I was at this gig!.....14 years old and completely mesmerised.....I appreciate it even more now looking back....what a great band they were.....Brian May's guitar work that night was the reason I learnt to play!!! I was so lucky to live near the Rainbow Theatre back then and have an elder brother who took me to loads of gigs!! Great reaction to a great song.....and a great trip down memory lane for me🎸....

@ghichens3418

6 ай бұрын

wish I had been there myself !! Great stuff

So beautiful

Queen is greater than the sum of their parts. They all truly needed each other to achieve superstardom.

I am so glad I got see Queen in concert, they were amazing live, Freddie is so missed. What a talented man, as were all of the band?

Classic Queen!. Glad I got to see them but not here! Wembley Stadium 1986 and the shows the world has watched millions of times on DVD! Tickets were £14.50! 😉

I'm very fortunate to have seen Queen in there early years (1972) at a small venue in Colchester England Freddy was outrageous they were travelling around in a motor home. Queen's first two albums were their best then they went down the more commercial route to cater for the masses.

Thank you Chris and Cynthia ! great reaction , glad you enjoyed this masterpiece ! Cheers for that !

@ghichens3418

6 ай бұрын

@@Owlstretchingtime78 Cheers pard ! the bonus of being an older Geezer .

@ghichens3418

6 ай бұрын

@@Owlstretchingtime78 Yay !

Pure Class

Yes,it's just awesome! They are and their performance is just awesome!!!! Very unique song,it sounds very interesting! Another cool live version of this song is at the Hammersmith Odeon 1975. That version is more intense and more orchestralike and dreamy for me. Their sound is there pure perfection and another level!!!! Please check that one too and react to!!!! Thank you!!!!😊😊😊😊❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

👍👍Old school goodness!! 🖖❤

Another great live Queen song is, Who Wants to Live Forever, live at Budapest. Absolutely phenomenal.

This is one of my 2 favorite performances of this song, preferring the performance at the Odeon, Hammersmith because I think the instrumental portion of the song is better in that one (the guitar is so much more powerful) as well as Freddie's voice is more emotive but both are unbelievable performances by the entire band. Thank you for your reaction.

@marianclough8577

6 ай бұрын

I agree with you. The performance at the Odeon, Hammersmith is much better.

A bunch of really talented, intelligent, well educated men. Brian wrote this about a woman that he had a crush on during his college years. He was too shy to ask her out.

Great reaction!! LOVE this song - especially this (and Live At Hammersmith) versions! Queen IS the sum of it's parts - not just Freddie, Brian...but ALL of them! I only knew the album version of this song until they released the Live At The Rainbow 1974 set - got it for Christmas from my wife, watched it Christmas morning with my coffee & Bailey's and was just floored - at the whole concert, but especially this song!! Too bad so many 'casual' listeners don't know this side of Queen! Cheers.

I was born in 1961, so I was about 15 when Bohemian Rhapsody hit. I soon after combed the second hand record shops and picked up Queen, Queen2 then Shear Heart Attack. So I can remember sitting with a long chord listening to this and the other albums on head phones. I listened to those albums over and over. So really, anything off those first 3 albums were amazing.

@Adam_Le-Roi_Davis.

6 ай бұрын

I was born in 1960 and I was 15 when it was released in '75 so, you must have been 14, I know that it's easy to get confused with it being so long ago.

The early years are the best for Queen, especially when it comes to live performances. This is one of their best songs, regardless of who wrote it. Queen was a pretty democratic band when it came to the writing and the credit, and the overemphasis on Freddie is more of a recent phenomenon. A lot of the media was handled by Brian and Roger, so it was never all about the front man. When it comes to writing history, things tend to get a little bit skewed.

@markferrett700

6 ай бұрын

Spot on appraisal 👍

A great song, Graham ❤❤

@ghichens3418

6 ай бұрын

Ta Col ! Tis a gem , have a good week up to Christmas , cheers mate

I saw them at the Festival Hall in Melbourne in 1976. I also saw them get booed while performing at Sunbury two years prior.

