You are watching Queen The Greatest,
and no celebration of Queen’s most iconic
moments and achievements would be
complete, without the record breaking…
In January 1985, Queen flew
out to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to
headline what was to be
the biggest rock festival ever held.
[Interviewer] “Freddie, can I just stop
you for a minute and ask you
how everything’s going?”
[Freddie] “I think everything is
going to be OK.
I’ve got first night jitters, I think,
this is the first big night.
We’re going to watch the other bands and
see how it’s all going.
I just want to get a feel of it all.”
In a site specially built to hold
a staggering 250,000 people, Queen took
to the stage at 2 o'clock in the morning.
Yet despite the late hour, they were met
by an extremely excitable crowd,
stretching as far as the eye could see.
Queen’s previous stadium experiences in
South America stood them in good stead,
and they delivered another spectacular
show, and as this rare BBC report
from the after show party demonstrates,
the band clearly didn’t want
this special night to end.
[Interviewer] “What’s it like looking out
over all that huge amount of people?”
[Freddie Mercury] “Well, it’s mind
boggling you know, and to me I just…
it’s like a housewife to be honest,
just go on there and do my job
and then come home.”
[Interviewer] “Surely, it can’t be like
being a housewife?”
[Freddie Mercury] “Oh, you know
what I mean.
It’s just a job to me anyway,
but it’s mind boggling,
what can I tell you it’s quite amazing.
I mean, you saw those people there.”
[Interviewer] “So guys, how did you feel
it all went tonight?”
[Roger Taylor] “Very well. Fantastic.
Our biggest audience yet, I think.”
[Freddie Mercury] “When you’ve got a crowd
as large as that, and the event,
the adrenaline just takes you over,
and so I guess I was sort of cavorting
about more than usual, I don’t know.”
[Roger Taylor] “The only thing was it was
very late by the time we went on,
but everybody stayed so, I mean,
it was great really.”
[Interviewer] “For a lot of the bands this
was a first visit to South America,
it was Queen that blazed the trail on
two previous tours, being the first
big rock band to come here.”
[Freddie Mercury] “The Government actually
wanted us to be here, and I think
they wanted the Rolling Stones or us,
or whatever.
A lot of the groups were scared to
come here, in the early days as it were,
and we took the plunge.
And look what happened!”
[Interviewer] “Queen gained a lot of fans
in Brazil, some of whom managed
to persuade Brian May to come and play
on the beach.”
Queen would return to Rock in Rio in 2015
with Adam Lambert,
for the Festival’s 30th anniversary –
once again receiving a rapturous reaction.
Looking back to 1985, it had been
an extraordinary way to start the year,
and as the band left Brazil, they must
have wondered if there would ever be
an event as remarkable as that one.
Little did they know the answer to
that question was just a few months away…
as we will discover in the next episode of
Queen The Greatest.