“We hesitated to say sure. The possibilities of making fools of ourselves had been so large”: Live Aid was Queen’s crowning glory. But they practically turned it down

The model new difficulty of Classic Rock journal is out now and options Queen on the duvet, telling the story of their business resurrection with 1984’s back-to-basics The Works album, which adopted a turbulent few years for the rock legends.

The in-depth cowl story, written by Queen biographer Mark Blake, additionally throws up just a few surprises, not least the truth that the band nearly didn’t play Live Aid – their crowning glory as a reside band.

Queen had entered the 80s greater than ever, notching up their greatest ever US single with the funky Another One Bites The Dust and bagging a transatlantic No.1 album with The Game.

But then the wheels began to wobble. 1982’s Hot Space album proved divisive with followers, who considered its outstanding R&B and disco affect as an excessive amount of of a departure from their exhausting rock roots. Hot Space’s failure to duplicate the success of The Game brought on tensions with the band’s US label Elektra, who singer Freddie Mercury blamed for not selling it sufficient in America. Mercury himself already had one eye on a solo profession that may attain fruition along with his 1985 solo album, Mr Bad Guy.

Released in 1984, The Works marked Queen’s return to rock, with singles similar to Radio Ga Ga, I Want To Break Free and It’s A Hard Life reasserting their business energy within the UK (if not the US), whereas Hammer To Fall and Tear It Up discovered them rocking more durable than ever.

Such was their renewed success that it was as shock that they didn’t seem on the Band Aid charity single Do They Know It’s Christmas?, launched in December 1984 to lift cash for victims of the famine in Ethiopia. Mercury himself wasn’t shocked at their absence. “I don’t know if they’d have had me on the report,” mentioned the singer. “I’m a bit outdated.”

There had been no such questions the next 12 months, when Band Aid co-founder Bob Geldof approached Queen to look at Live Aid. An enormous charity gig held concurrently at London’s Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia’s John F. Kennedy Stadium on July 13, 1985, it was set to be probably the most spectacular gig in historical past. The line-up learn like a Who’s Who of rock and pop, with Paul McCartney, The Who, reunited Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Bob Dylan, Madonna all lined as much as seem. And Bob Geldof needed Queen on the invoice. The solely downside was that Queen weren’t certain in the event that they needed to be concerned.

“We undoubtedly hesitated to say sure,” recalled guitarist Brian May. “We needed to take into account whether or not we had been in ok form. The possibilities of making fools of ourselves had been so large.”

Those considerations had been primarily based on the truth that the members of Queen had determined to take a break from one another. While each The Works and the next world tour had been profitable, the band had been seemingly pulling in numerous instructions, not least Mercury, who launched his debut solo single, the dance-pop monitor I Was Born To Love You, in April 1985. The remainder of Queen puzzled in the event that they’d misplaced him for good.

“Freddie had stepped so far-off,” mentioned May. “I believed we’d not get him again.”

Luckily, Geldof needed Queen to play, and wouldn’t take no for a solution. Legend has it that his invitation for them to play at Live Aid ran alongside the strains of: “Tell the outdated f***** itʼs going to be the largest factor ever…”

What occurred subsequent is historical past. Queen signed as much as play Live Aid, and as Mercury hammered out the opening notes to Bohemian Rhapsody on a grand piano in entrance of 72,000 folks at Wembley Stadium, their doubts and fears evaporated, along with the uncertainty that had surrounded them earlier within the decade.

Read the total story of the making of The Works, and Queen’s return to glory, within the new difficulty of Classic Rock journal, on sale now. 

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