Original subtitles

Dark, isn't it?

Here we are, the famous drone, Rog.

That was your drone, I think, wasn't it?

Yeah, I think that was one of my drones.

I think that was a drone of Roger's.

And this will be the credits.

I can't see a thing at this stage, trying to find the stage.

See, Roger and I are languishing here

on a large sofa looking at this

very ancient

performance of ours which has been lovingly

remixed and remastered and everything by our chaps

who have spent a lot of months on it, I have to say.

We couldn't afford lights, so we asked the audience to bring candles,

and cigarette lighters.

Montreal.

I hope it gets brighter than this.

Still droning.

Nothing like a drone for building up tension.

This is when Steven Spielberg was at his peak, obviously.

Son of Close Encounter-ish

beginning.

I think he copied us, didn't he?

- I think he copied us, yeah. - Yeah.

That's actually the first proper moving light rig, wasn't it?

It was, actually. I'm very proud of this.

Used to call that the Bic razor rig.

The fast version of We Will Rock You.

Each of those spotlights under the main rig sections

are manned by a little man in a chair in the air.

Each individually controllable, so they could be very interactive in the show,

as you'll see later.

Fashions of the early '80s. Wonderful.

There's a very interesting story behind this, actually,

which we should probably share some of.

These two concerts were shot

by a chap called Saul Swimmer

who came up with the idea that he would film us

in very high-quality film

and then edit it all together from the two nights

and take it out on the road on its own as a show.

What they call curtain-walling, on a huge screen.

And he actually did do it for a while, I believe.

But it has various repercussions on the way this was shot.

And also on the way it was originally mixed, because it was originally mixed...

That's a nice fill, Rog.

It was originally mixed

very dry so that it could be put into an auditorium

and they could get the impression that we were there, actually playing.

Yeah, it was a thing called Mobilevision

and it was basically a travelling version of IMAX.

A nice idea, but

we found the cameras got very much in the way.

Yeah, it led to great...

A great furore backstage, really.

At least, Fred got...

Fred got probably more annoyed than I can ever remember him getting.

So, behind all this onstage,

there's a lot of aggro, really,

because we really seriously fell out with Mr Swimmer

and with our own manager

over this.

Jim was actually banned from the dressing room for a period, I seem to remember.

But there's a lot of anger in this performance, which you can see.

Comes out in various ways.

Yeah, a lot of the songs are very fast.

But a great crowd in the Montreal Forum,

which was always a great place for us to play.

This is not the Robbie Williams song.

It's 20-odd years before.

And it's a very fast version.

So, you guys are sitting watching this film, with us talking all the way through it.

You can always switch us off if you want.

Or you could just watch it all the way through without us

and then all the way through with us and then...

There's some great Freddie lyrics here. I love them.

Yes.

"I'll pull you, I'll pill you, I'll Cruella De Vil you.”"

Of course.

Interesting that also, this concert...

Because usually you see us in the middle of a tour.

This was a one-off, or a two-off.

And it's a very different sort of situation.

I think it's the first time we ever played Under Pressure, for instance.

So instead of being a well-oiled machine,

this is all a bit sort of risky for us.

And in some ways that's quite nice.

But you're not looking at

the son of well-oiled machine that we were at Wembley, for instance.

I've forgotten how much John used to dance.

Quite nifty.

Yeah, we really...

It took us a while to get used...

In fact, we never really got used to the film cameras being around.

They were really getting in the way

and it really got to Freddie, I think.

It was all a bit thrown together.

I think that's partly what annoyed us, just the cameramen got in the way.

And really pissed Fred off, that's for sure.

And most of the time they spent following Fred,

because they weren't sure who was doing what at what time.

You'll notice, I mean, some of the camerawork is really not good.

They don't know where they are and there's all sorts of things missing.

But what they've done with the quality's great

because it was shot on son of double-35mm,

which was as good or better than anything else that you could get.

Yeah, the actual quality of the film is wonderful.

So when the shot is good, you get a wonderful picture.

A very high-definition picture.

Fred poodling around, and then straight into the song.

