I know this is long but well worth the read. This is a Queen fan who went to the concert in Philly.
Claudia @glamfannation 51s
Now that's a concert!! drinkingcocoa.livejournal.com/516489.html
Brian May and Roger Taylor came to Philadelphia to spend the evening with me! That was so nice of them. And they brought Adam Lambert, Spike "The Duke" Edney, and...wow...Roger Taylor's son, Rufus Tiger. That was a surprise! He was the backup drummer. He looks exactly like what you'd expect from a computer morph of Roger Taylor and his beautiful model ex-wife.
It. Was. Great.
We sat next to these Adam Lambert fans who were part of a group that was traveling to several stops on this tour. The woman next to me seemed so sweet and she earnestly, nervously hoped that a Queen fan like me would find that Lambert did a good job with this gig. She needn't have worried; he could not possibly have disappointed me, as I got the distinct vibe that he both felt honored to be part of this musical legacy and understood the gift he was giving Queen by bringing their music to life again, especially with that very specific queeny preening attitude that Freddie brought to the band.
Freddie was all over this concert, beloved man. Of course we were listening for comparisons between Lambert's singing and Freddie's. As people who listened to every album of Queen's over and over -- except for Hot Space, which has songs I still haven't heard, and hope never to hear -- oracne and I can list all of Freddie's musical shortcomings. As she said, he was a baritone pretending to be a tenor. Sometimes his straining to hit the high notes made him sound bombastic. I always laugh adoringly at his plinketty-plink piano playing (like in "Bohemian Rhapsody") and his rhythm guitar on "Crazy Little Thing Called Love." Would Adam Lambert out-sing him? I found that no, he did not; I did enjoy his singing and the songs felt right with his vocal treatments. It wasn't like George Michael, who sang "Somebody to Love" with Queen and soared effortlessly over all the parts that used to give Freddie trouble, causing me to admit grudgingly that he was a different, better class of singer. Adam Lambert's vocals were a bit subdued, not too much, but enough for the instrumentals to be equal to the vocals and not background. Considering the nature of the collaboration, the legendary arena band with the younger front man, that was a beautifully balanced dynamic.
Actually, everything about the balance in this show was superlative. It had truly expert pacing, switching between full ensemble to instrumentals to solos or duets. I knew Brian would sing a few songs, like "Love of My Life." After Freddie died, I had no idea what they were going to do with that song, which had been such a Freddie signature. I remember choking up in the early 1990s, the first time I realized Brian was going to take the chair and do it acoustically, alone. There was always a tiny undercurrent of almost-slash between Freddie and the hopelessly straight, uncampy Brian, and it was because of the real love that was clearly between them. To see Brian singing alone about Freddie being one of the loves of his life still hurts. The screen showed old footage of Freddie and a woman in the row behind me started sobbing wildly.
