Queen - Live at Knebworth Park, Stevenage (9th August 1986) - Audience recording

QUEEN QUEEN QUEEN

Tour: Magic
Date: 9th August 1986
Venue: Knebworth Park
City: Stevenage, England, UK
Attendance: ca. 120,000

Audio Quality: A
Lineage: AUD - ? - "Definitive Knebworth 1986 - 2021 Remaster" (Wardour-456) - EZ CD Audio Converter - FLAC Level 5
Shared by Gullveig.org

The picture was taken by Richard Gray.

This is the last concert of the 'Magic' tour and Queen's last concert with Freddie Mercury as he would be diagnosed with HIV (and later full blown AIDS) just a year later. Luckily, it is a much better way to end off this chapter than any other concert on the tour could have been: A crowd of at least 120,000 people (some sources even claim numbers up to 200,000!) came to see the end of Queen's biggest tour at the time, making this the largest single paying audience for a UK rock concert in over a decade. The show was added in response to the massive demand for tickets for the two Wembley nights back in July. Brian would later claim the band would've been able to play up to six nights at Wembley and Harvey Goldstein, this tour's promoter, apparently agreed with him as he had booked Knebworth Park along with the Wembley Stadium dates. With so many (drunk) people in one small place, fights were pretty much a matter of time and bottle fights broke out long before Queen even set the stage during one of the opening acts. The mood would heat up so far that one man was stabbed to death after falling down from a light tower - Queen only learned about this tragedy on the following day and were understandably upset. At the same time, a woman gave birth to her newborn at some point.

Despite all the issues, the majority of the audience had turned up for a day full of music (all in all, four bands performed that day, including Status Quo) and on all recordings of this concert (whether it's the parts used for 'Live Magic' or any of the various audience recordings) the positive atmosphere gets apparent immediately. Cheering, clapping along, singing along, EVERYTHING sounds about twice as loud than at any other outdoor gig the band ever played and both Brian and Freddie keep mentioning this throughout the show, making for iconic speeches from start to finish. Although the band has unfortunately decided to not play any of the previous additions (the likes of 'Big Spender', 'Gimme Some Lovin' or 'Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)') their enthusiastic and passionate performance makes it clear how special this night was for them, even if Freddie was the only one aware it might have been their last for good. Of course there is so much more to read about this special concert and to anyone who wants to learn more, I heavily suggest checking out queenlive.ca for that!

Snippets at this show: 'Liar' (before 'Tear It Up') and 'Chinese Torture' from 'The Miracle' (during Brian's guitar solo).

00:00:00 - 01. One Vision
00:05:49 - 02. Tie Your Mother Down
00:09:47 - 03. In the Lap of the Gods... Revisited
00:12:00 - 04. Seven Seas of Rhye
00:13:17 - 05. Liar / Tear It Up
00:15:27 - 06. A Kind of Magic
00:22:17 - 07. Ay-Oh
00:24:00 - 08. Under Pressure
00:28:04 - 09. Another One Bites the Dust
00:33:38 - 10. Who Wants to Live Forever
00:37:36 - 11. I Want to Break Free
00:41:08 - 12. Impromptu
00:44:22 - 13. Guitar Solo
00:53:38 - 14. Now I'm Here
00:59:51 - 15. Love of My Life
01:05:23 - 16. Is This the World We Created...?
01:07:57 - 17. (You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care
01:09:31 - 18. Hello Mary Lou
01:10:58 - 19. Tutti Frutti
01:14:41 - 20. Bohemian Rhapsody
01:20:17 - 21. Hammer to Fall
01:25:58 - 22. Crazy Little Thing Called Love
E N C O R E
01:33:48 - 23. Radio Ga Ga
E N C O R E
01:43:31 - 24. We Will Rock You
01:46:16 - 25. Friends Will Be Friends
01:48:21 - 26. We Are the Champions
01:52:06 - 27. God Save the Queen [tape]
01:53:38 - Harvey Goldstein announces the End of the Show

You can download every show I've uploaded either on queenboots.live or the Queen Forum (queenchat.boards.net)!