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THE TRIBUTE CONCERT
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- A SET OF STRANGE COINCIDENCES (Pretty
Amazing but True!!!)
The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, in aid of the Mercury Phoenix Trust, Wembley, 20 April 1992
This
was written on 25/26 November 2004 The
facts that I mention can’t have occurred to me when I first saw the
concert on TV; maybe I just wasn’t ready at that time to see all the
interconnections, but I see them all clearly now. The Internet has also
provided a ready reference which has helped me to establish or clarify
some issues which were either unknown or forgotten. It’s 25 November
2004. Yesterday was
the anniversary of Freddie’s passing so I felt it was appropriate to
watch the Tribute Concert DVD, which I hadn’t watched from beginning
to end until this point – so, in fact, the first time I’d watched
the concert as I’d seen it on TV in ’92. First I’d like to
mention the two great performances of this concert which were identified
through recordings; George Michael’s ‘Somebody to Love’, and Elton
Johns’s ‘The Show Must Go On’. The former can only be described as
phenomenal. In a live concert one never knows what might happen and this
particular one was full of raw emotion which on more than one occasion
took precedence over technical brilliance. But with George Michael’s
performance we had both, backed by Queen and the London Gospel Choir. If
this doesn’t rank among the greatest of his life I’d be amazed. It
was an uplifting triumph, coming immediately after his duet with Lisa
Stansfield, ‘These Are the Days of Our Lives’ which by the look of
Roger, Brian and John, was a difficult memory. ‘Deaky’, however, had
looked as if he enjoyed Lisa Stansfield’s interpretation of his song
‘I Want to Break Free’ earlier in the concert - and with good
reason! As for Elton
John, he sang with such feeling and meaning - it’s his facial
expression when singing which stayed in my memory and the song was
clearly so right for him. Furthermore, a
third performance had stuck in my mind as particularly great, though,
over the years, and that’s Roger Daltrey’s ‘I Want It All’.
I’m frankly surprised that this version never saw the light of day
beyond this concert. Like ‘The Show Must Go On’, Queen had never had
the chance to perform this song live*. Now on to the
coincidences. Today I started to look at one or two things connected
with three songs which were performed in the ‘David Bowie’ section
of the concert. They mainly concern my two stays abroad during my time
at University. I’ve
already dealt with ‘Under Pressure’ (second
item) (Bowie performed this in the concert with Annie Lennox) as a
song which recalls a particular set of emotions for me; those of a
nineteen-year-old, still in so many ways trying to get a grip on growing
up without a mother, far from home in a strange but exciting place - the
Shanghai scenes which can be conjured up when I hear this song are still
vivid. How much thought I gave at that time to the fact that it was
Queen – the group of my teens - I can’t say. I had also admired
David Bowie a great deal, even as early as my last year at Primary
School. But with the
two non-Queen songs which follow there’s more. When I wrote ‘Hammer
to Fall – The German Connection’ (third
item) I wanted to use a Queen song in the title and had to find the
one which, for me, formed the closest link to the images. In reality,
though, the dates don’t coincide, as Queen weren’t releasing
anything in 1983, ‘Hammer to Fall’ itself not appearing until a year
after my visit. However, the next song in the Tribute Concert, Mott the
Hoople’s ‘All the Young Dudes’, (released in 1972, produced by
David Bowie), forms a major musical memory of my time as a student in
Leipzig. I didn’t – and still don’t - have
much recollection of the song up to that point, when, eleven years after
its release, a group of us – British and East Germans – were hugging
and swaying together in a circle to this song in one of the discos we
attended at the ‘Jenny-Marx-Halle’ (which was the hall where these
student events were held). On hearing the song again, the memory is so
distinct as to bring out deep emotions - this was, after all, right in
the heat of the Cold War and at the time of Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ -
and there we were, a group of young people, transcending the ‘Iron
Curtain’ by showing solidarity against the background of
this seventies ‘glam rock’ anthem…!!! The next song
in the concert after that one is David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ which was
released in the month after my mother’s passing, and I remember that