Just played a few extra bars there to get his breath.

Yeah, Fred's voice is in great shape.

I mean, really, he just goes for it all.

That's a nice shot.

It's actually quite an event for us to be able to

put out this film with a high quality form at last after all these years.

Because it was out for years, very badly mixed and mastered and everything.

And what they did was they edited between the two nights

and sometimes the picture was from a different night from the sound.

So, sometimes you weren't looking at anything remotely real.

So, what our chaps have done is make it much more

what was actually happening at any particular moment.

But...

Brian looks very young there, doesn't he?

Good lord, yes.

But when they edited the film,

they threw away all the bits that they didn't use,

so we could not re-edit the visuals.

So, a lot of the stuff had to be done adapting sound to picture.

That's a fairly young Roger, isn't it?

You haven't changed, though, Rog.

It's funny, I used to, in this particular time...

I'll just talk over Brian's solo now.

I didn't... I used to take the bottom head off.

I think the idea was, at the time, to get the drums sort of louder and punchier.

But these days I've very much gone back to keeping both the heads on

and getting more ring and resonance out of the drums

so they sound more natural.

Yeah, Fred's soaring there.

I thought that was you soaring, Rog.

I can't remember. Maybe it was.

Yes, the other thing that resulted from

our bad relationship with the people who made this thing

was that they owned it lock, stock and barrel.

So it was one of the few pieces of our product

which we had no control over for years and years afterward.

So, it's a great thing that we now actually have it,

and we could make a good job of

polishing it up

into the form that it originally should have been.

And this is one of the last

times that you would see Queen, just the four of us.

There's no extra

keyboard man, which we took on shortly after this.

It's just very raw, the four of us.

And Fred was playing a lot of piano, which I personally like.

Yeah, he's very underrated as a pianist, as you can see.

Wonderful.

He plays beautifully and sings beautifully.

Faultless.

Fantastic rhythm in his playing.

I've never known anyone else to play keyboards with that amount of rhythm.

Yeah, he was a joy to play with.

He just had the rhythm in him, so...

We used to make a very great, tight unit.

Absolutely.

And yeah, I think, as Brian said, this is the last...

Probably the last time we ever played, just the four of us,

with no assistance from anything.

A lot of concerts now,

a lot of it's on a hard disc, et cetera, et cetera.

Not ours, by the way.

Yeah, not ours. And this is just four people, and...

Fred actually wanted

the freedom to move around.

That's why he played less piano later on.

And that's why we eventually did take on a keyboard player.

It made Fred feel a lot more free to perform

and connect with the audience.

We used to have lots of nice little things worked out

where he could play piano for a while, like in this song,

and then grab a microphone,

thrust into his hand by Ratty.

Who'd better get it right.

Yeah, there's a lot of to and fro-ing from the piano.

It just gave him

a little bit more leeway and space

to work the stage

and less things to think about all at once

in the later concerts.

We did do some of our very big concerts in South America

at the very beginning of the '80s, just the four of us.

No support act, either.

Just going out, it felt

gladiatorial, almost.

It was

just four of you

between disaster and success.

I bet you my hairstyle's completely slipped by now.

This is one of our songs in basically in 6/8

or sort of three-time, which is...

We had several songs in that time,

in that time signature,

which is quite unusual, actually.

It just sort of seemed to work for us.

This one always worked great live, I thought.

Ratty, otherwise known as Peter Hince,

grabbing the microphone at the perfect moment.

Freddie back on the piano.

Very nice.

Yeah, great use of the microphone there.

For dynamic effect. Fantastic.

Freddie's piano monitors and his vocal monitors were so loud

that if you sat down and hit the piano and shouted into the mike...

Rip your head off.

It would feel like your head was being chopped off.

He had a very powerful voice and very loud monitors.

Brian did a good half-windmill there.

Leaning into it.

Little spider's-web waistcoat there.

Fascinating combination of fashions there.

Yes, a Nina Huryn creation, that was.

It's amazing, we didn't seem to get hot in those days, did we?

It was blisteringly hot on stage.

That's youth for you, isn't it, really?