What are you talking about, 'when Freddie joined them"? Queen is a British rock band that was formed in 1970 and was comprised of: Freddie Mercury - Lead vocals and piano Roger Taylor - Drummer and vocals Brian May - Lead guitar and vocals John Deacon - Bass guitar Queen released 15 studio albums, 10 live albums, 16 compilation albums, two soundtrack albums, 2 extended plays, 73 singles, and seven promotional singles. They were one of the most influential groups in rock history. ************************** Here is the real story of the origin of Queen (not what you saw in the movie): Freddie Mercury was born Sept. 6, 1946, as Farrokh Balsara in Stone Town, Zanzibar to a Parsee family. Parsee (or Parsi) are adherents of the religion Zoroastrianism. They descended from the ancient Persians who fled from Persia (now Iran) to India during the Muslim persecution in the 7th-8th centuries. Freddie's parents were from Balsar, India where his extended family still lives. Freddie's father worked for the British government and was stationed on the African island of Zanzibar where Freddie and his sister were born. At the age of 7 years old, his aunt was visiting and noticed that young Farrokh (he wasn't Freddie yet) could play on the family piano any tune he heard on the radio just by ear. She immediately insisted to her sister, that they start Farrokh on piano lessons which they did. At age 8, Farrokh was sent to St. Peter's School, a private all-boys boarding school located in the town of Panchgani, India. It is ranked among the top ten boarding schools in India and catered to the sons of British ex-patriots. The school is known to produce students speaking with the upper-class British accent known as the Received Pronunciation (RP) which is the accent of the Royal Family. That explained Freddie's very crisp, posh British accent. It was while at school that he began calling himself the very British name, Freddie (it is said that he hated the name Farrokh). During his free time from school that he spent with his aunt and grandparents in Bombay, he discovered and indulged in a growing love of music. He also formed his first band with friends, a rock and roll band called The Hectics. Freddie continued to study piano while at school up to piano grade level four. He never learned to actually read or write music and he never had any vocal training other than participating in the boy's choir at school. After completing school, Freddie returned to Zanzibar until 1964 when the Muslim revolution forced his family to flee to London with basically the clothes on their backs. In London, he began attending Ealy College to study Graphic Design. While in college, Freddie began singing in a blues-rock band out of Liverpool England, called IBEX. IBEX later changed its name to Wreckage. In 1968, while singing in the group Wreckage, Freddie became friends with a fellow student also studying Graphic Design at Ealy College named Tim Staffell. Tim was also the lead singer/bass player for a rock group called "Smile" in London that he formed with his grammar school friend, Brian May (lead guitar), and Roger Taylor (drummer). Tim invited Freddie to come to a rehearsal session of "Smile" where he first met Roger and Brian. After that, Freddie became a regular at Smile rehearsals and performances, and a good friend to both Brian and Roger. "Smile" was fairly successful on the college circuit and had cut a record but it could not seem to get an album contract. Then in 1969, Tim was offered a position in the band Humpty Bong, which was an even more successful band that actually had an album contract. Brian and Roger were devasted that Tim was leaving and considered giving up music altogether but their good friend, Freddie talked them out of it. What Brian and Roger soon learned is that their shy, quiet, and reserved friend, Freddie, could be awfully persuasive when he was really passionate about something. He convinced them that they were too talented to give up music and they must form a new group. So Roger and Brian began looking for a lead singer and a bass player. They auditioned several singers but none hit the mark for them. Then one day, Freddie quietly came to them and said, "Who you need is me." They really didn't know what to say. Yes, Freddie was a good friend (at the time Roger and Freddie were flatmates and ran a booth in Kensington Market selling used clothing to make ends meet)) and they knew Freddie performed in a group out of Liverpool, but to be honest, they had never actually heard him sing. Plus Freddie's personality was so shy and quiet and reserved. That is not exactly the type of personality a rock group wants as their lead singer. But Freddie was persuasive. Brian booked an audition room at his school, Imperial College and Freddie auditioned for them. I don't know what songs they performed but needless to say, both Brian and Roger were shocked when they first heard Freddie's voice. Though Freddie did not have the same control of his voice he would later develop, still they were astounded by his singing ability. (Roger did claim in later interviews, that he thought that Freddie sounded a bit like a billy goat because of his extremely fast vibrato.) What possibly shocked them both the most, was when their quiet, shy, and reserved friend began to sing, he turned into this flamboyant and dynamic performer. From the very beginning, Freddie had no fear on stage. He would simply become this showman with a magnetic onstage bravado. Freddie's vocal range was from F2 to F6 (he frequently hit F5 during live concerts). His voice could go from a deep, throaty rock growl to a tender, vibrant tenor, then on to a high-pitched, perfect coloratura, pure and crystalline in the upper reaches. Also, Freddie utilized subharmonics, which was and still is rare for singers. Subharmonics are generated when the ventricular folds in your throat vibrate along the vocal folds and are typically associated with Tuvan throat singers. Plus his vibrato moved at a whopping 7.04 Hz, whereas the typical Western classical singer has a vibrato somewhere in the range of 5.4 Hz to 6.9 Hz - and this is just for classical singing. The ultimate vibrato would be that of a perfect sine wave, at the value 1, which opera singer Luciano Pavarotti very nearly hit. Mercury’s vibrato waves had a value of 0.57, indicating his vocal cords were modulating at more than one frequency. This means he sang with an irregular, and therefore highly unique, vibrato. Needless to say, Brian, Roger, and Freddie all agreed to form a new band together. Freddie was the one who insisted that since they were a new band, they needed a new name. He was the one who proposed the name "Queen". Roger and Brian were not initially sold on the name, but as I said, Freddie could be very persuasive when he felt strongly about something. Freddie had a specific concept for the band that resonates to this day. He once stated, "The concept of Queen was to be regal and majestic. Glamour was part of us, and we wanted to be dandy. We wanted to shock and be outrageous." It was a very regal name and it sounded splendid. It had a lot of visual potential and was open to all sorts of interpretations. Plus he knew something about marketing. "Queen" was a strong, single-syllable name that was very universal, catchy, and easy to remember. It had a lot of visual potential and was open to all sorts of interpretations. Of course, he knew about the sexual connotation of Queen but he preferred not to see the name ‘Queen’ as a reference to his sexuality. They began looking for a bass player and went through about four or five different players before they finally found 19-year-old John Deacon (Deacy was the youngest member of Queen). According to Roger, the other bass players they had tried either had the skills and talent they were looking for but their personalities didn't mesh with the other three or their personality worked well with the other three but their talent and skill did meet the mark. John (Deacy) Deacon became the 4th member and bass guitarist for Queen in 1971.

