Queen: The Complete Works (104 page)

What was most significant about this tour was the support act. Queen soon discovered that Thin Lizzy, fronted by Phil Lynott, had every intention of upstaging them, though the reviews were usually in Queen’s favour. A rivalry was cooked up in the press, but Lizzy’s guitarist, Scott Gorham, maintained it was a friendly rivalry: “A lot of bands get paranoid about not letting the support act upstage them, and to keep you
down they won’t give you a soundcheck, etc. But we didn’t get any of that from Queen. They said right away, ‘Here’s the PA. Now you’ll need soundchecks and lights, and what else?’ Together we had the attitude that we would set out as a British attack to conquer America. Of course we were two very different bands. Lizzy was a sort of punk band with street cred, whereas Queen were very polished and sophisticated, so you see there was no competitiveness on that score.” Appropriately, considering that 1977 marked Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee, the tour was called the Queen Lizzy (geddit?) North American tour, though this wouldn’t happen until later: Cheap Trick and Head East were the support acts for the first few dates.

Unfortunately, Queen were touring during one of the coldest winters North America had ever encountered. Following the Chicago show, the band were due to perform at Hara Arena in Dayton, Ohio on 29 January, but the tankers transporting fuel to heat the arena were stranded with frozen diesel tanks. Ever the consummate professionals, Queen offered to play regardless, but officials decided to cancel the show. Two other dates – in Sacramento and Fresno, on 8 and 9 March respectively – were cancelled, reportedly due to problems with Freddie’s voice.

This tour saw Queen playing to larger audiences, though the transfer from concert halls to arenas and stadia wouldn’t come into full effect until later in the year. The band did get to perform at the legendary Madison Square Garden during this tour, the first – and certainly not the last – time they would appear there. Not every night was a massive success, though: due to the frigid temperatures, audiences were often a little more riled up than usual; in Chicago, they were downright irate. During ‘The Millionaire Waltz’, a dozen eggs were thrown on stage, resulting in Brian slipping and injuring his tailbone. The band stopped mid-performance and left the stage, conferring to continue regardless of the disruption, and came back on fifteen minutes later. Freddie angrily admonished the audience (“Listen, you motherfuckers, we don’t have to play for you if we don’t want to! But for the other 99% of you who want to see the show, we’ll continue.”) and the band picked up where they left off. Brian was in considerable pain, though, and the only encore of the night was ‘Now I’m Here’.

As usual, reviews of the tour were mixed, and while the audience reaction was always wild, critical notices weren’t. A reviewer in Dallas missed the point entirely: “Considering that Queen is one of the most popular shows around – and you certainly couldn’t argue with the enthusiasm of the crowd at Moody Coliseum last Friday – it seemed odd that the best this third-generation rock band could come up with was an array of rock cliches from the first generation ... [This] could be easily forgiven, of course, if the performers indicated it was all in fun like, say, Kiss does. On the contrary, Queen not only took themselves dead seriously, but appeared to mock the crowd for doing likewise.” The
Montreal Gazette
was downright savage. “Queen’s sound was even more offensive because the group has been hyped as something more dynamic. One sensed that the only way their ‘music’ is to be performed night after night is by sheer memorization. The changes of tempo are so quick – and so facile. There was nothing there but mundane technique, the kind that can be rehearsed and repeated ad nauseum ... Queen is propelled by the sound of its own success. Thus there is flashing, blinking lighting, phoney smoke and all the easily purchased gimmicks one comes to expect from a ‘glitter rock’ ensemble ... Audiences are baited to be carried away by the clockwork energy of performance which is why it hard matters whether Queen turns it on or not.”

The New York Times
was complimentary, if reluctantly: “If commerciality is your criterion, it’s hard to complain; Queen has sold a lot of records. But live, the group rocks out in a more direct manner, and the virtue of on-the-spot wizardry to recommend them. Within the not always congenial context of this kind of artsified progressive rock, Queen gives a good show, slick and solidly crafted.” Boston’s
The Tech
also had kind words: “Queen showed a sell out crowd at the Boston Garden Wednesday night that their concerts can be as amusing and elegant as their studio work. From the first rush of fog to ‘God Save The Queen’, their show was an impressive combination of technical wizardry and wryly sophisticated theatrics.”

