doesn't exist - if you have any footage, please contact me
Line-up
Freddie Mercury (lead vocals, piano, tambourine, acoustic guitar),
Brian May (electric guitar, backing vocals, acoustic guitar, piano),
Roger Taylor (drums, backing vocals),
John Deacon (bass guitar, electric guitar),
Morgan Fisher (keyboards, piano)
Memorabilia
ticket stub (from my own collection)
concert program (from my own collection)
concert program (from my own collection)
concert program (from my own collection)
backstage pass
backstage pass (from my own collection)
Photos
Photos supplied by: Tim de Scally
Articles
Fan stories
Written by Harry Lassche
In 1980 my parents asked what I would like for my 13th birthday. I said that I wanted either a Kiss-LP or a Queen-LP... They gave me the Game album and the funny thing was (although I didn't think of it as "funny" that moment) that they had wrapped it in giftpaper and wrote "Harry" on it with a pencil... I remove the paper, saw the cover with in the right-upper corner "Harry" IMPRINTED in the aluminium-like material!!! Great, thank you guys...
On my birthday in 1982 my parents made that little miss up with a ticket to a Queen-show in Leiden on the 24h of april. Needless to say that I was thrilled... They brought me with their car, dropped me off at the entrance and treated themselves to an evening at the local cinema. I remember wearing this red and white Queen-shawl and a lot of buttons on my jacket, whatever happened to the shawl and buttons I don't know, but I often regret losing them in time.
Anyway, first on the stage is Bow Wow Wow. I really liked them (I had their album at home) but I think I was the only one... While they were playing the audience began throwing all the beercans they could find (back then you could still buy beercans instead of these plastic cups with low-alcohol beer nowadays) and they didn't miss!
The four members of Bow Wow Wow were dancing and ducking and running to avoid the beercans, but at some point both the drummer (who couldn't move too much) and the guitarplayer (with the mohawk) got hit right in the face! I think they never finished their original playlist because it was a quit short performance. 10 minutes after the band had abandoned the stage, the guitarplayer with the mohawk comes walking back on stage with his arms full of beercans. He walks to the front end of the stage and start throwing these beercans back in the audience... Hard!!! I remember Roger Taylor being pissed off at us for never giving these musicians a chance...
After half an hour or so, Queen came on... I was overwhelmed by what I can only remember as one great wall of light, heat and sound... I had never heard so much noise before.... and I loved it!!! The Flash-intro was enough to give me goosebumps, Tie Your Mother Down overwhelmed my ears, Love Of My Life was as beautiful as on the Live Killers-album and Get Down Make Love made me go "High" on the psychedelic synthersizer sounds...
I also remember hoping that David Bowie would come walking on stage to sing his part in Under Pressure, but I realised that that was just the hope of a 15 year old boy on his first concert ever...
In the end of the show, after a short retreat, Roger began playing his drums for We Will Rock You and the crowd went crazy again and so did I... I don't remember all the other individual songs very well, it seemed to me One Great Song of 100 minutes...
Back outside I discovered my parents' car, opened the cardoor, stumbled in and I could see my mother's lips move but my ears were ringing too much to hear her. I wanted to say that but I found out that my voice was gone as well! So I just fell asleep in the back of the car, "drugged" by this future addiction called Queen... Needless to say that the ringing in my ears only wore out after a couple of days. I took a few photographs that night, but unfortunately, after developing, they turned out of poor quality. Oh well, nothing can erase the memory of my first concert ever, that of Queen...