This is Queen the greatest, and in this episode
we celebrate Queen's now legendary 1986 stadium tour of Europe –
The Magic Tour.
The Magic Tour would be the biggest series of stadium concerts of Queen’s career,
and although the band had played vast venues before –
there was a sense that this tour would take it to another level…
[Roger Taylor] “The thing we are all looking forward to most at the moment is
this European tour.”
[John Deacon] “And that’s quite a commitment from us in a way, because
Freddie’s sometimes a little reluctant to go on the road these days.”
[Freddie Mercury] “It’s been a while since we actually did a tour.
It’s very, very exhausting for me to do what I have to do.
The stages are getting bigger and everything, and you know
I just like to feel that I’m perfectly fit to do these shows,
and not just say ‘yes I’ll do it.”
[John Deacon] “We’re starting on it now really,
ideas for the staging, the lighting and that sort of thing.”
[Interviewer] “This particular tour you’re doing,
you’re taking a hundred and sixty foot stage,
which is the biggest ever constructed for a rock act?”
[Roger Taylor] “Yes, it’s an absolutely massive stage.
It’s really been designed to cope with the places that we’re playing in.
To get the optimum out of those places.”
[Brian May] “We usually go in someplace like a film studio
which has this big, open… like an aircraft hanger I suppose…
and just set everything up and put everything through its paces.”
[Brian May] “Because it’s not enough for us to be rehearsed,
we make sure every single lamp, every wire is set up
so everything’s going to be given a run through,
so all the bugs can be ironed out before we get on tour.
It’s like a full dress rehearsal.”
[John Deacon] “We’ve been playing for so many years now,
we do feel very relaxed playing in quite big gigs as well really.”
[Roger Taylor] “Strangely enough, when you’re used to large audiences,
100,000 is almost less terrifying in some ways, than 5000.”
[Roger Taylor] “It’s a strange thing with our band,
the bigger the audience the better it seems to work.
The audience contact seems to be better with the larger audiences.”
[Brian May] “Once you’re on tour, I like to get on and do it.
I don’t like to be hanging around on tour.
I like to get in as much as you can
because you can build up this great rhythm,
and you get into the mood and the feel of playing,
you play better each night, I think.
If you see us at the end of the tour,
we are a lot different from what we are at the beginning of the tour,
because we’re in that rhythm.”
[Brian May] “I suppose it’s almost like being an athlete,
you just work on yourself and you have nothing else to think about,
except doing your bit for that two hours as well as you can.”
[Freddie Mercury] “There was a trend a few years ago,
with the punk movement and whatever, where they said
“Oh, we want to play to the small audiences
because we’re being intimate, and all that.”
Load of rubbish.
I mean everybody who wants to be a star wants to play to the biggest audiences.”
And as we will see in part 2,
over the final few weeks of the tour, Queen would perform
three of their biggest and most iconic gigs –
demonstrating why they are regarded as the greatest live act.