Queen live at the Bowl, Milton Keynes, UK (05.06.1982)

Fan stories

Written by Steve_C/Kes

At the time, I was living on the Mull Of Kintyre on the West coast of Scotland. I remember being elated at getting tickets for the last gig of the UK tour. I always tried to get 'last night' tickets, because the band were famous for always going a little more 'over the top' on each of their tour's final nights. So, we drove down from Scotland, which took an eternity with fuel and meal stops, and stayed at the in-law's on the south coast of England. The next day we set for the 'new-town' of Milton Keynes, about 100 miles or so, away. We got there quite early before the gates opened and the weather was unsettled, lightly raining for about five minutes nearly every other hour. The support bands for the day were 'Teardrop Explodes', who had a fairly big hit with a song called 'Reward'. I quite liked Julian Cope and his band, but this WAS a rock gig, and the audience weren't generally as receptive to this brass backed 'new romantic' style of music. The customary sea of lemonade bottles headed towards the stage ensued. Now it was over twenty years ago, and the memory starts to fade a bit after a while, so I'm not sure whether 'Heart' were next on, or 'Joan Jett and the Blackhearts'. Either way, both bands played well, and were most enjoyable. Joan Jett had recently had a very big hit with 'I Love Rock'n'Roll' (very recently covered by Britney Spears), and the crowd loved that one. This was prior to 'Heart' having a major hit in the UK, but they were at that time an established and well known band.

Looking at the stage, there were these items that looked like little vehicles hanging from the gantry, we later found out that these were individual self contained lighting platforms with a guy sat in each directing three spotlights wherever they were required to do so.

The Queen set itself started with an extended backing tape from the intro of Flash Gordon. Most of you will have seen the video of this gig, so I won't labour on about what they played too much. Only that the crowd, as a whole, weren't into the 'Hot Space' numbers that much. Personally, I was watching my favourite band, so I didn't really care what they played, as long as it was theirs. The bits cut out of the video, included an intro to 'Las Palabras De Amor' from Brian, (just before 'Love Of My Life'), though they never actually played the whole song, Brian announced that they were not doing their song of peace tonight. Brian's two-day guitar solo was edited out, as was 'Fat Bottomed Girls', the intro harmonies on this did come across as pretty iffy, and of all songs, they also edited out 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love', much to my disappointment, as I'd heckled Freddie about his ability as a guitarist, and 'stone me', he only went and answered me.

Knebworth '86 was a much better show, but I know I'm lucky enough to have had the honour to be able to compare them.