@nesimusic9153

6 ай бұрын

Freddie was Called Freddie by His schoolmates and Not because He hated His original Name!!! IT was much easier to speak!! The Name Farroukh was very fashionable Name at that time,Said His mother in an Interview. Freddie did Piano Lessons to the level five,Not four!!!! Brian did IT to four!!!!!!

@Sassypaws4927

6 ай бұрын

@@nesimusic9153 OdD! That is not what Freddie's longtime friend and personal assistant, Peter Freestone (or as Freddie referred to him, Phoebe) said. According to Peter, Freddie would get very irritated when anyone called him Farrokh. He claimed that Freddie had specifically chosen to be called Freddie because it was such a British name. Though he was proud of his Persian ancestry (Freddie often referred to himself as a "Persian popinjay"), he always felt very British. At the time of his birth, Zanzibar was a British protectorate so Freddie was born a British citizen and he felt the name Farrokh made him seem separate from the other British children he attended school with. Freddie's sister Kash (Kashmira) admitted that when the family first came to live in the UK, she and her parents had a difficult time adjusting to living in the big urban metropolis of London but not Freddie. London felt like home to Freddie from the moment he stepped foot on the ground. This was where he was meant to live. The truth is he disliked India and Zanzibar and thought them dusty, dirty, and very unmodern . Whereas he saw the UK, especially London as vibrant, robust, and modern.

I prefer the 1975 Hammersmith video of White Queen, watch it & see if you agree...

Freddie was put on earth to do what he did in his short life span...

Song was about a girl that Brian was in love with from afar.

For anyone listening to this, the reaction audio is clipping out a solid portion of the song. Equalised badly. There is a ton more harmonics missing when listening. Check out the original version to understand the cascade of music being produced.

@ghichens3418

2 ай бұрын

Yep ! Agree 100 %