Yeah. Nary a bead of sweat.

Always liked to end with a flourish.

This is code for Freddie thinking the security's too heavy.

Off we go. Breakneck pace.

Freddie son of changes

the melody slightly,

but always sort of in keeping, and tasteful and intelligent

choice of notes always.

And always totally recognisable.

Probably just to keep himself interested.

This is what's called a medley.

And we're straight into I'm In Love With My Car.

That's a nightmare of singing and playing drums at the same time.

I'm sure it was "my hand on your grease gun” in the original, wasn't it?"

Have you changed it, Rog?

I can't remember. I used to get it wrong every night.

Was there some particular reason for this, Rog?

There's Fred really enjoying the fact that

I'm having to work harder than he is there.

He's filling out the sound nice, there.

The main problem, though, in playing drums and singing is the next breath.

So the notes tend to be shortened a bit, you know.

(Hey, he)'-

That's always a high note to get at the end there.

Gets the blood going a bit, this one.

It winds you up.

This is the psychedelic one.

Get Down, Make Love.

At the time, the light show was very much cutting-edge.

Probably doesn't look it now, but...

Nobody had really seen moving lights.

One minute they were six foot above the stage,

the next minute they were 26 foot above the stage

coming down.

Gave the show a lot of added excitement, I think, at the time.

And it was used quite well in this song, as I remember.

Quite atmospheric.

Yes, we were always very interactive with the lights.

These days people tend to employ a lighting guy and say, "Get on with it,"

but we were always in rehearsals using the colours and the moods

and trying to achieve certain effects.

This is a nice effect here.

Yeah. Hopefully not too many colours at once, I think.

Yes, we always liked the primary colours,

and simplicity in the light and shade.

Yeah, lots of colours makes white.

This is the first... I think this is the first time, pretty much,

that I used this device which we invented,

which feeds the guitar around a number of times through a harmoniser

and I can control the pitch of the harmoniser with a foot pedal.

I had it specially made.

And it actually still exists, although it's all rusty,

in a garage somewhere.

Blimey, Brian, you just vanished in cloud.

And Rogers hitting strange things that go...

Yeah, that's one of the first ever sets of electronic drums.

It sounds pretty strange now, but...

I hope you're playing this very loud at home because it was very loud in the auditorium.

Nice shot.

It's neat being able to play with the light,

kind of have a little battle with it.

Like Roger said, there is a guy up there who's driving it.

A little fantasy world here.

That was my referee's whistle.

It's funny we end up talking about the lights all of the time,

but it's a big part of the show, really.

Nice asymmetrical effect there, which is unusual.

A lot of the part of our show, in fact, involving cues

was all done on eye contact, really.

And just John and myself there at the end.

Freddie... Well, we all just relied on eye contact to get the cues right.

Makes it more organic.

That's why the shows were slightly different, every single performance.

It's unusual. You don't see me playing piano that often, really.

You look like Bob Dylan there.

Nice lighting effects in this. Nice shots of Fred.

He sings this beautifully, I've got to say.

Good shot.

I think he forgot the first line there.

Beautifully rescued, though.

Lovely.

It's just the bass, piano and drums here.

Brian picks up his guitar in a moment and makes it all go heavy.

Great bass part from John.

This is me on guitar now,

which, of course, you don't see 'cause there's no cameraman around.

And Fred's up on the other side, on a platform.

We had these wings on the stage so that we could really get out

on each side to interact with the audience at the sides.

Now he's back down.

And now, Fred on piano.

All very clever.

Backing me up to do the solo.

You'd almost think we practised.

- Yeah. John plays great bass lines there. - He does.

- Beautifully constructed. - No one quite like John, gotta say.

Just a bit of eye contact there, again,

and a big last chord.

Some audience shots.

This is interesting. In the original, the old version of this,

which was sold under the confusing title of We Will Rock You,

they neatly cut this bit out for some reason.

Our chaps were able to restore it nicely.

Very well done, chaps.

- That's a good old pace as well, isn't it? - Yeah.

Playing the record at about twice the speed, I think.