Typically, the West Coast was the most impressed with Queen’s show, with the
LA Times
raving, “The band’s lavishly-designed, strikingly executed show confirmed its place at the forefront of the third wave of the English rock groups. Queen has more power than the Electric Light Orchestra, more accessibility than Genesis, more range than Bad Company ... Queen has the basic rock stylebook down so pat that it has even picked up some of the pretentiousness and excesses of other bands. But none of the familiar patterns has kept the band from asserting its own identity. The group
may lean on various proven styles, but it always gives the music a distinctive touch.” In Seattle, the reviewer was positively overjoyed with the show: “It was majestic. It was regal, full of pomp and circumstance. And it was gaudy, mad and make-believe. Which is as it should have been, for last night at the Arena a capacity audience was in the court of Queen, the delightfully clever but slightly barmy British rock group. The group is known for its high energy, wall-of-sound, full-force performances and last night it delivered. It was a lot like other Queen shows here but stronger, more forceful than before. It was full tilt rock ‘n’ roll, ninety minutes of intense, draining, hard-driving music.”

Queen were so taken with the reception that they would return to the States for a second full-length tour in November, this time with a completely different show.

A DAY AT THE RACES EUROPEAN TOUR

8 TO 19 MAY 1977

Musicians:
John Deacon
(bass guitar, triangle on ‘Killer Queen’)
, Brian May
(guitar, vocals, banjo on ‘Bring Back That Leroy Brown’, acoustic guitar on ‘’39’)
, Freddie Mercury
(vocals, piano, tambourine)
, Roger Taylor
(drums, vocals, bass drum and tambourine on ‘’39’)

Repertoire:
‘Intro’, ‘Tie Your Mother Down’, ‘Ogre Battle’, ‘White Queen (As It Began)’, ‘Somebody To Love’, ‘Killer Queen’ / ‘Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy’ / ‘The Millionaire Waltz’ / ‘You’re My Best Friend’ / ‘Bring Back That Leroy Brown’, ‘Death On Two Legs (Dedicated to......’, ‘Sweet Lady’, ‘Brighton Rock’, ‘’39’, ‘You Take My Breath Away’, ‘White Man’, ‘The Prophets Song’, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, ‘Stone Cold Crazy’, ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, ‘In The Lap Of The Gods... Revisited’, ‘Now I’m Here’, ‘Liar’, ‘Jailhouse Rock’, ‘God Save The Queen’, ‘Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting’, ‘Stupid Cupid’, ‘Be Bop A Lula’, ‘Doing All Right’

Itinerary:

May 8: Ice Stadium, Stockholm, Sweden

May 10: Scandinavium, Gothenburg, Sweden

May 12: Broendby Hall, Copenhagen, Denmark

May 13: Congresscentrum, Hamburg, Germany

May 14: Jahrunderhalle, Frankfurt, Germany

May 16: Philipshalle, Düsseldorf, Germany

May 17: Ahoy Hall, Rotterdam, Holland

May 19: Sporthalle, Basle, Switzerland

Queen hadn’t toured Europe since December 1974, and a lot had changed in the intervening two-and-a-half years. In order to ensure decent ticket sales, the band scheduled a brief tour through Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland and Switzerland, performing eight shows in eight cities over a two-week period. The set list remained largely unchanged except for the addition of ‘Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy’ to the medley, though John Deacon had reported in the spring issue of the annual fan club magazine that “We hope to include material from our forthcoming album, if we have time to rehearse it well enough before we hit the road.” It’s unlikely that he was referring to ‘Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy’ and ‘Death On Two Legs (Dedicated to......’, both performed for the first time on these dates, so that begs the question: did the band record any material during the two-month break between dates in North America and Europe?

The band were relieved when tickets for the eight shows sold out reasonably quickly, with the penultimate show in Rotterdam (their second ever appearance in Holland) selling out within an hour of going on sale. Following the show, the band appeared at an EMI reception held aboard a boat in which Queen were rewarded with 38 silver, gold and platinum discs for record sales in the country. The tour concluded in Basle on 19 May, and the band had only a brief period in which to relax before moving on to a tour of their home country.

A DAY AT THE RACES UK TOUR

23 MAY TO 7 JUNE 1977

Musicians:
John Deacon
(bass guitar, triangle on ‘Killer Queen’)
, Brian May
(guitar, vocals, banjo on ‘Bring Back That Leroy Brown’, acoustic guitar on ‘’39’)
, Freddie Mercury
(vocals, piano, tambourine)
, Roger Taylor
(drums, vocals, bass drum and tambourine on ‘’39’)

Repertoire:
‘Intro’, ‘Tie Your Mother Down’, ‘Ogre Battle’, ‘White Queen (As It Began)’, ‘Somebody To Love’, ‘Killer Queen’ / ‘Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy’ / ‘The Millionaire Waltz’ / ‘You’re My Best Friend’ / ‘Bring Back That Leroy Brown’, ‘Death On Two Legs (Dedicated to......’, ‘Sweet Lady’, ‘Brighton Rock’, ‘’39’, ‘You Take My Breath Away’, ‘White Man’, ‘The Prophets Song’, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, ‘Stone Cold Crazy’, ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, ‘In The Lap Of The Gods... Revisited’, ‘Now I’m Here’, ‘Liar’, ‘Jailhouse Rock’, ‘God Save The Queen’, ‘Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting’, ‘Stupid
Cupid’, ‘Be Bop A Lula’, ‘Doing All Right’, ‘I’m A Man’, ‘Mannish Boy’, ‘Lucille’, ‘Procession’

