Contentious viewpoint on Live Aid...it's not perfect.

Might have made a good companion to "Do they know it's Christmas" at the end.😉

Often the most popular shows of any band become overrated. Happens with Queen- many cite Montreal to be their best show of all time, when really- it's not even the best show of that year. Even in strictly objective terms, it has one of the weaker setlists.

My point with that is to say, I've listened to every single circulating Queen concert and I strongly disagree with this take. In fact, the MORE I learned about Queen's live history, the more amazing Live Aid seems.

First off, I think the setlist is perfect. There isn't a single song I would change. You have to keep in mind, now Hammer To Fall may seem like a strange choice over a Queen staple like Tie Your Mother Down or Now I'm Here, but you need to remember the context of the day. That was one of the singles for their most recent album at the time. It was fresh in the public conscience- atleast more fresh than Tie Your Mother Down, which was an 8 year old song. (Can YOU remember many songs you heard on the radio 8 years ago?)

That's all well and good, but the performance?

Again, to fully understand how good Live Aid was, I'd like to put you into the context of the time.

Before Live Aid, Queen were going through a very tense time.
They saw failure in North America so bad that they didn't even bother to tour there. They were the center of controversy because they played at Sun City during an apartheid-based boycott, the band were tired of each other, and these struggles came across on stage.
The Works tour (September 1984-May 1985) is often cited by many bootleg listeners as Queen's worst tour. There are of course some diamonds in the rough, and no Queen concert will be a BAD concert, but in general it sounds like the band is just going through the motions. Less inspired. More and more songs would get dropped from the setlist as the tour went on, and by the Australian leg, it just seems like the band wants to get the tour over. Freddie stopped caring about his vocal condition and that led to some very poor vocal performances as well. Queen were also fighting internally. Brian even made a goodbye speech to the entire Queen crew on the last night of The Works tour as the band were unsure whether or not they wanted to continue together.

So Live Aid? Holy fuck. It's one of the tightest sets in the band's entire career, ESPECIALLY for Freddie and Brian.
Bohemian Rhapsody features Freddie going for every single Bb4 in the song besides "carry on", an amazing rendition and the definitive medley version. If you're not familiar with Bohemian Rhapsody live- that's a huge deal.
To put it into perspective, Live Aid is the ONLY concert in 1985 where Freddie actually sings the original melody for "Now I've gone and thrown it all away." Up to that point, Freddie had only ever done that live 4 confirmed times. He only did that 4 times at concert from 1975-1985, and Live Aid was one of them. It's got the tightest intonation up to that point as well.


Usual live phrasing: (0:31)


Live Aid: (0:59)

Radio Ga Ga and Hammer To Fall are often considered the best live versions of the songs, for good reason. Freddie goes for some rare phrasings and notes that he wouldn't even dream of attempting during The Works tour. Hammer To Fall was also shortened significantly, to be more like its single version, and the tempo is FAST. Much faster than other live versions. So no, I wouldn't say that the Live Aid one "drags on for too long."


Usual live phrasing: (1:25)

Live Aid: (1:27)

We Will Rock You was never a huge vocal spectacle, but even that song gets something of note, as Freddie goes for one of the A4s for the first time in years. In the 70's he got them all the time, but he stopped doing them some point in the early 80's, with it only returning a handful of times within the hundreds of shows. It's slightly overshot, but the fact that Freddie even went for it at all is pretty damn special.

Usual '80s phrasing (0:34) 


Live Aid: (0:24)

The main thing here is We Are The Champions. TO THIS DAY, no version of We Are The Champions live even comes CLOSE to Live Aid's. Not even the legendary Crazy Tour.
Not only does Freddie go for the studio octave in a chorus, he does them in ALL THREE. There is NO other instance of this in the entirety of Queen's live history. From 1977-1986, there is not a single version where Freddie does this except Live Aid.

Usual live phrasing (octave low) 0:55

Live Aid phrasing (High octave, what Freddie does on the News Of The World album) 0:56

Not only that, he gets the "keep on FIGH-tiiing" C5 in the first chorus. INCREDIBLY rare, last done in 1981.

This version of We Are The Champions would already be the best version of all time because of this, but not only is Freddie fucking amazing, BRIAN is too. Brian does both of these two studio guitar licks for the ONLY RECORDED time in Queen's live history. He must have heard Freddie going all out and gotten some inspiration.


