Queen - The DVD Collection: Live At Wembley Stadium (DVD)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Soundtrack	Outstanding
How does it compare to similar films?	Outstanding

Advantages:	They will rock you !
Disadvantages:	Errr .  .  .  it's Queen, so, nothing !

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

It's 1986 - One year on from Live Aid, and Queen are back at Wembley Stadium, rocking the crowd once more! They are at the top of their form and from this concert you can see why they were the biggest band in the world (at that time anyway). And thankfully, they recorded the experience so that the legions of fans who are far too young to have seen them live (including myself) can have some idea of what they were like. And even better than that, they also recorded their rehearsals, the stage being set up, and some footage from the previous day's concert.

So here we have a 2-disk collection, not only of a fantastic concert, but many other goodies as well! My personal favourite bit is the Queen Cam section, right at the end - that was what made me want to get the dvd since I was told about it by another fan!

***DVD 1***

The saturday concert. If you're a Queen fan, you've probably seen this before, but the concert was nearly 2 hours long (110 minutes), so most videos and tv showings have bits cut out to fit it into a smaller time. And you probably have heard all the cliches before about how Freddie dominated the stage, running from side to side like a maniac with the poor cameramen desperately chasing after him to keep him in shot, Roger pounding his drums, Brian sending spirits soaring with the smallest twitch of his finger and John doing what John does best - providing a heavy bass line to bring it all together. So I won't be going on about that!

I love watching this concert because it has all their best songs played brilliantly, a huge selection of top ten hits to choose from! I just wish I had been able to be there, crammed into the front row of that crowd... The thing that is really great (and which you won't notice because it's done so well) is the huge number of cameras on stage recording everything so you don't miss any part of the concert.

They managed to pack 28 songs into less than 2 hours, and hopefully you know most of them so I will just mention my favourites! In the interview on Disk 2, Roger and Brian talk about the show, saying that the plan was "Deafen and blind them in the first 10 minutes, then let it calm down a bit, then do it again at the end" - and that's exactly what happens.

The band walk onto the stage for the first song, "One Vision" and the crowd roars! They then proceed to belt through several songs at top speed, not giving the crowd time to pause for breath as they rip into "Tie Your Mother Down", "In The Lap Of The Gods", "Seven Seas Of Rhye" and "Tear It Up". This is a great mix of songs from each of their first few albums, great for listening to as you do the housework actually… or maybe that's just me, I don't know!

During "A Kind Of Magic", four inflatable cartoon versions of the band members were let loose in the stadium - 2 were brought down by the crowd but the others floated away. The Freddie inflatable ended up draped over someone's washing line a few miles away!

Freddie then does his amazing vocal game with the audience, which leads into "Under Pressure" - which was written in collaboration with David Bowie, but Roger has to sing his part, doing a very good job of it - I love hearing Roger's voice, it's so sweet and kind of husky… *sigh*…

Then we get into the slower section, starting with "Who Wants To Live Forever", a really lovely song based on the film "Highlander" and written by Brian. The next few songs in fact are Brian May creations, and are mostly slow, romantic ballads. Brian even plays a couple of them with a 12-string acoustic guitar - "Love Of My Life" and "Is This The World We Created". This gives a really beautiful sound, and the part where Freddie stops singing on "Love of My Life" and the crowd takes over always brings a tear to my eye.

The 50's medley included (You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care, Hello Mary Lou (Goodbye Heart), Tutti Frutti and Gimme Some Lovin'. This is always a great part of the show as the whole band come to the front of the stage and we get to see Roger's legs - phwoar - as he grabs his tambourine and they all seem to be having a great time doing this!

This is followed by Bohemian Rhapsody - there's no way they could do this properly live on stage, as they had so many vocal harmony overdubs on the original track and on stage there are only 3 of them singing (John never sings!). So when the middle part with the harmonies comes on, the band leave the stage and play a recording - taking the opportunity to get out of their sweaty clothes and put some fresh ones on!

