This has, somehow, bugged me for a while. Why didn't they include a Deacon song in the setlist when they did Live Aid? I Want To Break Free was a big hit in the previous year, for example. Or Another One Bites The Dust could have been played instead of CLTCL. I guess they added Hammer to Fall because the set 'needed' a rocker.
I think John was too modest to even bring this up.
Thoughts?
I think they were very aware that they were being broadcast globally and maybe Break Free wouldn't have been the best thing for the America audience.
I think they struck a clever balance of old a classic, Bo Rhap, crowd pleasing up to date album hit Radio GaGa a rocker which was also from the current album Hammr To Fall (a reminder of there roots) "Crazy" big hit and huge in the states, maybe they could have played Bites The Dust instead, another huge hit but in a short set maybe CLTCL worked better. Then the two stadium sing along classics.
They squeezed what felt like a real Queen set into 20 mins, even including a Freddie sing along. It would be hard to imagine anything working better despite what we might have personally wanted to here.
I think John, like the rest, could argue his point if he felt justified. Maybe he felt they had the right songs for the gig too.
cmsdrums wrote:
If anything could have been swapped out it should have been Hammer To Fall, but as the most recent single it can be explained.
You must be MAD! EVERYBODY SANG HAMMER TO FALL AT LIVE AID - IT WAS THEIR BIGGEST MOMENT!
HAVEN'T YOU SEEN THE MOVIE????!
.... (wait for it. ....wait for it...)
To me the only other song they could've performed was Under Pressure (and possibly with David Bowie though he didn't like the song for a few years).
Another One Bites The Dust and I Want To Break Free are inappropriate for different reasons (the lyrics for the first and the second for its acception in certain countries).
The only other big songs they could've performed (judging by The Works tour setlist) are Killer Queen, Somebody To Love and It's A Hard Life though the first two were part of a medley at this point so would not work - you'd have to split Bohemian Rhapsody and Radio Ga Ga but these two songs work really well together and the latter is a hard song for Freddie to sing (especially when his doctor advised him not to sing at the concert). Also would Freddie want to play a song which would mean him singing from a piano for most of a song? Probably not.
Having a rocker in the setlist is extremely important for Queen as they are a "rock" band. The only other credible song in my opinion is Now I'm Here but because that song isn't as well known as Hammer To Fall. Despite Hammer To Fall a minor hit like Now I'm Here would've been more familiar with audiences as it would've been heared on radio playlists so more audience would recognise it.
In my humble opinion Queen had the best setlist as it had a bit of everything:
- Throwback/oldie song everybody knows and loves (Bohemian Rhapsody)
- Audience participation (Radio Ga Ga, We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions)
- A heavy rocker (Hammer To Fall)
- A familiar hit song always on the radio and fun live (Crazy Little Thing Called Love)
To me the most important thing about a show like Live Aid is audience participation something which will entertain audiences on a global song. And Queen had that in three of the six songs. A power ballad in English would not have the same effect in somewhere like Turkey or India.
P.S. it would've been nice to hear Queen sing Under Pressure with David Bowie - the only likely change this would have ever happened.
The live aid set list was basically the ending of the live show they toured for The Works
They knew beforehand that they worked together and how to impress!
Dim wrote:
Hammer to fall is very cold war song. Also it is antinuclear song. It is the hard rocker for the set list. I really enjoyed it.
Yeah. It's just kinda repetitive
I REALLY enjoyed the version BM did with Paul Rodgers...the slow build made it a bit stronger for me for some reason beyond novelty.
But yeah. I was just jabbing that in the film everybody's singing along (horse shit, right? )
ANAGRAMER wrote:
The live aid set list was basically the ending of the live show they toured for The Works
They knew beforehand that they worked together and how to impress!
That's what I thought with The Magic Tour, all six Live Aid songs were performed within the last seven songs in the Magic Tour shows (three of them main set closers and the other three encore numbers).
Dim wrote:
Hammer to fall is very cold war song. Also it is antinuclear song. It is the hard rocker for the set list. I really enjoyed it.
It's a song, like Dead On Time, about mortality. One of the verses is framed by Cold War references, but that reflects the time it was written in rather than its overall subject.
People should stop analysing these songs and just enjoy the music and the mind blowing performance from the band and Freddie.
It was "Live Aid" and was a chance for the band to show how professional and versatile they were to the world.
Not even was there no Deacon song in the Live Aid setlist, THE MAN himself wasn’t even present there. It is rumoured that the bassist during Queens set on Live aid was a try-out version of the inflatable John Deacon doll, that was a year later used during the Magic Tour of 1986.