Like a lot of the songs in this concert.

I mean, a lot of songs live tended to be much faster than the records,

basically, because they gained excitement and intensity at being faster,

but we took that to extremes, I think, on these couple of nights.

I think it's... Well, of course, they were one-offs.

We weren't entirely relaxed.

And that little... The tension and slight disagreements

between the film crew and ourselves and...

Tended to just... I guess you could call it rushed, but I just call it fast.

It gains, you know, where it loses a little and it gains some, I think, from the tempos.

Yeah, John's really moving around a lot and really hammering it, I gotta say.

I think there was a bit of an extra edge in John that night, isn't there?

- Yeah, I think so. Yeah. - Definitely.

Just the mere fact of having cameras, of course, in a situation changes everything.

Yeah, I think he thought he was getting paid extra for dancing.

Having Fred look you in the eye when you're playing

always made you play a bit harder.

Yes.

I can't remember what happens here, I think we just used to do what occurred.

Great little interaction that Freddie did. Much imitated these days, I gotta say.

Yeah, he's still the best at that. I've never saw anybody do it better.

Yeah, Freddie did have this way of

kind of insisting that everybody get involved.

It was very, very endearing, I think, and it really did glue the place together.

- He's a wonderful showman. - Audiences were generally more static

- in those days, you know, and... - Very true.

There's always a lot of security in the hall trying to keep them on their plastic seats

and we'd spend most of our time trying to get them out of them.

And particularly in America, I think, you know, the...

I think at this point we'd just come from South America,

where the people would insist on singing everything.

Every single line in English.

And particularly Love of My Life, which you'll see later on, you know,

and we almost had son of come to expect it, I think.

In America, you... Well, this isn't America, this is Canada, of course,

it's still North America, but...

A lot of people just wanted to listen and after a while you get used to

wanting that kind of response from the audience.

You look for the feedback and it helps you.

So, I think there's a feeling in Fred of, like, "Come on, come on, let's get into it."

Even though they're responding in their own way, very nicely.

Dragon Attack. Yeah.

Now, this had been quite a nice radio hit, so, very well known to everybody,

and a lot of fun to play on stage.

Yeah, Dragon Attack was particularly exhausting, actually, for the drums.

- Very hard for Rog. - Yeah, very hard.

Here I am, which riff am I on'?

I think that's Ben Elton in the front down there, isn't it?

Yeah, it's got one of those patterns that just...

It doesn't let up. You can't...

- Yeah, it's a stiff one for you. - It's got a lot of work on the right hand.

Relentlessly demanding, energy-wise, on the arm muscles.

Pretty tight, though. Pretty tight.

Nice to see Freddie in his muscular prime there. He looks fantastic.

With his chest wig on.

That is a funny story, actually, isn't it? But we'll tell it another time, won't we?

"No, tell it now," they say.

We did two photo sessions quite early on in our career

and for one of them, for the first one, I think, or for one of them, whatever,

Freddie decided that he wanted to shave his chest.

He wanted to have a clean-cut look.

And then, for the other photo sessions, he was just normal.

And then, some guy in the press put two and two together to make five

and said, "Yes, of course, Freddie was wearing a chest wig in this one."

And, of course, he wasn't.

Nice curtain of light there.

Lovely, lovely lights. We love our lights.

I've got my front room like that at home, it's just like that. Yes, fabulous.

Your front room's a bit bigger than this, though, isn't it?

It is, really, yeah.

We're cooking here, I think we're getting into it now.

Yeah, that's nice. I think the band's settled down by now.

This is a nice thing where we sort of change tempo together.

We had a good feel for each other, sometimes.

It's all really... Within certain parameters, this is all made up, really.

See, you and I had been doing this since about 1974, probably.

Probably knows... See, Brian's looking directly...

We know what we're gonna do.

Everybody's looking at one another, really. I think that's the key.

- Yeah, good contact. - Interaction, eye contact.

We had the freedom 'cause there's no damn clicks that, you know...

These days people can't do that 'cause they're working to clicks

and a lot of the stuffs on hard disc, that you're hearing.

