It cut no ice. In the UK, the Musicians’ Union
issued a hefty fine, while the band found
themselves on the UN’s cultural blacklist. The
poison from the incident dripped into publications
like NME, where socially conscious artists like Paul
Weller wagged their fingers. By 1985, as Steven Van
Zandt’s Artists United Against Apartheid released
the protest song Sun
City – key lyric: “I ain’t
gonna play Sun City!”- Queen seemed like
pariahs on the wrong
side of history.
Commercially, all
was not lost. In
January 1985, Queen
played to 300,000 fans
at Rock In Rio, a
performance only
marred by Mercury’s
pelting with rocks and
cans during a drag
routine for I Want To Break Free (he calmed the
crowd by singing We Will Rock You in a double-
sided flag, with the Union Jack flipped to reveal the
Bandeira Do Brasil). Even then, the sense lingered
that for Queen to be embraced again on home
soil, it would take a redemption on an almost
impossibly epic scale. The kind of redemption that
only Live Aid could offer.
May would recall in Smash Hits that the band
almost snubbed Bob Geldof’s invitation to play the
biggest charity gig ever staged: “Our first reaction
was ‘Oh God! Not another one. We’d been
involved in quite a few and we were a bit
disillusioned as to how the whole business works.”
But on that day in July, Queen’s six-song set was
a resurrection, launching them into the One Vision
single, 1986’s A Kind Of
Magic album and the
restorative Magic Tour,
its 26-date arena
itinerary speaking of
a band emphatically
back in business.
Playing to over
400,000 fans and
grossing more than
£11 million, dates at
Maine Road, St James’
Park and Slane Castle
were topped by two
storied shows at
Wembley Stadium, where a 64-foot stage and twin
ego ramps lived up to Taylor’s promise that “it will
make Ben Hur look like The Muppets”.
And if the lineup’s previous hands-across-the-
water gesture in South Africa had fallen flat, there
were no such ethical issues with their arrival at
Budapest’s Népstadion, where 80,000 fans were let
off the leash by the ruling Communist party’s
authoritarian prime minister, György Lázár (whoallowed clapping for the night, if not drinking and
smoking). By the time Mercury had serenaded the
stadium with local folk standard Tavaszi Szél Vizet
Áraszt – the lyrics scrawled on his palm – the
reaction, as May told it, “was fucking deafening”.
And yet, amid these myriad triumphs, an aside
from Mercury in Budapest was darkly prophetic,
the singer responding to a reporter’s enquiry as to
whether he planned to return to Eastern Europe,
Officially, Mercury would not learn of his HIV
diagnosis until Spring 1987. But with the tabloid
press speculating about an earlier Aids test in
Harley Street, confidant Barbara Valentin claiming
he had already shown symptoms and ex-lover
Tony Bastin shortly to die of the disease, perhaps
the singer sensed the gathering stormclouds.
Mercury would return to Budapest, he replied that
day, “if I’m still alive”.
The show went on – and the finale could only be
Knebworth Park. On August 9, 1986, a sea of
120,000 fans awaited the helicopter touchdown of
a band who could go no higher. Every corner of the
catalogue was mined for gold; every thrust and jab
of Mercury’s microphone caught on the site’s giant
TV screens. The Miracle album of 1989 still lay ahead,
but this was the truest swansong to the band’s
larger-than-life decade. And at the end of the night,
the frontman’s heartfelt last words from the stage- from any stage – had a sense of finality befitting
what would be the last show by the classic Queen
lineup. “Goodnight and sweet dreams...”
Live fast... Freddie on
a bullet train during
a Queen Japanese tour.72 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
“They were the heavy,
heavy police who
would kill people at
the drop of a hat.”
Freddie Mercury on the band’s
bodyguards in Brazil