QUEEN LIVE AT WEMBLEY – 25 YEARS TODAY

The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

Call it fate, but I happened to come across a BBC Queen video on the web last night, made to celebrate the group’s 40^th anniversary. It contained a lot of old footage that I’d not seen before, from early TV appearances to interviews and recording sessions. I surfed the web and noticed that today was the 25^th anniversary of the Queen Live at Wembley concert…

I discovered Queen in 1981, late by many standards, but I was only 12 at the time. Their album Greatest Hits had just been released and I heard it at a friend’s house. Perhaps there was a mix of pre-teen hormones and emotional instability, but it seemed to me that nearly every song stuck a chord.

I was hooked.

Over the next couple of years my relationship with the group and the music developed into an obsession. I owned every album and knew everything there was to know. These were pre-Internet days, so learning meant reading and researching, and the more I knew, the more I wanted to know.

The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

In 1985 there was Live Aid, an event that propelled Queen back into the international spotlight where they would stay until the end. I remember watching the concert on TV, rushing home from my Saturday job in order to catch Freddy, Brian, John and Roger as they took the world by storm. The following Monday all my schoolmates agreed that they’d been the highlight of the event. In a little way I was elevated to cult status along with my heroes.

Then came 1986 and an ad in the London Evening Standard. Queen Live at Wembley, July 11^th and 12^th. Supporting acts were Status Quo, INXS and The Alarm. I begged my Mum to let me borrow her Mastercard so I could call the ticket office when it opened and I spent hours dialing and redialing that number (no “redial” on our old rotary phone). When I got through I was so excited that the guy on the other end had to tell me to calm down…

The day came and I was among the first in line, along with my friend Colin. It was a warm summer day and time stood still. When the gates opened it was a free-for-all, especially in front of the stage where it was standing room only. We ended up about 30 feet from the front.

The opening acts ran for about 5 hours. It was a long day. It was a hot day. The crowd was amazing. Beach balls and inflated condoms were bounced around in the air. There were Mexican waves, shared drinks and a feeling of tension and anticipation that I can only describe as “incredible”.

Evening came and the lights went on. In a shower of light and smoke and cheers my heroes came on stage and I screamed myself hoarse. Opening with “One Vision” and playing everything classic, and some newer tracks (Highlander had just been released and Queen had performed the soundtrack), the concert was too short it seemed. Freddy had us in the palm of his hand. I don’t know how many tens of thousands of us there were, but it didn’t matter; he was singing with and to me. His command of the crowd was legendary and he lived up to it that night. From “Love of My Life” to the acapella impromptu back-and-forth, we were all Queen that night. We clapped through “Radio Gaga” and cheered through “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”. We gasped at “Bohemian Rhapsody” and we all sang “We Are the Champions”.

The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and that evening was over in the blink of an eye. Little did we know but it was the penultimate Queen appearance. There would be just one more concert on that tour, but that night would be immortalized on DVD as the “definitive” Queen concert.

The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long – it wasn’t too long afterwards that rumors about Freddy’s health decline started circulating. For me, there was school and work, so I paid little attention. The music still came. There was queen and there was that amazing concert.

Then I heard “The Show Must Go On” on the radio and felt that something was wrong. Perhaps I was that overzealous fan who hears meaning in everything, but this time there really was.

The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. When Freddy passed away in 1991 he took a big piece of many of us with him. It’s been 25 years since that concert, but it’s still as fresh as it was yesterday and I still get goosebumps when I remember it.

Queen is as big now as they have ever been. Freddy will live forever. But for one night I was part of history in the making and that remains one of the high points of my life.

What has this got to do with marketing? Absolutely nothing. This stuff sells itself.

Miss ya Freddy!