I was surprised and so happy that Roger stepped out to sing a solo. Oh. <3 I have always loved his husky voice, but he didn't do much lead vocal work for Queen -- I don't think he sang lead on any of their hits, although he made a fortune with the ridiculous "I'm in Love with my Car" (the B-side to "Bohemian Rhapsody," back when the members of Queen were splitting the money based on who wrote which song). There's something about his nature that's essentially lazy ("IN-dolent," oracne corrected me) and I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd waved an easygoing hand and turned down a solo. So I was touched when he stepped out, looking really distinguished, to sing the lovely and wistful "These Are the Days of Our Lives." I think that might have been the last video Freddie ever shot, and he was quite ill by then, visibly gaunt; I recall reading that his parts in the shoot had to be done quickly so he could rest. The screen showed footage of young Queen, like shots of their long-haired first-ever visit to Japan. The camera lingered over John Deacon, who hasn't performed with the band for a very long time, and the audience applauded. The shots of young Roger were a reminder that he used to be so pretty, he was unreal. I used to think he would age poorly, puffy. But he has a really glorious beard and the wrinkles around his eyes are warm, and there's a freshness and ease to him I don't see in his younger performances -- like someone who's quit smoking and is taking really good care of himself. Now that he's silver -- this is the first time I've felt his persona reach me. He was so relaxed. He kept waving away tributes and applause, and gesturing to the audience that we should be paying attention to Adam Lambert's magnificence instead. The Lambert fan next to me reported that Roger has said, of Lambert keeping them young, "We drink his blood every night." ;-)
There was one moment Roger was not so relaxed. They gave Rufus Tiger the lead drum position on one song; he and his father switched drum sets, and Roger just played tambourine while Rufus labored over "Tie Your Mother Down." I thought that was a brilliant choice for this. It's a Brian song, written when he was quite young. After Freddie died, Brian took over singing it, but it was horribly wrong to hear this grandfatherly professor emeritus-looking guy sing about "my little schoolgirl." Having Adam Lambert sing it and Rufus Tiger do the drumming felt much more appropriate. However. Rufus did not do well. He drummed too fast, ahead of the rest of the performers, and the camera shots on Roger's face made me tense just watching. He looked like he was in agony. It's not like you can wave your hand and get a drummer's attention mid-song. It sounded very much like the kid was speeding up from nerves. Brian looked tense and grim, too. He sped up his guitar playing to keep up with the drumming, and Adam Lambert sang faster. It wasn't that much of an increase in tempo, but it served as a good reminder that Roger Taylor is actually very skilled at what he does. And the kid was on his father's drum kit. Yikes. When the song was over and the spotlight hit only Adam Lambert, I saw Rufus leave his father's drums and Roger put his arms around the kid and patted him. Phew.
Oh yes -- I think Rufus Tiger, when he was 4 or so, was the kid whose complaint about bad music on the radio led to Roger writing "Radio Gaga." To this day, I cannot figure out why that song ever became a hit.
Brian's solos made me laugh. He's a geezer, he's rich, he has a Ph.D., John Deacon isn't around to be annoyed by him -- he can do whatever the hell he pleases! And he did, and I laughed. In the intro to "'39," a time-travel science fiction ditty he wrote, he started intentionally blabbing on and on and on about time paradoxes and Einstein and all sorts of geeky, geeky stuff. Then when he launched into the (wonderful) song, the screen showed the geekiest possible footage of old space missions. Hello, this is Brian May and he is seven years old. ;-) I kept laughing. And said to oracne that somewhere in the world right now, John Deacon is puking. On another song of his, he had the screen show rapidly moving stars, like a fourth grader doing a class project. This was during his 15-minute instrumental guitar solo, during which he made an awful din with his guitar, low and disintegrated. He played with all the gizmos on his guitar. It was utter self-indulgence. I grinned and grinned.
I think I remember reading that John Deacon still talks to Roger -- as bassist and drummer, they had what was once described as the tightest rhythm section in the business -- but he most definitely does not talk to Brian. Even back in the 70s, I think Brian got on John's last nerve. I bet Brian was a surpassingly whiny, grumbly tour-mate. Ah, just my type. <-- not actually kidding
Speaking of my type, there are three men I'm aware of who have the same hands: Benedict Cumberbatch, Severus Snape, and Brian May. Long, slender, magical, deft. The close-ups on Brian's fingers on the frets were as exquisite as ever. There's something about the precision with which he plays that's always looked clitoral to me, like a man who knows exactly where to find the spot.
But ahem. *clears throat* The long partnership between Brian and Roger showed as strong as ever. Just think of all the songs they've played together, each correspondence between guitar note and drum roll creating more and more fibers to connect the two of them. I once saw an Olympic ice dance team, Lobacheva and Averbukh, checking out of a hotel. As they stood at the counter waiting for their bill, completely unconsciously, they paralleled each other's poses -- each had one knee bent and that foot poised behind the other at the exact same angle. I mean exact. They probably do this in their sleep. And I remembered that as I saw Roger and Brian work together to create all that sound. There were a few times Adam Lambert or one of the other musicians messed up and I saw the two of them fix it, repeating for an extra bar or cutting short, without even looking at each other.
