Queen: Live material
Queen live albums are funny things, as indeed their concerts were. I saw them only the once, at Earl's Court, London, in 1977, and, while I enjoyed the spectacle of the show and the performance I was left a bit frustrated by the group's insistence on cutting down several songs to just a minute or two in length, as part of a Medley. This was something they were to do throughout their career. The practice was ok when performing a medley of covers, I guess, such as on 1985's Live At Wembley but when it involved three or four of the band's own songs then I found it really frustrating, because I wanted to hear the full versions of the songs. Killer Queen was a song that fell victim to this butchery on several occasions. What will she have thought? This feeling of irritation was exacerbated when several minutes were taken up elsewhere in the concert with extended, meandering guitar noodling during Brighton Rock - something that was usually twice as long as in the song's original recording - or indulgent sonic messing around during Get Down, Male Love.
So, you knew what a Queen live set would involve - if you were lucky you would get three (often only two) full songs at the beginning, followed by one of these Medleys, then an extended Brighton Rock work out and sometimes a Get Down, Make Love one too, a couple more full songs, then later in the show you got a rock 'n' roll covers medley followed by a couple of crowd pleasers. Somewhere in the show would be Bohemian Rhapsody, utilising the original tape recording of the operatic bit, which always sounded a bit odd, but, to be honest, I'm not sure what else they could have done about that.
Anyway, if I were to write full reviews of these live albums, I would make these same points over and over, so I have dealt with them all in one batch.
Live At The Rainbow 1974 is my favourite, containing two shows, from April and November 1974 and the band are at their rockiest and raw. Both shows have excellent, deep, bassy sound quality and are eminently listenable, albeit in a this-is-how-it-was warts 'n' all fashion. Basically, it is a proper live album. This was a rampant, posturing Queen in their pre-Bohemian Rhapsody days too. They were popular but not that popular, so you get the impression that this was a band giving their all in their efforts to impress and show everyone that they were the real thing. Even Freddie Mercury sounds somewhat nervous and unsure of himself between songs, almost as if he is trying too hard to get everyone to like him. Whatever, I'm rambling. Freddie and his mates succeed. And some. I would have liked to have heard the band perform the whole of Queen II's side two, however, as opposed to just bits of it in the two concerts' Medleys. They also Medley-fy (to an extent, maybe it just seems that way) Stone Cold Crazy, Bring Back That Leroy Brown and Seven Seas Of Rhye. Just stop it. Despite my seemingly perennial complaints, both these shows are great!
That enthusiasm carries over to A Night At The Odeon, from 1975, a show that was shown on Christmas Eve on BBC TV I vividly remember watching it in my bedroom on my little portable black and white TV, delighted to see one of my favourite bands live on the telly. Apart from Elton John in the same Christmas Eve BBC slot two years earlier, and The Who at Charlton Athletic football ground in 1974, this was pretty much unheard of. Anyway, this was now a band riding the waves of Bohemian Rhapsody's huge success and they deliver with a supreme confidence. It is up there with the previous album as one of my favourites. Then again, this is not surprising considering it comes from my preferred period of the band's career. The sound quality is really good - full, bassy, powerful and glitch-free. This, and its excellent predecessor are the very essence of Queen live, for me. If only we had access to the recordings back in the seventies.
In 1979, punk was what I was all about and that applied to many others too, so the only official Queen live album thus far (the previous two are retrospective by a long way) in Live Killers went under my radar. For others it simply didn't impress. Queen were well on their way to being desperately uncool old hat. Furthermore, it is not a full one-gig show like the previous ones, being compiled (or perhaps cobbled together) from recordings from several shows. The sound is somewhat tinny, indistinct, scratchy and muffled in various places throughout (thankfully never together) and, while ok when played on a good system, it still sounds a bit patchy and prepared without due care for me, with way too much of those accursed Medley bits - good rock songs like Death On Two Legs or I'm In Love With My Car should be decimated as part of a medley, should they? Not as far as I'm concerned, anyway. As I said, the show is not a full, single show and you can sort of tell.
An improvement from the same era, though, is the retrospectively-released Queen Rock Montreal, originally from 1981, which has a similar set and an audibly superior sound. It packs a real punch, but unfortunately, despite Freddie Mercury's many exhortations to the audience to let themselves go, the French-Canadians just don't get off their derrieres. Why, they don't even cheer for Bohemian Rhapsody! So, I get the impression the crowd just aren't connected at all.
Queen On Fire dates from 1982 and was recorded out doors at the Milton Keynes Bowl. Unfortunately it is right in the middle of what Mercury called "dabbling in black funk stuff" (or something like that) and several chugging, disco-inspired numbers from the unsuccessful Hot Space album are performed amongst the medleys. Not good. Just rock, eh, lads? It's what the crowd wants, judging by their reaction to the old rockers (noisy) when compared with the Hot Space material (quietly apathetic). Similar to the next one up, the open air gig sound is somewhat mushy in places too.
Rock is more to the fore in 1985's Live At Wembley as a triumphant Queen rock their many new post-Live Aid fans. However, as well as being Medley-blighted, it suffers from "open air gig muffle" in its sound - distinctly lifeless and unimpressive. Sort of lost on the air. This is after a supposed digital re-mastering too. Give me indoor concert recordings all day long. All is not lost, though. You get two great rockers in One Vision (the show's opener) and Hammer To Fall, which showcase eighties Queen at their rockiest, as they should be. The rousing Radio Ga Ga ain't half bad either. *Actually, a recent re-listen has found that the sound isn't as bad I have stated above, so there you go. It has a bit of power to it.
One sad bit in the show is where Freddie responds to contemporary rumours that the band are splitting up by defiantly saying "we'll be together until we fucking well die". He was right too, unfortunately.
