Artist | Queen + Paul Rodgers |
---|---|
Date | 04.10.2008 |
Venue | TUI Arena |
City | Hanover |
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 | 14000 |
Audio recording | Length: 132:32 Quality: VG [an average audience recording] No download link available |
Video - information | 132 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: Alex Bart, Sarah Watkin
Queen are rocking the north, presented by NDR 2. The rock heroes of the seventies and eighties are back! Seventeen years after the death of their charismatic singer Freddie Mercury, Brian May and Roger Taylor are playing the old Queen classics with singer Paul Rodgers, well-known from Free and Bad Company. The band, with this new line-up, has now recorded its first new album ‘The Cosmos Rocks’. On 4th October 2008 they were in Hanover. Queen were acclaimed with standing ovations by over 11,000 fans in the sold-out TUI arena after over two hours of playing. NDR 2 reporter Dirk Plasberg was there – here is his report:
"It's A Kind Of Magic" – Taylor sang sitting at the second drum kit, assembled on the small stage at the end of the 15-metre-long catwalk, just over the heads of the fans. And they sang along. To turn back time for a few hours with the old hits, revelling in memories. The venue was sold out, the fans between 20 and 60: Three generations doting on one band – not many groups in the world can claim to have that.
"A great show from the old gents", "they have an aura”, "they make music from within and everything fits together – atmosphere, acoustics, mixture of old and new songs – simply an amazing concert experience", raved Queen fans, some of whom had come a long way - from Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Berlin and Thüringen – for this one show.
When Brian May’s guitar roars on ‘I Want To Break Free’, the first chords sound of ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, when Roger Taylor’s drum sets the beat for ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, then the time travelling back to youthful days is started. Brian May sang the song ‘Love of My Life’ first on the acoustic set - the Mercury anthem of the seventies from the LP ‘A Night At The Opera’. And as ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ resounded, Freddie Mercury, faded in on the screen, sang the number with Paul Rodgers singing the close of the emotive song. Past and present blending together.
Queen had only four new songs in the bag from their current CD ‘The Cosmos Rocks’. Apart from the title track they played ‘We Believe’, the single ‘C-Lebrity’, which ridicules the C-list fame of reality TV, and the opener ‘Surf’s Up, School’s Out’, which quickly ran into the 70s song ‘Tie Your Mother Down’. After that were the first fireworks of hits with ’Fat Bottomed Girls’, ‘I Want It All’, ‘I Want to Break free’ and ‘Another One Bites The Dust’. Those were the rhythms that made the fans ecstatic.
The middle part was marked by instrumental solos – Brian May held forth in the guitar solo, Roger Taylor also performed on drums. Too long a break to catch one’s breath for the hit fetishists, a treat in the other direction for acoustic freaks. Paul Rodgers played his part in an unspectacular way tonight; reserved at times, consciously not behaving as the dazzling front man because he knows about the myth of Freddie Mercury whose songs he sings with reverence and feeling. He is aware that he cannot simply replace the monument. It is treading a thin line that is emotionally not easy for the singer and for the fans of long-standing. Original and Imitation? Paul Rodgers does not want to be a replacement; he would lose face.
Many fans respect the new Queen singer for his performance: "He’s taking on a role appropriate to the circumstance – he’s a fantastic singer, accepting and interpreting the songs in his own way. As you can sense Freddie between every guitar riff, he’s always there during the concert. And that’s simply beautiful", said Ines from Thüringen. And Frank from Osnabrück thinks that Paul Rodgers does not rank behind Freddie in anything – he is a worthy successor, even if you cannot replace Freddie Mercury.
At the close Queen accelerated once more. The last three quarters of an hour belonged to ‘Radio Ga-Ga’, ‘The Show Must Go On’, ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, the Free classic ‘All Right Now’ and ‘We Will Rock You’. After 25 songs and 2 hours 15 minutes it was over. Standing ovations from the fans. You couldn’t have more praise for the rock veterans.
