Guest
Queen capped off the A Day At The Races tour with two shows at London's Earls Court Arena. According to the tour programme there was only supposed to be one night at Earls Court, on June 5. The itinerary was amended due to ticket demand. The proceeds from this show went to the HRH Queen's Silver Jubilee Appeal. The band dropped £50,000 on a new lighting rig for these shows, which was a giant crown - 25 feet tall by 54 feet wide, weighing two tons. Queen were pioneers of many rock concert spectacles, including this very first mobile lighting rig. The music of Chopin (Freddie's choice) plays as the audience enter the venue. At this point, one can barely see the stage, as the crown is only a few feet above it, with black drapes below it - thus hiding everything on stage, and causing some audience members to wonder where the band will be playing! Procession is heard (revived only for the Earls Court shows, and never to be used again), and then the A Day At The Races overture rings through the speakers. Part way through, the crown slowly begins to rise, and out comes the dry ice (the first picture above was taken during this moment). Queen then burst onto the stage to perform Tie Your Mother Down, and the show goes on as usual. According to Freddie, perfume came naturally “from London“ tonight during Killer Queen. He changed the lyric at many shows in the past month, and he would again do this in Tokyo in 1979. Playing to the hometown crowd seems to presents a slight tension in the air for the band. Still, there are many incredible moments throughout. Brian's Brighton Rock guitar solo is epic (even incorporating bits of Frère Jacques and Three Blind Mice), and he really shines with his delay technique at the end of Doing All Right. Freddie's voice is in pretty good shape tonight, but he has problems hitting a few of the higher notes, unlike the Bristol and Glasgow shows in previous weeks. Still, he puts in great performances of Doing All Right, White Man, and In The Lap Of The . To lighten things up, Roger often screams things in the background between songs, not to mention his duck quack before '39, heard at this point in the set at many shows during this period. During this time period, Freddie wasn't heard singing “I see a little silhouetto of a man“ on the tape of Bohemian Rhapsody's opera section. In 1975 and '76, Freddie sang this line live, so it was muted on the tape. The band continued to use this version of the tape through November 1978, with the exception of the Earls Court shows because the promo video for the song was shown on the big screens during the opera section. Tonight the band cover Elton John's “Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting“ during the Jailhouse Rock medley. Sporting his dazzling silver lurex outfit, Freddie emerged from a trap door for the second encore, but the videos from both nights unfortunately don't focus on him at that moment. The whole band (especially Roger) are a joy to watch during the medley. At the end of the show, the lights continue to sparkle as the crown descends to its original position. Since Queen used the two video screens on either side of the stage at Earls Court Shortly after the shows, the band must have listened to the recordings and realized how awful John Deacon's voice sounded in the harmonies of Somebody To Love. His microphone would never be turned up again (except for in Buenos Aires '81, but for an entirely different reason). Setlist: 1. Procession // Overture A Day At The Races - 00:00 2. Tie Your Mother Down - 01:35 3. Ogre Battle - 05:30 4. White Queen - 11:27 5. Somebody To Love - 17:50 6. Killer Queen - 23:58 7. Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy - 25:58 8. The Millionaire Waltz - 28:25 9. You're My Best Friend - 31:42 10. Bring Back That Leroy Brown - 33:46 11. Death On Two Legs - 36:06 12. Doing Alright - 40:13 13. Brighton Rock - 46:30 14. '39 - 1:00:14 15. You Take My Breath Away - 1:04:15 16. White Man - 1:08:16 17. The Propets Song - 1:12:45 18. Bohemian Rhapsody - 1:19:40 19. Keep Yourself Alive - 1:25:06 20. Stone Cold Crazy - 1:29:35 21. In The Lap Of The Gods (Revisited) - 1:31:56 22. Now I'm Here - 1:35:31 23. Liar - 1:40:40 24. Lucille - 1:49:18 25. Jailhouse Rock - 1:51:18 26. Saturday Night Alright For Fighting - 1:54:12 27. Stupid Cupid / Be-Bop-A-Lula - 1:56:13 28. Jailhouse Rock (Reprise) - 1:57:30 29. God Save The Queen - 1:58:13