- I don't want to mention any names. - Yeah, don't mention any names.

You were at Wembley the other day, weren't you?

I was at Wembley the other day and you'd be surprised what happens in Wembley.

All sorts of people...

Which I think is very disappointing. You go to a show

and what you're hearing out of the PA is basically bits of stuff out of the studio.

It's very sad.

There are some good bands around, though.

There are, indeed.

See, there's a dramatic pause there, but he's also getting his breath back.

- This is... - Doing his stuff with the mike stick.

Very distinctive Freddie, isn't it?

Crack.

I don't know if I'm that fast any more.

Another one of our endings.

- Big ending. - End big.

Lots of spitting, swearing, death,

eye contact and thumping.

I wonder if you guys in Montreal can recognise yourselves down there.

Interesting.

Yeah, this is interesting. We had, as I said, just come from South America,

where this was taken up and became a huge hit on the radio,

and everybody in Argentina and Brazil could sing it perfectly in English

and did at the concerts. It was quite colossal.

So we'd... And we'd been the first people who actually, I think,

went down to South America with a full rig and played football stadiums.

It was quite colossal.

At this time, Under Pressure was number one in England,

and we had a number-one album and number-one video in England,

I think, with Greatest Hits.

So, we're kind of at a peak.

But Freddie, at this moment, is finding out

that he has to sing it because they're not singing it that much.

They are, a bit.

But not as much as he'd like.

We were trying to figure out what he was saying.

Sometimes I'm shocked when I look back at Freddie's performances

and realise just how good they are.

'Cause you forget.

With his fingers on the mike stand,

everything's in control.

Yeah, there was only one of Fred.

He's great.

He'd actually got used to not having to sing this song,

'cause the audience would sing it.

All sorts of things go through your mind at a time like this.

At this moment, Freddie is changing into a new dress,

and I'm being cantilevered into some kind of dressing gown backstage.

I think this is the first time we did this in public, isn't that right?

Yes, the first performance of Under Pressure live.

Back in England it was number one,

and became number one in Argentina, as well, where we'd just been.

We still feel a great band with the Argentinians over this.

Well, it sounds very solid.

Very solid, very measured, isn't it, yes? Nice tempo.

Very careful, in a way.

It evolved quite a lot from this, actually, didn't it?

Deaky hammering it very nicely.

Roger has modestly had his face painted on the drum, you'll notice.

On the bass drum, just in case you should forget what he looks like.

That's the trouble with having to sit at the back.

It is you, isn't it, Rog?

Yeah, I think it is. Yes.

It's a very enjoyable song to play live, I gotta say, Under Pressure.

I love it. All that dynamic and stuff in it.

Yeah, with a very sort of joyful ending. Well built.

But that's quite different from the way we played it later on, isn't it?

I mean, there was more emphasis in general later on.

It's a bit low for me, this bit. It's a hard part to sing.

Yes, this song arose out of, pretty much, a chance meeting

in Montreal, with David Bowie,

and then we hacked it out all together.

An unusual song,

and it was put together in an unusual way.

One of my favourites.

Well, this is pure improvisation, as I remember.

Yeah, this is like, "What are we doing here?" Oh, well, this seems like fun.

It's probably something we worked out in sound check,

and just jammed on it, and that's what this is.

I'm sure this does

materialise in the studio at some point, though, doesn't it?

It comes out of this...

I think Freddie has in mind this song which is going to be called Sex Show.

- You'll hear, he says that in a minute. - Yeah.

There you go.

But we're into Keep Yourself Alive, in a oompletely different key.

This one's always best done with the invisible guitarist, I find.

Meanwhile, we got a nice view of the camera there.

Good view of the camera.

- No guitar, but there you go. - Fabulous.

Oh, there it is! I was playing. I thought I was.

There's me lovely old Ludwigs.

It's nice that we did have the freedom to stretch out in these bits, if we wanted to.

I have to admit, I don't know what's coming next.

Interesting shot, too. Very nice.

A little experimentation.

Deaky's thinking, ”Well, okay.

"He'll get on with it for a while."

