An archive text from October 11, 2021.
The YouTube format “Queen: The Greatest” has existed for six months now, in which a specific period in the band’s history is examined in more detail every week in order to celebrate the group’s 50th anniversary. The 30th episode, which was released on Friday (October 8, 201), is dedicated to one of the most important performances for Queen: the “Live Aid” concert from 1985.
The fundraiser, organized by Bob Geldof, saw more than 50 bands perform at Wembley Stadium to raise money to fight famine in Ethiopia. Queen’s performance was watched by 72,000 spectators in the stadium and by 1.9 billion people on television and is still considered one of the best performances by the band – and especially by Freddie Mercury. However, as the band revealed in the “Queen: The Greatest” episode, they weren’t so sure beforehand whether the performance would even take place.
“We said, ‘Oh yeah, sure,’ because we thought it would be almost impossible to pull off something like that.”
Queen guitarist Brian May says in the video: “Geldof was sitting a few tables away and came over to us and said, ‘How about we do this?’ And he said, ‘We’re going to do this and this and this’. We said, ‘Oh yeah, sure,’ because we thought it was almost impossible to pull off something like that.” So the whole band was more than surprised when Geldof actually asked May to sign up for the show. But, says the 74-year-old musician, “we were all very keen on it.”
There was one main reason why their twenty-minute gig was so incredibly well received by the people, May continues: “We had an unfair advantage.” He explains: “We had already played in football stadiums. Freddie in particular learned this magical way of including everyone. In a huge football stadium he could make everyone feel like they were in touch with him.”
“I remember looking up and seeing the whole place going crazy and thinking, ‘Oh – this is going good!'”
For drummer Roger Taylor, the success of the gig came as a surprise. He says in the video: “I remember looking up and seeing the whole place going crazy and I thought, ‘Oh – this is going well!'” He also answers the question of whether the appearance at “Live Aid “ was a well thought out career move on the part of the band. “No, it wasn’t a career move,” says Taylor, “but of course everyone has that in the back of their minds.”
At Queen’s Live Aid gig, the British rock band played a smorgasbord of their biggest hits, including “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Hammer To Fall,” “We Are The Champions,” “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “Radio Ga Ga.” “. The performance has gone down in history as one of the best music performances of all time and was pivotal in reviving the band’s career.