An audience with the Queen

IT is 40 years in November since I bought my first Queen album, A Night at the Opera, having heard the remarkable Bohemian Rhapsody on Kenny Everett’s show on Radio 1. Over the next year or so I added to this collection with the first two albums, Queen, Queen II and also Sheer Hear Attack which had been released at the end of 1974. Over the next 30 years the remaining 20 releases on vinyl, cassette or CD were also added.

To say, therefore, that I have been a Queen fan for most of my life is perhaps an understatement and when I saw that they were coming to Leeds Arena I knew I just had to be there. Following Freddie Mercury’s untimely death in November 1991 nobody thought the band would ever play again but they reformed in 2005 with Paul Rogers on lead vocal for a world tour culminating in 2008 with the Nelson Mandela concert in Hyde Park.

More recently however, they have teamed up with Adam Lambert, a runner up in the USA’s American Idol in 2009 and someone with a remarkable voice. Roger Taylor recently said about him: “He’s sensational. He has this amazing range, ‘cause Freddie had a great range. Adam can really cover it. He’s an extraordinary singer and a real talent. I feel he fits into our sort of theatricality. It is very comfortable.”

From the first bars of One Vision which opened the show until the final encore of We are the Champions the capacity 13,500 audience at Leeds Arena were treated to two and a half hours of sheer entertainment. With 32 dates of a world tour with Queen already under his belt, Lambert looked entirely at home. As for the two remaining original members, the now-grey-haired Brian May on guitar and Roger Taylor on drums, both now over 65, they looked like they were having possibly the most fun they’d had in years.

To give Adam a rest at times during the show, which ran continuously without a break, Brian & Roger indulged in prolonged instrumentals showing they are definitely still at the top of their game as far as rock music is concerned.

Roger Taylor was accompanied by his son Rufus who was the second percussionist for the evening and whom I had seen in the band for the We Will Rock You musical when it was at the Grand Theatre in Leeds in November 2011. The interaction between father and son on this was absolutely brilliant. The instrumental line-up was completed by bassist Neil Fairclough and Spike Edney on keyboards. They also performed acoustically on ’39 with May on lead vocals, and still one of my favourite songs from A Night at the Opera.

The stage was suitably dressed for a spectacular show, flanked by giant video screens with another set inside an enormous Q, a long runway out into the audience and two side platforms with steps leading up to them used to great effect by Lambert and May.

All the usual Queen hits were performed, Somebody to Love, Tie Your Mother Down, Bicycle Race/Fat Bottomed Girls, Save Me, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, The Show Must Go On and of course the inevitable Bohemian Rhapsody.

Brian May, seated at the end of the runway, performed Freddie Mercury’s beautiful composition Love of My Life, the song he and Mercury used to perform as a pair, until suddenly footage of Mercury singing it live appeared on the giant screen behind. For a moment, it felt like he was there. And again, in Bohemian Rhapsody we were treated to a vocal duet of Lambert and Mercury performing together showing how well Adam’s vocals compete with the great man himself.

As a performance, it was truly empowering, and whilst we know no one will ever be able to properly replace Freddie Mercury as the ultimate front man and outlandish performer, there is no one who could better fill the master’s shoes and put on such a splendid performance as Adam Lambert.

John Burland