A 50 minute version was broadcasted on TV but a much longer video is on the bootleg market - it still misses about five songs.
Video - downloads
Queen Special HQ DVD: linkSikke's YouTube: DSMN link
'39 link
DOTL link
IYCBT linkJapan 2008 Re-Broadcast (NIH & CLTCL): linkThe Queen Special (US broadcast): linkSikke's YouTube (SYW): linkChief Mouse Bonus videos restoration: link
Line-up
Freddie Mercury (lead vocals, piano, tambourine, acoustic guitar),
Brian May (electric guitar, backing vocals, acoustic guitar, piano),
Roger Taylor (drums, lead vocals, backing vocals, timpani, tambourine),
John Deacon (bass guitar)
Memorabilia
ticket stub (from my own collection)
concert program (from my own collection)
concert program (from my own collection)
concert poster
concert poster
concert poster (from my own collection)
backstage pass
backstage pass
Articles
Fan stories
Written by Jane
If I'd have known how special and legendary this gig was to become, I would have taken notes at the time - fortunately this concert was filmed - I've seen two clips of it recently to my absolute delight: this was an incendiary show. I remember seeing it afterwards on TV, severely edited down for TV consumption with all the voiceovers by Peter Ustinov... The footage is great but to be there was simply amazing and I know in my life I will never see another show like this one.
I don't remember anything about getting there but I remember where I sat at Hammersmith, towards the back and to one side, around row S. I'd already seen them at Brighton and marvelled at the latest rig, the Pizza Oven... and then I went with a friend to the Rainbow to see them where we practically hung off the balcony singing - another great gig, where I believe they drilled a hole in the roof(?) for the lighting rig or maybe my memory is failing around this point... Now if I could have gone to another gig on this tour I think it would have been to Purley Tiffany's, which was really tiny and reports were afterwards that they nearly bought the ceiling down, the noise comparable to a jumbo jet taking off - which is so wonderfully rock & roll... and of course, so them!
But I digress... this night was also extremely loud, punishingly loud in fact. Yes I remember Brian's 'Three Blind Mice' solo very well - a quiet bit - but then it got bloody loud, the 3-part digital delays reverberating from the stage monitors to behind me at the back and across to the other side of the venue at the back, then back to the stage, round and round. I remember that vividly.
Another memory from this night: Fred's fight with the monitors during Sheer Heart Attack... the monitors lost. Another great rock & roll moment - possibly the most potent I've ever witnessed - a moment of sheer exhilarating wildness, in a tremendous show. I know I thought, "what the hell's he doing" whilst really laughing and thinking, yeah, I know, because I feel exactly the same - I can't explain it very well to you who are reading this, just to say it again: it was an intense, incendiary night.
A third and last fragment of memory - Fred arrived on the shoulders of Superman for the second encore, We Will Rock You, which was great fun... After depositing Fred, he ran off the stage in a suitably manfully Superman fashion, which I can still see now.
Well, there you are - I'm sorry I don't remember anymore but you got the bits that are indelibly burned into my memory for all time...