God Save The Queen – even from herself: Queen and Paul Rodgers were rocking in the sold-out TUI-Arena in Hanover because…The Show Must Go On.
It was thundering and whirring, and a heavy storm descended on the projection at the back of the stage. Then the stars circulated, the planets flew and the guitar blasted off - the Cosmos rocked.
‘Queen & Paul Rodgers’ are on the ‘Cosmos Rocks’ tour through Europe, stopping off on Saturday at the TUI arena, Hanover. A crowd of 11,000 wanted to know what the two remaining members of the British super group Queen, Brian May (61) and Roger Taylor (59) together with the hired musician and successor to Freddie Mercury Paul Rodgers would make of Queen’s legacy.
Paul Rodgers (58), former singer of ‘Free’ and ‘Bad Company’, has never made a secret of the fact that he was not a second Freddie. He is the sincere rocker with blues in his voice, not an exalted Diva; he lacks the desire to pose and be emotive. On top of that, bassist John Deacon has long since parted company with the whole business. (As Brian May described the relationship with their former band member: “He lets us be and speaks with our accountants rather than with us”).
But can the band still be called Queen? The honest answer would be no; even May and Taylor know that. But a new start without the old songs? Unthinkable. The show must go on! So they continue to make use of their own history, but at least there is – apart from the musical ‘We Will Rock You’ guaranteeing the royalties – a new album, ‘The Cosmos Rocks’, from which, however, hardly anything was played this evening.
People do, after all, want to hear other stuff: ‘Tie Your Mother Down’, ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’, ‘Another One Bites the Dust’, ‘I Want It All’, ‘I Want to Break Free’. And so they came, the old songs, exactly in that order, mighty and grandiose, rich and full, but also a little ponderous. Yet May’s guitar sings just as creamily as before, and his tresses are still just as long and black as we have known them.
Rodgers and May romped the catwalk to the small stage in the middle of the auditorium, whenever possible, up and down again; light and video effects were opulent and inventive, the sound was loud – but the great feelings did not arise at first. It was too banal, what there was to hear – a proper rock band with a proper singer, though without the glitz and razzmatazz.
May, seizing his acoustic guitar, sat right at the front and asked in a theatrical way: “Please sing with me ‘Love of my Life’ – for Freddie”, a tear-jerker to commemorate the Queen front man who died in 1991. Then drummer Roger Taylor had his drum kit assembled at the front and sang, ‘I’m in Love With my Car’, with expression and grace. May stood next to him beaming, and suddenly there was an enthralling rock song from two older gents, full of spirit. Even the snappy ‘It’s a Kind of Magic’ was sung by Taylor, and you ask yourself, “Why doesn’t he do that more often?” May let a brisk solo loose for that one, and suddenly we were enjoying ourselves in the arena in a downright queeny fashion.
It was going up and down, back and forth. The majestic and the everyday were conjoined. Rodgers was able to sing ‘Bad Company’, one of his old blues-rock hits, before May started his particular kind of a solo trip. Polyphone echo cascades and spherical ribbons of melody were gliding through the house, causing amazement - and there, there he was all of a sudden – Freddie! Only on video, but who cares?
He would have liked what Brian did there. ‘Radio Gaga’ acclaimed by 11,000 pairs of outstretched arms, led us up to the home straight, where ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ and ‘The Show Must Go On’ were waiting. And finally he came again; he whom one was always hearing, much as Paul Rodgers was also in front twirling at the microphone stand: Freddie Mercury. The band played ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, in memoriam, to the video-recording – up to the baroque middle part, which was illustrated with the most splendid and flashy pictures of Mercury and at which the ‘real’ (or is it imitation?) band was silent.
For the finale it could only be the two greatest triumphs of Queen - ‘We Will Rock You“ and ‘We are the Champions’. Two and a quarter hours of rock history were over, spectacularly celebrated and worn to a frazzle at the same time. God Save The Queen – even from herself.