Artist | Queen + Paul Rodgers |
---|---|
Date | 02.10.2008 |
Venue | SAP Arena |
City | Mannheim |
Country | Germany |
Setlist | 01. Intro: Cosmos Rockin' [tape] 02. Surf's Up... School's Out 03. Tie Your Mother Down 04. Fat Bottomed Girls 05. Another One Bites The Dust 06. I Want It All 07. I Want To Break Free 08. C-lebrity 09. Seagull 10. Love Of My Life (Brian on vocals) 11. '39 (Brian on vocals) 12. Bass solo (Danny + Roger) 13. Drum Solo 14. I'm In Love With My Car (Roger on vocals) 15. A Kind Of Magic (Roger on vocals) 16. Say It's Not True (Roger, Brian and Paul on vocals) 17. Bad Company 18. We Believe 19. Guitar Solo 20. Bijou (Freddie's studio vocals) 21. Last Horizon 22. Radio Ga Ga 23. Crazy Little Thing Called Love 24. The Show Must Go On 25. Bohemian Rhapsody 26. Cosmos Rockin' 27. All Right Now 28. We Will Rock You 29. We Are The Champions 30. God Save The Queen |
Support band | none or unknown |
Attendance | 11500 |
Audio recording | Length: 136:33 Quality: VG+ [a very enjoyable recording] No download link available |
Video - information | 135 minutes, amateur recording. |
Line-up | Paul Rodgers (lead vocals, acoustic guitar) Brian May (electric guitar, acoustic guitar, lead/backing vocals) Roger Taylor (drums, lead/backing vocals) Jamie Moses (electric guitar, acoustic guitar, backing vocals) Danny Miranda (bass guitar, backing vocals) Spike Edney (keyboards, backing vocals) |
Photos supplied by: Wilki Amieva, Sarah Watkin
Whether it would be a requiem or a resurrection celebration: a question which may have arisen for purists before this concert, and they are clearly in the minority. Most of the well over ten thousand present at the Queen and Paul Rodgers concert in the sold out SAP arena were simply just happy that it offered them a chance they had never at all bargained for: Once more to bawl and stamp to ‘We Will Rock You’ in original version; once more to close their eyes and melt in sheer bliss with ‘Love Of My Life’. And once more, after more than two hours of a fascinating concert, to stretch their clenched fists into the air, feeling like Dietmar Hopp if 1899 Hoffenheim* have just won the German Championship – and sing, at the top of their voices, ‘We Are The Champions’.
Queen are true Champions. There is no doubt about it after this concert. They have broken through the iron rule ‘They never come back’, which states, ‘If you were once right at the top and dropped out, you’ll never manage to come back at the same level as before’. More than that: Queen have made the impossible possible.
As in 1991, when singer Freddie Mercury died of AIDS, it was perfectly clear: That was the end of the band. Queen without Freddie – that was like the Rolling Stones without Mick Jagger, like the Doors without Jim Morrison; possible in theory, but completely unthinkable on a practical level. The charismatic Mercury had made too great a mark on this band.
Without him Queen would not be able to continue to hold their own – at best as a cheap copy of themselves, perhaps.
For well over two hours, what blustered over the stage of the SAP arena was everything – only a cheap copy it was not. On the contrary, it was rock music with the same intensity that formerly characterised this band. Perhaps with no longer quite the same vigour as back then – we have all got older. But, to make up for that, with an unconditional devotion, with a passion that was almost tangible - and with the accumulated experience of the almost 40 years which the old gents have by now spent in the music business.
‘Another One bites the Dust’, ‘Crazy little thing Called Love’, ‘Tie Your Mother Down’: the songs that made the band famous were almost all to be heard this evening. Okay: Singer Paul Rodgers is not Freddie Mercury, of course. That granted, here is the astonishing thing – he does not have to be him in any way - the Queen magic is still there just the same. Mercury was Mercury, Rodgers is Rodgers: He delivers the songs he commands, as an experienced rock singer with his wonderful blues voice, with absolute brilliance. Initially he does not touch others, like the ballads, at all. These were then taken on by guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, both amazingly good singers as well, or by the audience. In this way, ten thousand sang the chorus of ‘Love of my Life’ which Brian May sang actually with almost as much touching beauty as Freddie Mercury once did – that really has almost something sacred about it.
Apart from that there was a lot of scope for Brian May’s guitar solos which sound more powerful than ever; for Roger Taylor’s percussion escapades with which he delighted the audience for almost 15 minutes – and thankfully also for Paul Rodger’s own music.
‘Bad Company’, the song after which he named his second band in 1973, became one of the absolute highlights of the evening; and the Free hit ‘All Right Now’ heard once more, is also not bad – the song is over four decades old – it came off as if it had been composed only yesterday.
It has many facets, this new Queen show – some here or there even bordering on kitsch; for instance, all of a sudden after a wonderful guitar solo, Freddie Mercury is actually brought in from the screen and allowed to sing ‘Bijou’. We could have been spared this tear-jerker as well. On the other hand the whole concert showed that Queen manage Freddie’s musical legacy more than worthily – and have actually found a well-nigh perfect form in which to present it live.
No, it was not a requiem. It was a true resurrection. Queen are back again – Long live the Queen!
* As per www.whoswho.de, Dietmar Hopp is a sports-promoting businessman on the board of the software company SAP, who supported both the building of the SAP arena in Mannheim where the concert took place, and for several years also the football team 1899 Hoffenheim which succeeded in entering the first division of the Bundesliga in 2008.
The mis-spelling ‘Freddy’ throughout the article has been corrected by the translator.