What Brian plays on News Of The World (1:42)


Live Aid (1:56)

Again just to reiterate. There's over 400 concerts with We Are The Champions, and the ONLY time that Freddie and Brian have ever done these was at Live Aid. 

Live Aid quite possibly saved Queen, too. It lit the fire that had gone out years prior.
    
John: "[Live Aid was] the one day that I was proud to be involved in the music business. A lot of days you certainly don't feel that, but that one day was fabulous. Elton John told us we were great, and Sting, who'd never seen us before, congratulated us. People forgot that element of competitiveness and it was a good morale booster for us too. It showed us the strength of our support in England, and what we still had to offer as a band."
Roger: "Live Aid was a shot in the arm. We were so jaded by that point. We didn't think we'd tour again for five years if at all - we'd just had it."
Freddie: "From our perspective, the fact that Live Aid happened when it did was really lucky. It came out of nowhere to save us. For sure that was a turning point. Maybe you could say that in the history of Queen, it was a really special moment."
    
To wrap it up, I genuinely just think your critique of Live Aid is because you've heard it too many times.
Of course any performance is going to get more dull/show more holes after hearing it a gazillion times, but that's not what the show was designed for. It was designed to show that Queen were true musicians, even without their grand lighting rigs or pyrotechnics. It showed the world that these aging Queens were still a mighty fine group, and that they were here to stay.
It did EXACTLY what it needed to do for Queen, and it did it damn well. 

No performance is perfect, but Queen at Live Aid may well be the closest thing.

Terrific post, ManyMilesAway. Yes, Hammer to Fall was perfect for that stadium setting. You need to show that Queen can rock and roll. That performance proves that HTF is a Queen classic as well. I love that part of the Live Aid set. Yes, it's a shame we didn't get a Bowie duet on Under Pressure. But Queen nailed the global jukebox concept that Geldof had. They rolled out some hits and performed them to the teeth. I'm always inspired by their Live Aid set, no matter how many times I've watched it. I may watch it today just for a shot in the arm. Freddie's singing on Champions? My God. How great was he as a performer? The best.

Killer Queen and Somebody To Love were DINOSAURS at that point, Killer Queen especially- at 11 years old. I get that it was their breakout hit, but The Beatles wouldn't have played "Love Me Do" if they did Live Aid.

The setlist itself was definitely the best on the day - and probably the best Queen could've managed under any similar circs. However, with 20/20 we can all improve on that setlist.
Someone pointed out the length of CLTCL, and I tend to agree. I reckon the main 18-min slot could've been had a mid-section medley: Remove HTF, abridge CLTCL (02:15) and you could gain a "hits medley" (coincidentally, all three of my "medley" tunes peaked at no2 in the UK charts, adding to Bo Rhap (no1) and WATC/WWRY (no2), that's a killer crowd pleasing setlist.

My setlist would look like this:
♦ Bo Rhap (02:45)
♦ Radio Ga Ga (04:01)
♦ MEDLEY: Killer Queen (01:45 Live Killers vers) > CLTCL (02:15 to drums) > Somebody To Love (04:00 final section Milton Keynes from drums @ 04:05)
♦ We Will Rock You (01:18)
♦ We Are The Champions (03:00)
Remove a little chatter and there's the perfect Queen 18-min setlist.

However, with 20/20 we can all improve on that setlist.
Remove HTF, abridge CLTCL and you could gain a "hits medley"

My setlist would look like this:
♦ MEDLEY: Killer Queen (01:45 Live Killers vers) > CLTCL (02:15 to drums) > Somebody To Love (04:00 final section Milton Keynes from drums @ 04:05)
Remove a little chatter and there's the perfect Queen 18-min setlist.

A lot of people, including the choreographer for the Bohemian Rhapsody movie don't actually realise what's going on there.
I think it's a bit more complicated than just dancing with the cameraman;




The result is making the situation worse, Because now the camera wire is stuck in the tangled microphone wire, The cameraman eventually has to bend down and sort it out.  He hugs the cemeras' cable guy at the end to apologise for this.



That's my take on it any way.

As much as I would've loved if Somebody To Love was played at Live Aid, or even Killer Queen, I think Freddie sat at the piano for nearly half the gig wouldn't be memorable as others have pointed out. He commanded the stage so brilliantly, and he was at the piano for roughly four minutes.

Freddie only needed to be at the piano for the Bo Rhap part, was it not possible to have Spike or someone else play the piano parts of STL/KQ?