Itinerary:

May 23/24: Hippodrome, Bristol

May 26/27: Gaumont, Southampton

May 29: Bingley Hall, Stafford

May 30/31: Apollo Theatre, Glasgow

June 2/3: Empire Theatre, Liverpool

June 6/7: Earl’s Court Arena, London

The set list for Queen’s first tour in the UK since September 1976 hadn’t changed from the European leg, though ‘I’m A Man’, ‘Mannish Boy’ and ‘Lucille’ all made rare appearances; the
Queen II
track ‘Procession’ replaced the
A Day At The Races
guitar intro as the opening music played on the PA system for the two Earl’s Court Arena shows. In Greg Brooks’
Queen Live: A Concert Documentary
, he states that ‘Mull Of Kintyre’ was performed during the Liverpool concerts in June, but this is improbable, given that Paul McCartney and Denny Laine wouldn’t even write the song until August.

This tour saw Queen, and especially Freddie, at their most regal, obviously taking pride in being back on home turf after travelling to all corners of the world. The two final dates at Earl’s Court Arena were treated as the band’s true homecoming: Led Zeppelin had sold out five nights there two years earlier, and it was seen at the time as the place for a band to play. They pulled out all the stops for the last night of their UK tour, with a brand new lighting rig in the shape of a crown – an appropriate gesture, considering it was Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee that year. Realizing the significance, the band recorded and filmed both shows with the intention of releasing the result as their first live album and video, but the idea was dropped, ostensibly so that Queen could work on
News Of The World
instead.

This marked the height of Queen’s total disconnect from the press. With punk and New Wave displacing the old wave, one-time supporters of Queen suddenly became detractors, and took every opportunity to rake the band over the coals. At least
Record Mirror
’s review of the Southampton show was positive: “As stage super egos go, [Freddie’s] must be one of the largest – but why not? He’s got a great voice and he’s one of the very best rock pianists around ... After kicking off with ‘Tie Your Mother Down’, Queen trod a little uncertainly at first with some dangerous lapses in the show’s pace and mood. Happily, about two-thirds of the way through the two hour show they went into ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and suddenly everything clicked. From then on the atmosphere was electric. The concert had crossed that invisible barrier that separates the good from the great and became the kind of evening no one would forget for a long time.” The Earl’s Court review, too, from the same magazine was positive: “Mercury, his face one minute angelic and sweet, the next evil and dark, spits the lyrics [to ‘Stone Cold Crazy’] out at you. Dry ice billows over the stage floor as they move into overdrive for ‘In The Lap Of The Gods’ and the place is filled with May’s guitar work as he displays his supersonic style. Mercury moves to the front of the stage tossing red and white carnations out to the tentacles of hands that plead for them and him. Then with one more almighty flash, the stage is left empty – they’ve gone! More, more, more, more and hand clapping gathers momentum, screams and shouts echo around the gigantic hall as they step back on to the stage. Launching into ‘Liar’, May, his face streaming sweat, pushes out a guitar solo that many a person would be envious of.”

Not all was rosy, though.
Melody Maker
was especially vicious of the band’s performance at the Bristol Hippodrome: “On the evidence of this gig, at least, there was little to suggest that [the band] still tackled their set with any serious degree of commitment or genuine enthusiasm, with the result that their much-vaunted effects seemed wholly excessive, and their music hollow and wimpish. A case of innumerable layers of gloss and veneer wrapped around a band doing little more than going through the motions, an experience that’s about as entertaining as a knee in the groin.”
The Times
was dismissive of Earl’s Court: “I had hoped to fly in the face of fashion and give last night’s concert an enthusiastic notice. It turned out to be one of those events that justify the emergence of the new wave bands, the triumph of technology over music. Queen have long been accused of being mere technicians and certainly their exploitation of a phenomenal barrage of equipment was quite breathtaking ... But, as befits our national condition, everything was over inflated. The lighting, although magnificently timed and controlled, began to take over the music; the barrage of smoke bombs, Freddie Mercury’s costume changes, including one that must have been a Shirley Bassey reject, and his cavorting round the stage, all seemed imposed on the songs to make them more entertaining ... Through
all the noise, which for this hall was reasonably good, and all the superficial excitement, I felt there was a coldness on stage, not to the performance, but to the music itself, as if this was just another way to fill an evening.”