12.10.17 Next Stop London
Dec 10, 2017 16:10:12 GMT -5
Post by pi on Dec 10, 2017 16:10:12 GMT -5
QUEEN AND ADAM LAMBERT – MEN ARENA, MANCHESTER, 9 DECEMBER 2017
A recurring joy of being a father is taking my daughter to gigs. Whilst I get a huge amount out of seeing her enjoy her own generation’s music (Lorde, Wolf Alice and Kooks for example this year), the special frisson when you see her enjoying music from your formative years. And as those older artists are sadly starting to pass away, it seems that there is a greater imperative to see those still treading the boards.
One of the things that I’ve noticed about parenthood and music is that there are some performers whose music creeps into children’s consciousness almost by osmosis – the Beatles, David Bowie, Michael Jackson. Queen fall into the same category, from primary school performances of “We Will Rock You” onwards.
I’ve had a bit of an odd relationship with Queen over the years, partly of my making, but they’ve been complicit. If we start with their side of the bargain, as an 80s teenager, their decision to play Sun City in Apartheid era South Africa (which I still think is wrong by the way) wasn’t in anyway endearing. I also didn’t perceive them as a serious albums band. This was informed by one Christmas where I’d put “a Queen LP” on my Santa list, only to receive the “Flash Gordon” soundtrack, which wasn’t necessarily where you’d start a Queen record collection.
But the “Flash” reaction (shall we call it that?) also illustrates that I was being a bit of a numpty about the band. They made some incredible singles during the 70s and early 80s and I sniffily dismissed them as not really contenders as a “proper” band. That was bloody stupid of me in retrospective – guilty as charged.
In 1985 I was lucky enough to see them at Live Aid and do the twenty minute stunning greatest hits set that since appears to have acknowledged as one of the high water marks of rock’n’roll performance. At then point I thought “well it will be tough to top that” and never saw them live again.
We know how that particular story ended – Freddie passed away, John Deacon faded into the background and Brian and Roger hired Free’s Paul Rogers. As good a singer as Rogers is, it wasn’t really the right fit. He’s a bit too meat and potatoes, a bit too bluesy and lacked that joie de vivre that Freddie brought to party after party.
In the meantime, Queen’s reputation as a credible band rose phoenix-like, with Metallica, Dave Grohl and Joshua Homme acting as prime advocates. We watched the Foo’s perform a touching “Under Pressure” at Glastonbury earlier in the year and it was at this point I thought, “let’s give them another go”. I’d seen them on the TV performing with Adam Lambert on a BBC New Year’s Eve special and was very impressed. My mates Pete and Ewan saw them around the same time and were raving about the show. So when the opportunity arose to combine a weekend in Manchester with chance to see the band with a bunch of friends, it was too good to miss.
Lambert is a revelation live and demonstrates what an astute bit of business it was by May and Taylor to start to work with him. Whilst the billing is “QUEEN and Adam Lambert” (note the pointed capitalisation), it really feels like a proper band rather than a karaoke experience. Lambert inhabits the songs, realising that not only do you need balletic vocals but also flamboyance to do this material justice. He acknowledges “the pink elephant in the room” early on. He isn’t Freddie he says but he was a fan just like everyone in the Arena and he is here to celebrate Freddie’s music. He wins the audience over if there was any lingering doubters and I would unreservedly recommend anyone feeling like “it isn’t really Queen” to put there reservations aside and take the evening for what it is.
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