take it any further [ ]…

…[ ] at the time. It was hard to get an in without fully commiting yourself. I will say one thing for punk rock at the moment: it is creating a way that groups can get a start, which in itself is very healthy. I think maybe people are being pushed into the limelight too soon, and there’s a tendency to concentrate on image to the exclusion of the music area.

We never had that trouble, because we were just totally ignored for so long, and then, completely slagged off and slated by everyone. in a way that was a very good start for us. There’s no kind of abuse that wasn’t thrown at us. It was only around the time of Sheer Heart Attack that it began to change, but we still got slagged off a fair bit even then. I’m always affected by criticism. I think most are, even if they say they’re not. It doesn’t matter how far you get, if somebody says you are a load of shit, it hurts. But that was just press response, because for the rest it was building up very steadily. Queen II sold really well over a longish period and coincided with us breaking ground concert-wise.

It’s hard to think what could give us the same sort of buzz as that initial recognition by people who would come to see us regularly around the time of our first album, when they had no reason to come to gigs other than something “special” they saw or got from the band. Recently, Hyde Park was a high… the occasion rather than the gig. You know, the tradition of Hyde Park. I went to see the first one with the Floyd and Jethro Tull- great atmosphere and the feeling that it was free. We felt it would be nice to receive that, but it was fraught with heartbreak in a way ‘cause there were so many problems. Trying to get the place for the evening was so hard, trying to get it at all was hard enough. We had to make compromises we don’t like and it got very political. The whole day ran to schedule but for a half hour, which was remarkable considering the hassles at every stage, but that half hour meant we couldn’t do the encore. It sounds trivial, I know, but that’s the part of the show where we felt most at home. We’ve got the approval and can really enjoy ourselves and to be denied that, having worked up to such a pitch, was very hard to take. I was very depressed. The encore isn’t just a set piece, it’s a bonus thing for us as well as the audience. It doesn’t matter how tense the gig has been- the sense of release is always welcome.

I hate to think of music as a competition, but that element is there and only a limited number of people draw big audiences, so I suppose music is competitive in that sense. Whenever I meet a group on the road, though, I don’t feel that. You just really want to get close to one another. Competition can be good in some ways. As you know, we’re taking Thin Lizzy as a support, and Lizzy as a support band is a real challenge. Obviously they will want to blow us off the stage, and that can be a very healthy thing. You feed off the energy of others and I know that if they go down a storm, we’re gonna go on feeling that much higher. It makes for good concerts. We’ve had it the other way round, we gave Mott the Hoople a hard time on our first tours here and in America.

Then, there’s the “ we’re the biggest” kind of rivalry between groups, which is largely a media thing, but it does mean more ‘cause it’s easy to get a buzz out of success. You need new things to get excited about, so we’re doing New York’s Madison Square this tour. It’s a thrill and a challenge, but after that I suppose we will want to do something bigger and better. We are aware of the dangers, because obviously you can lose something along the way if you start doing really big places where you can’t really project. To say something for us I think we’ve done it gradually. We haven’t tried to run before we could walk. The last tour we could have done bigger places, but we chose to play smaller places for a few nights, instead, with one or two larges venues only, to get the feel of it. Now we feel we can really cope with a tour like the current one. Everything will be that much better. We’ll be that much better- larger than life.

Circus Magazine- February 28th, 1977

➡ NEXT: FREDDIE MERCURY

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