This was our first single, of course.

It's actually the first self-written track we ever put together in the studio, I think.

I think that's right.

That and Stone Cold Crazy, I think, was...

Well, that actually came out later, didn't it?

Roger's gonna build some serious sheds here.

Syndrums'?

No, they're Rototoms.

Oh, beg your pardon. Rototoms.

Now he's off to do something completely different.

- I'd forgotten all about this. - There's a big surprise.

Bang on the big timpani.

A bit showing off, really.

Showing off my new neckerchief.

Most people may not know that Roger has pedals on these things

so he can change the pitch of them.

Getting very sweaty by now.

This is the middle eight, isn't it?

- No, this is the verse. - Oh, yeah.

That's a great noise, actually.

That your huge gong behind?

Known for the hugeness of my gong.

Now resides at your country palace, doesn't it, I think?

Yeah, I think we broke that first one, and

the second one stands in the garden.

Get the kids in for tea.

You were thinking of having it converted

into a swimming pool, weren't you, at one time?

Yeah, converted into a countryside leisure park.

Off for a Kit-Kat.

Ah, now Bri gets to expand lyrically.

Now this is where I get the chance to play with the lighting...

The strange pod above me,

which I used to enjoy.

He's coming down as far as he dares. It was a lot of fun.

Very Close Encounters.

I'm getting the thing to feed back through the air.

I love prog rock.

This was played with the two delays, of course, which became a feature.

Which I've always enjoyed, because you can...

You can make various different kind of things happen.

The lights almost developed personalities of their own, really.

They became the other members of the band

at points like this, in the show, and

in a big arena, it's very,

when people hadn't seen things like that before, very effective.

This bit also gives me the chance to explore different parts of the audience.

- Care to rephrase that? - And make a big noise.

Yeah, depending how confident I felt,

I would just switch off the delays and just do something like this.

I was just a boy, you know.

It's funny, looking back here. I don't...

I feel a mixture of things, really.

Once we get up on the side platform,

"the prancing platforms", as we used to call them.

Or as the road crew used to call them.

In a lot of those, basically, hockey arenas, or

basketball arenas,

it's steeply raked on the side, and a lot of people sitting at the side of the stage,

so those things enabled especially Brian and Freddie

to get up and get close to

people up there, and involve them more in the show. It worked very well.

- It's a good piece of design. - Yeah, a lot of fun.

I get this feeling you're wanting to try

and give everyone a little piece of something.

Sometimes I don't quite even know what I'm playing.

It's just like I was trying to give them a piece of this.

And sometimes I'm very conscious of what's coming back to me from the delays.

I think I'm trying to summon Roger up from the depths now.

Yeah, that means, "Get up here!"

Don't ask what they were doing backstage!

No, we've just been, you know, towelled.

No, basically you'd get rid of the sweat, if you could. There'd be

fans in there.

I mean, air fans, you know.

And...

A change of shirt, know what I mean?

I hear that looks back.

Ah, Flash and The Hero are on the CD,

but not on this DVD,

so you'll have to gel the CD from... Bloody good, actually, isn't it?

If songs got cut from the original video,

there's no way we can get them back visually,

because the visuals don't exist.

Fred's on the guitar. It can only be one song.

It must be Crazy Little Thing,

which he wrote on guitar in the bath.

I never quite worked out how he got the guitar in the bath, but...

Always started in too fast.

Oh, sounds good, though.

Fred played pretty good guitar. It's not generally known.

For instance, he wrote Ogre Battle on guitar, and if you want to try playing that,

be my guest, on an acoustic.

He could really hammer the guitar incredibly fast

at a great rate with his right hand. Quite a unique feel.

Obviously, he wrote this on the guitar.

You'll notice Brian playing a Telecaster. It was the only time, really,

this particular Fender sound on this track.

It was unusual to play a Tele.

Always took it around on tour just for that solo. It's quite funny.

Still have that guitar.

But we don't have the white Telecaster, which

Freddie used to play at times. Not this time here.

It got stolen at some point, and I guess it's hiding away someplace

in somebody's collection.

