Walking off the stage at Live Aid, Brian May thought Queen’s set could have gone better
Brian May had no idea Live Aid was going to be an all-time set
Aux News Live Aid
Queen’s legendary 20-minute set at 1985's Live Aid would be the first stop on a time machine for many, many people. It is uncontroversially one of the greatest live performances of all time and has been pored over again and again by critics and fans alike. But for Brian May, one of the lucky few to have experienced the magic from a very, very close vantage point, those six songs were simply business as usual—at least in the immediate aftermath.
In a recent Guardian interview, the Queen guitarist was asked if he had any idea that his band had stolen the show when he walked offstage in 1985 after those final notes of “We Are The Champions.”
“Heh! No. Absolutely no inkling whatsoever,” he responded. “You walk off things like that with a great feeling of exhilaration, but you’re also doing the postmortem: ‘Oh, God, I didn’t do that, I wish I’d done that, that went wrong.’”
Despite his—in retrospect very silly, but also deeply relatable—self-reproach at the moment, May did feel something extra special in the air that day. “It did feel different because it wasn’t a Queen audience… yet they’d still react that way,” he said, noting that all 72,000 spectators had bought their tickets before the band was even announced on the bill. (Acts like David Bowie, The Who, U2, and Elton John were also among the benefit concert’s list of headliners.) He continued: “The enormity of that did hit me: the Radio Ga Ga, clap, clap. To see that happening sent big chills up my spine.”
May also spoke to the chill-inducing power Freddie Mercury had over that crowd, especially in the call and response section where the rocker was able to bring tens of thousands of people together with a single two-syllable note. “We didn’t plan it,” he said of the moment. “It was always up to Freddie, whether he wanted to do it, and he just felt confident that it was the right moment. Freddie did have an aptitude, it has to be said—he just could connect. He connected with everybody. As soon as he went, ‘Ey yo,’ that was it—the place imploded. I can remember looking over at Roger, thinking, seems to have worked!” Seems to have worked, indeed.
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I was looking for the Freddie upvote gif, but this is better
If anyone hasn’t seen it, see it. It’s legit as good as you’ve heard.
I watch it every once in a while to remind me of when I was blissfully unaware child of the 80’s.
It is an amazing set. Two of my high school friends went to Europe after their senior year to backpack over the summer. They ended up going to this concert just by chance. They each have agreed that the biggest letdown ever is the Bowie set after watching the Queen performance.
I liked the Bowie set personally but Queen were great. But Queen more than anybody must have made millions and millions from the boost they got in record sales, all off the back of trying to raise millions for famine relief.
And what’s wrong with that?
I can get that. I played in several bands in my 20s — obviously nothing on the scale of Live Aid, honestly it’s laughable to compare my experience playing to almost 200 people with Queen playing to 70K (plus the entire planet watching via broadcast). But yea, sometimes you nail a set and you know it and sometimes you really have no idea how it went or feel like it was just mediocre and you learn later you hit it out of the park. There also times where you’re crashing and burning and know it, or crashing and burning and you don’t know it. In my personal experience copious amounts of drugs and alcohol are responsible for the latter.
At that stage of their career, Brian May would have been used to blowing people away as the regular Queen yardstick. He probably picked up on one flat note or a little buzz of extra feedback somewhere and thought the act was just OK. He obviously wasn’t judging by crowd response!
Thing is, Queen were easily one of the best live bands on the planet at that point and they hadn’t long finished a World tour supporting The Works album. They’d have been in good nick and tight as hell. To them, Live Aid may not have been the best live performance they’d put in in the last couple of months, never mind of all time.
As another somewhat active musician I get what you’re saying. The best performances still feel “meh” a lot of the times. But Brian May was used to flattening people over the course of 1.5-3 hours. I can rip a set of dope hardcore in 20 minutes, but to leave a massive crowd wanting more yet feeling satisfied in 20 minutes is gonna play with your head.
I remember all the buzz being centered around U2 afterwards but nobody’s put it in a movie yet to mythologize it.
That was one story from Live Aid. The other was this one, because it was basically Queen’s totally organic relaunch after years of slumping sales. It was lighting in a bottle, and was legendary WAY before Bohemian Rhapsody hit theatres.
