Hello, and welcome to Queen The Greatest Live
An exploration into what makes a Queen show the ultimate, live music experience
Having seen the importance of rehearsals,
we now delve into the equally vital – Opening Number.
Over the years, Queen have treated us to some spectacular openings,
and as Roger and Brian now explain,
this is because of their belief that how they start a show is central
to connecting with the audience from the outset.
As with most shows,
I'm not talking about plays or anything like that,
I think for the audience,
they want to be blown away at first.
So if you can blow them away a bit at first,
we used to say blind them, deafen them,
and then calm down a bit after 20 minutes.
But it's really you try and make an impact
with the first song visual
and obviously sort of an aural attack really.
And then you try and space the songs intelligently,
but you really want to go bang, bang, bang, bang
at the beginning of a show.
Yeah, openings and closings of shows are incredibly important
What's in the middle is important too But you know, the way you come on
and the way you leave are the most significantly memorable moments.
So a lot of thought goes into the opening,
and it's been a specialty of mine for a long time.
In fact, sometimes writing a song, you are already aware it'd be a good opener.
You see it and the production starts to take place in your head.
We've had some good openers and I think generally they've come out of the music.
I think our show's different from shows in that everything comes from the music.
It's not like 'let's put on a pretty light show and play some music'.
Everything comes from the music,
everything is making the music more expressive, making it connect better.
So knowing that process and that sort of solid seat of it,
it’s actually quite easy to fashion those moments.
It's so fun to plan it out,
plan the sound, where we're going to be, planning the lights and everything
and then see the effect on the audience and go, ‘Yes, that works’.
We've had some good openings.
I used to like the kabuki.
The big curtain just disappears in front of your eyes
and suddenly reveals all.
That was always a good, good gag.
With Queen famous for their attention to detail
it’s no surprise they put a great deal of thought
into building audience anticipation,
even before they burst onto the stage.
I remember going to see a show by The Who or Zeppelin,
and you're sitting there in the audience and they’re late
it's all hot and steamy and sweaty, and you think ‘What are they gonna do?’
and it's that amazing moment when they first hit the stage.
So we're very aware of that and we try to give…we're never late.
But we try to give that feeling, justify that feeling of anticipation,
give them something that they've never quite seen before,
It's nice to sort of create an atmosphere,
I think, and we use very sort of ambient things.
Sounds for that through the P.A., not loud,
just to get a nice buzz, hopefully, and an expectant buzz.
I think many acts do that.
Support act? Yes. We've had them in the past.
Many and it's always been fine.
But I think the show these days is big.
It's a massive production
and really, and it's long,
and I think it's just a bit sort of superfluous really.
We don't feel we need a support act and so we don't have one.
Basically, we have a lot to offer on a given night
and we like to use the whole evening.
So we like to do the whole show ourselves.
It's like we kind of do the warm up ourselves.
In some ways, it's a shame because it's nice to take a support group out
because it gives them a leg up
and it gives them a good chance to be seen.
But at the same time, we've talked to our audience a lot of the time,
I think most of them prefer what we do. They like the whole evening, just us
That we've actually made the effort to put our show together
which lasts two and a half hours or more,
which encompasses everything that they might want to see us do.
And you can't do that in any less time than that, really.