Some of my favorite moments involved swearing. :-) Roger said hello to the audience and murmured, "Philadelphia. We have so many good memories here." I imagine he meant Live Aid in 1986, which Queen owned. Then he laughed and said softly, "I never thought we'd come back here. I'm so fucking old." I laughed too, charmed. I love this older, grounded Roger Taylor. :-) Brian had a moment, too, when he messed up an intro and muttered, "Fuck it. You can't get everything right." Then he looked chagrined and apologized to the kids in the audience. :-) Something about that made him say that the band had seen a Katy Perry concert the night before, and he pointed out that this band, Queen + Adam Lambert, doesn't have any of that. No click tracks. No dancers. "Just us poor old buggers." I looked at the lead guitarist and the bassist and the two drummers and the keyboardist and the singer. Just them. Nothing but the music. And marveled at how much sound they managed to make, live.
I loved some of the more obscure stuff they played from the Queen catalogue. Oracne called us the type of fan who knows every word to "Seven Seas of Rhye" and "Stone Cold Crazy" -- not songs we expected to hear live. They covered "Love Kills," Freddie's first solo single. My favorite might have been "Killer Queen." OH, my. <3 <3 <3 Here was where Adam Lambert's genius truly shined. The set folks brought out the most decadent-looking velvet-upholstered baroque chaise longue. He draped himself over it in debauched manner and delivered a performance of such pitch-perfect camp that even Freddie would have been satisfied. One could imagine teen Adam Lambert singing it, just so, in his own bedroom with a hairbrush for a mike. He put the naughtiest of suggestive pauses into the line "Guaranteed to blow your mind," which Freddie never did. Sometimes it amazes me that Freddie Mercury came out with this subversive stuff in 1974.
Pouty-lipped, queer-as-fuck Adam Lambert pranced around the stage, gyrating filthily and calling out to "all you fat-bottomed bitches" (surprisingly, I think it was Brian May and not Freddie Mercury who wrote the celebratory "Fat Bottomed Girls"), swigging out of a Moet et Chandon bottle and then sending it out in a spray onto a (very) willing audience and asking saucily, "Did I get you wet?" And leered at Brian May's virtuoso fingering and got really close, leading with his crotch, and Brian just studiously ignored him and kept up his precision playing, exactly as he used to studiously ignore Freddie grinding on his leg decades ago. ;-) Lambert's costumes were brilliantly done to refer subtly to Freddie's costumes while being completely right for Lambert. (Ah, I loved Brian's second costume, too, a simple white button-down shirt with sleeves rolled up -- tailored that way, I presume -- to reveal a printed inner cuff that circled his biceps. He's so easy to dress well, on the occasions his taste hits the mark. He's just a big old frame.)
I didn't see this dynamic as clearly when watching performances with Freddie in the band, maybe because they were all the same age then, but tonight it really hit me: how on earth did this band form with three very conventionally heterosexual men providing backup for a flaming bisexual like Freddie? Did they not feel any discomfort with it, back in the early 1970s? So here they are again, with their lyrics and the rest of the band looking not so queer, and then this outrageous pretty boy in his tight studded leather. An odd formula for the kind of success they've had.
I love that Brian May is so incredibly geeky and awkward that he has never mastered the slightest ability to look sexy while playing the guitar. I love it. He is such a geek. What is he doing being an all-time classic rock guitar god? He is such the professor-in-his-study type!
"Another One Bites the Dust" sounds fresh, still. I realized that song is 34 years old. I remember being on the school bus the first time I heard it, being impressed with its intensity. The wrinkles around Brian's and Roger's eyes, clearly visible on the large screen, look so beautiful and warm. It was a lot of music for two hours. It impressed me, as it never has at any other concert I've ever attended, that the musicians were making music on their instruments for me, so the sound could physically travel into my body and reverberate in my chest cavity, in the exact patterns and sensations that they intended. They moved their hands and bodies; I received and felt it.So this is the point of a large arena concert. I never understood that before.