Come to think of it, I don't know if we still have that Ovation of Freddie's.

Deaky on his good old Precision bass.

Me on my homemade Red Special.

And Fred doing his little Elvis thing there. I always liked that.

Yeah.

Things like this, I've always kind of...

In soloing, I'm always kind of aware that I want to keep the rhythm going.

For years and years and years, I was kind of

trying to cover the ground between the lead and the rhythm,

which in some ways, is good for you,

but sometimes there are moments in songs like this where it feels a little odd.

And when we had the keyboard player, there used to be room fora keyboard,

a honky-tonk type solo at the end of this, which was quite good.

And I could play off the piano. But that's just the four of us.

And it does have a certain rawness,

a certain charm, I think.

I guess when it's basically, instrumentally, a three piece, guitar, bass, drums,

you have to cover that...

That was a quick shirt change, wasn't it?

You have to cover that ground between rhythm and lead.

Yeah.

This is edited, of course. This is an encore.

So we've missed all the point when we came off, and...

I don't think it's even...

Is this in the right order'? I have no idea.

I would have thought this was the last encore.

Apparently, it's a trouser thing.

The people who edited the film together wanted to put this here

because Freddie had his trousers on. On the second night, he had shorts on.

He actually did it deliberately, because Freddie was so upset

with the Mobilevision guy that he deliberately

decided he would ruin the continuity so that they couldn't out between the two nights.

All quite amusing, really.

Bleep!

Offered in the best possible taste, I think, really.

Not the normal way to address your audience, but...

Wouldn't want him being normal, though, would we?

I like moments like this. He's going, "Okay, we gonna end? We gonna end?"

- Lots of eye contact here. - Yeah, fun!

Nice to do an old song.

Somebody else's song. A lot of fun.

It's a good one.

We never recorded anybody else's song, I don't think.

No, we didn't, did we'?

Looks like a Bohemian Rhapsody moment to me.

A little twiddle with his knobs, getting his piano sounding right.

Yes, those immortal introductory notes.

I think it became quite a hit, this one, didn't it?

Yeah, I think it did, actually.

You could always tell how tired he was

by which notes he would go for in this one.

- Definitely going for it in this one. - He's going for it, yeah.

If the voice was slightly, maybe, tired or something,

he was a genius at going for the lower note and people wouldn't notice.

- Finding a different way round. - A note that worked,

but wasn't quite as high as the one on the record.

This is a great study of Freddie, I think. The cameras just...

Obviously, you don't see anything of the rest of us, but it's great

just to see him go through this at such close quarters, in such high definition.

Classic, really.

- That's some voice. - There now, it's all there.

You don't see that on the X Factor, do you?

You do not.

The invisible guitarist again.

- That drummer is good, though. - Love the drums.

That was a good solo, that, Brian. Was that you?

I believe so.

I think I was there.

And Brian will come on as a fully grown butterfly now.

A little son et lumiere here, while we change our frocks.

Yeah, there's no way we could ever reproduce this on stage,

with all the multi-track voices,

so we just used it as

a little son et lumiére and a moment to change.

Then we come belting back on, and hopefully don't fall over.

Make a grand entrance, hopefully.

There's a pyro...

That's the best shot, the long shot, of the power of the lights, I've seen.

Great shot of Deaky there, too.

- I must have had six of those shirts! - Belting through it.

- Six of what? - I must have had loads of those shirts.

I don't know...

Freddie's nice run, all played with the left hand,

in octaves, which other people find very hard to do.

Yeah.

There's a little correction.

Starts going flat, and just gets himself in tune again.

There's moments like that where you can really feel Freddie

- feeling something inside. - Yeah.

And it's just coming out.

It's very expressive.

All those things are happening. He's interpreting the song,

he's interpreting his feelings.

He's doing the show, he's putting it across, he's interacting with us.

- Staying in tune. - Yep.

Some very pretty girls in the audience. They're all grandmas now.

Just saw Jeff Lynne in the audience there.

- What's he doing there? - Deaky dancing.

Quick change to a bottleneck.