Yeah, it has always been legendary. I remember my first girlfriend gifting me a bootleg CD of the performance. That was in the early 2000s, before YouTube was a thing.
And it got us Queen At Wembley, their follow-up concert the following year. This version contains the vocal warm-up with the crowd, where Freddie is, of course, gracious enough to let them win. Pure showmanship.And go, nothing sounds like the Red Special. Bits of mantelpiece and motorbike kicktand…and a 1947 high-nickel sixpence.
This might be a controversial statement, but fuck AIDS for taking one of the greatest singers of all time from us way too soon.
An incredible talent sorely missed!
And, fuck homophobes. Freddie Mercury. Elton John. George Michael. David Bowie (bi, or whatever). Imagine the gay talent on that stage!
Nothing controversial about that (I’d hope anyway). Shit, what is controversial is that AIDS is easily combated, and cured, by formulations of treatments that were cheap to make even then by pharmaceutical companies, but none did. It only became a priority when it started to spread through the “straight” community.
Yea, and Freddie Mercury too (were we not talking about Robert Reed?)
Also: Fuck Reagan, for pretending It didn’t exist, and therefore funding to find a cure didn’t either in the beginning.
I caught the performance that day (only on TV and radio, sadly) and thought it was amazing – but really, there were so many incredible artists planned or rumored (a huge number of performers on 2 continents, some at the same time! Led Zeppelin reuniting! Black Sabbath reuniting with Ozzy! A rumored reunion of The Beatles with Julian filling in for his father!) that I think I only fully appreciated Queen’s performance in retrospect. Honestly, I remember being most blown away by U2’s performance of “Bad” than anything else that day.
Perhaps in his defense, the show looked and sounded a lot better from the audience’s perspective.
May’s setiment could sum up how a lot of artists that day felt about their set. Phil Collins made history performing in two continents, but wasn’t proud of either appearance. That ties to Led Zeppelin’s disappointing set. Tears For Fears could have been there, but they were beyond exhausted from touring. From what I remember, the story of Live Aid was an insanely ambitious one-day festival, during a time when most great festivals were only in the UK (Glastonbury and Knebworth, particularly). Today, really good festivals are everywhere, and even the Newport Folk Festival has been reborn great. But Live Aid caught a lot of acts out of practice and out of their touring rhythm.Having said that, Queen’s set is arguably the best set of that historic day.
The thing I love most about the Live Aid set is the pacing.
All the performers had a strict 20 minute time limit, so they just played whatever they had in their catalog that could fit within 20 minutes.
Queen, meanwhile, decided to give you the full impact of a Queen concert from beginning to end, just within 20 minutes. The bombastic intro, the audience participation, the big finale, it’s all there.
This is the closest I ever got to a Queen concert. I had tried diligently in the late 70s but I was around 12 at the time and couldn’t get permission. They had such an effect on my life, after We Will Rock You I was never the same. There was only one Freddie and he’ll never be replaced. He was taken too soon.
As a musician that played in a very popular local band, I understand. Some of our best performances, were the ones you walked away from feeling like you could have done better, even though the performance was great, and our fans had a great time. You walk away thinking “why didn’t I stretch out more,” or “I could have played that better.”In now way would I compare our popularity to Queen or anyone else for that matter. The biggest crowd we ever played for was around 2,000, but even that’s a thrill and a half when you’ve got the crowd clapping, engaged, and singing a long. For 16 years, we kept it going, and only hung it up after our favorite weekly venue changed owners and the new owner wanted to go a different direction away from live music. It was a blast while it lasted.
Freddie Mercury certainly one of the greatest if not the greatest! The man was a songwriter a great vocalist, played multiple instruments, and a showman! The man was a quadruple threat! Never see another like him which makes him greater. Glad we have You Tube that allows us to see this iconic performer today!
Happy um 38th anniversary for this performance, i guess
I saw the Live Aid setlist on social media last week and although I had known it was big, I never knew how stacked it was with legendary artists. I wonder if there are even enough big rock acts today to do even one equivalent concert like that, much less two on the same day. Or if it would mostly be bands that were at the first one that are either still active (like U2) or could reunite.
I often forget what a great performer Freddie Mercury was.