The band then re-emerges, butterfly-like, for the rocking finale to the show, crashing straight into Hammer To Fall, which is one of my favourites, simply because of this recording - Spike Edney (keyboardist for tours) standing next to Brian as they rip into the chords on their guitars, and Freddie next to them copying their every movement!

Radio Ga Ga is always a big crowd-involvement, and is really spectacular to see the ENTIRE crowd clapping simultaneously - I remember when I went to see the Rolling Stones at Wembley, the DJ played it before the main show and the crowd STILL did all the claps, even though it was a recording! It always gives me such a weird feeling to see them doing that!

When the band gets to "We Are The Champions" all dedicated Queen-fans know that this is nearly the end of the show, so they always throw themselves into singing it as loud as they can, before joining into "God Save the Queen" at the very end of the show.

There is a very poignant (and funny) moment when Freddie talks to the crowd about some rumours that were in the press at the time that the band were going to split up - Fred points to his bottom and says "They're talking from here!" and tells the crowd that "We're going to be together till we f****** well die!" - a very ironic comment seen from 20 years in the future... little did Queen know that this was to be their last ever tour.

The DVD has a track-selection and an option to switch between Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and Stereo, but my tv can't cope with this sort of choice...

***DVD2***

Now for the goodies! The DVD menu is split into 3 sections, comprising of The Road to Wembley, Unseen Magic and the Queen Cams, each section is split into further sections as follows:

1. Road To Wembley:
-Brian and Roger - 2003 interview (28 mins)
Brian May and Roger Taylor were interviewed in 2003 about the concert - they are talking about each of the songs from the concert in turn, the lighting effects, how they felt, a few funny anecdotes. I often wonder why Roger wears his sunglasses all the time, even indoors, since he has such nice blue eyes *sigh*.

-Gavin & Gerry interview (19 mins)
Gerry Stickells, Queen's tour manager, and Gavin Taylor, the camera director for the concert, talking about the technical details of their jobs leading up to the big day.

Gavin Taylor talks about the camera set ups - there were 15 cameras covering the stage, and he was worried about when he would be able to change the film in them, since he knew that the concert would be very long. He went to Freddie to ask him if there were any songs he didn't mind losing from the recording, but Freddie said "No my dear - record everything!". So he did, and a good job too!

-A Beautiful Day (30 minutes) -
Backstage documentary including interviews from Elton John, Rod Stewart, Mel Smith, Roger, Brian, John, sound engineers, builders, roadies, the truck drivers, the bloke that made the tea and anyone else they could think of! Shows the building of the enormous stage at Wembley Stadium using stop-motion photography - and the problems associated!

-Tribute to Wembley Towers (5 mins) - timelapse demolition footage set to These are the Days of Our Lives... very sad watching the poor towers get ripped down *sniff*.

2. Unseen Magic:
-Friday Concert medley (28 mins)
This was shot the day before the concert on disk 1, and is not such good quality - it was just shot as a practice for the next day.
It rained and the crowd (and the band) got very wet!

-Rehearsals (10 mins)
The band rehearsing on a large sound stage - the stage was as big as the Wembley set up, you may (or may not) know that when they actually got the stage to Wembley they found that the original plans were wrong by 6 feet, so the whole thing had to be re-made!

-Picture Gallery (5 mins)
A photo montage set to "It's a Kind of Magic" - some nice photos!

3. Queen Cams - 4 songs multi-angle:
One Vision, Under Pressure, Now I'm Here, We are the Champions.
This is the best bit! There were so many cameras all over the stage that each band member had about 3 trained on them at any one time. All the footage was saved, and on these selected tracks you can watch one band member all the way through the song, or switch between them at any point. I like watching Roger pounding his way through it all on his drums... *dribble* er, for technical reasons only, of course! You could also watch Brian' playing the Red Special all the way through, if you're the sort who is interested in how he plays his guitar (the guitar he and his dad built 40 years ago and still going strong!). This part of the DVD is what makes it worth upgrading from video, if you already have that!

Well that's enough from me - if I haven't made you want to rush off and buy this dvd by now then you probably have it already! Thanks for reading :)