Yeah, shift it up a gear. Great.

The picture quality is particularly good. It's so great after seeing...

I remember the original was pretty damn murky.

This makes it look like it was yesterday.

Apart from the clothes.

It does have a nice transparent quality.

The quality is really lovely, as I was saying.

Yeah, nice pyro, yes. All along the front of the stage.

Nothing like a big bang at the end of the night.

Do hope you've got it loud at home.

Another One Bites the Dust.

Freddie, his rapper's gear.

See, I can't help it. The shorts made me laugh every time.

One of Deaky's greatest hits, of course.

Very, very big hit.

You see, he's playing the MusicMan there, which is...

He usually played a Fender Precision.

Usually the drummer gets saddled with the horrible high part there to sing.

You've got to remember, this was a brand new look

in 1980-whenever it was.

November, 1981, apparently.

Yeah, this was a brand new look then.

- I just don't know what to say about that. - I don't know what to say about that either.

I remember my roadie used to have to play the clap machine.

He had the timing of a three-legged ant.

- There's the crystal Taylor. - It was good then, was it?

Good timing, that was, yeah.

I used to turn around and say...

Some very questionable words there from Fred, I have to say.

We'll let that pass, though.

Taking the song to new places.

It's not my favourite look, this.

Does it remind you of Phil Collins?

Sort of. It reminds me a little bit of Axl.

- Yeah. - Some years later.

Also a wonderful showman.

Great vocal.

Quite crisp, I thought, that.

- Now this is Sheer Heart Attack, right? - Yeah, this one used to kill me.

And quite punky, I guess.

Well it's fun to play, for me, I gotta tell you.

I used to have to half stand up to get round this one.

Tough for you, isn't it?

Yeah, it's a tough one at the end of the night.

There's the white lights.

It was the most effective in the end.

- I love those curtains of white at the back. - You cannot beat white light.

"It was the DNA."

This is meant to be a wall of noise, here, from Brian.

Nice intensity we get built up here in the...

Which I personally enjoy.

I think there was a fire later this night, there.

At the top of the hotel.

Couple of parties going on.

Fred's room, my room... 100 people had to go down 60 flights of stairs

to find out it was a false alarm.

Sort of spoiled the night, really. It was all going so well.

Freddie eating the guitar, yeah?

- One of his favourite things. - Used to get quite violent, this bit.

Sometimes.

Another gentle evening.

I think you see Fred throw his mike away there.

And Deaky also tossed his guitar someplace.

I suppose it's weird to remember,

but these songs were relatively new in 1981,

so just a couple of years old.

Seems like a perennial closer now,

but this was a relatively new song then.

Well, they seem to know this.

Great rhythm in his vocal.

Takes guts to go out in white shorts in front of people like that.

In time-honoured fashion,

segues 'mo We Are the Champions.

I've found a lot of people find this song hard to sing,

not just because of the range of it,

but the timing catches a lot of

otherwise good singers out.

It's a great old anthem.

He really is a hell of a singer as well.

Deceptive.

- There he goes. - But just try it.

When this DVD comes out, it will be just about

exactly the 30th anniversary of Rock You and Champions'

first release.

So they have come of age.

I understand that BBC are planning

a kind of documentary about

what happened to those songs, because they have infiltrated their way into

events all around the world.

Quite an amazing thing, really.

Much more in public consciousness than probably anything else we've done.

- Roger taking the high road, there. - Yeah.

Just what I need at the end of the night.

I don't know about you, Brian, but I feel exhausted watching that.

- It does make you feel tired. - Absolutely.

It's a great moment, there. This is the moment where the lights become a wall,

which just lights up the audience.

So you really see the audience perfectly for the first time.

A good feeling, though, at the end of the gig. Very good.

Yeah, always a great feeling at the end of a show, I have to say.

Nothing quite like it, really.

- It's a damn good group. - Not bad.

Deaky should be here. Deaky would say, "Not bad."

And what would Fred say'?

- "Oh, let's fuck off and have a drink, dear." - Probably, yes.

What a nice shot.

Well, good night, folks.