the song struck a deep chord with me at the time and I’ve always had a
great deal of affection for it. But I had totally forgotten until today,
when I was looking it up on the net, that it had been released also in
German (my second language – and I now remember hearing it in German
at some time). A fact that I’m not aware that I knew up to this point
was that the song’s origins lie at the Berlin Wall; Bowie having seen
a couple meeting near it - the song was based on this image. Another
fact I unearthed was that an early performance by Bowie of
the song took place on the TV show of Marc Bolan (of T-Rex) in
September 1977. Bolan was killed in a car crash only a week later. The
spot where his car hit a tree was only a few metres down the road from
Roehampton Court, Barnes, where my father and I moved in 1978. This was
a year after mum’s passing – my brother and grandmother had moved
elsewhere and we needed a smaller place; south-west London was the best
area to look for flats. I hadn’t realised that this was the site of
Bolan’s fatal accident until I took a stroll one day soon after we
moved there and found that there were still quite a few flowers and
messages on that tree…. Well, that’s quite a lot to emerge all at once from one excerpt from a concert!!! Does all this have to do with having Queen in my soul, I ask myself – significant times or points in my life link in to this great story anyhow – despite being so unaware of it all for so long…. ©2004 Now-Im-Here.com ***** *Other comments I've made about the performances: Written about Gary Cherrone's vocals on 'Hammer to Fall' after another viewing of the DVD: 'Gary Cherone putting in 150% effort on 'Hammer to Fall' ..' and Kim added: Gary Cherone is an absolute power house and I wish Extreme had been around a little longer. Brian's performance of 'Too Much Love Will Kill You' (posted by me on the Roger Taylor Online forum): As
for Brian, yeah, but he's decided more recently he's not much of a
singer - I don't agree, but it must get difficult to do two things at
once - he appears to be a bit choked (emotionally, I mean) during the
performance. When I originally saw the Tribute Concert this was the
first time I'd heard this song and I was blown back by it. More: It is hard to believe when viewing Mick Ronson’s legendary performance on ‘All the Young Dudes’ and ‘Heroes’ that it would be his last - he was suffering from liver cancer and had only just over another year to live; when he passed away at the end of April 1993 he was the only a little older than Freddie had been. Mick Ronson was David Bowie’s guitarist in the early days – of Ziggy Stardust – and can still be seen with Bowie on the videos from that time, such as ‘Jean Jeanie’. Very much a face of that phase of early seventies glam rock, he was reluctant at first to go along with the ‘effeminate’ presentation and the gay messages imparted by the kneeling Bowie’s sexual advances to his guitar and putting his arm around him on television. None of this appears shocking now, of course, but at that time it can’t have been easy bearing in mind Ronson’s conservative north of England upbringing. (It was interesting to note at the Fan Club Convention that Jim Jenkins said people in Liverpool were shocked over Freddie’s black nail polish – the north of England was far less accepting of such things!) Ronson will also be remembered for his co-production, with Bowie, of Lou Reed’s great album ‘Transformer’. Mick Ronson the seventies star (Record Collector, July '93)
Mick Ronson at the Tribute Concert Soundcheck ***** The Led Zeppelin song ‘Kashmir’ forms the introduction for their lead singer Robert Plant’s performance of ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’. The influence of the Zeppelin sound, especially on Freddie, was especially strong in 1970 – the early days of Freddie’s collaboration with Brian and Roger. It can also be seen in Roger’s selection of inspirational albums. The first time I saw Roger sing last year, the only non-Queen song he performed was Led Zeppelin’s ‘Rock and Roll’. Surprisingly, bearing in mind the style, Plant carries off ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ wonderfully, with Brian ‘zeppelining’ his guitar towards the end, and really characteristic Plant vocals to finish! Robert Plant performing ************** Lyrics below: UNDER
PRESSURE Pressure
pushing down on me ALL
THE YOUNG DUDES (sung at the concert by Ian Hunter, with Queen, David Bowie and Mick Ronson). Well
Billy rapped all night about his suicide HEROES I,
I will be king HELDEN (German Version of 'Heroes') Du,
Könntest Du schwimmen There's also a French version of 'Heroes' : Héros
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