Queen The Greatest Live Episode 3. Rehearsals – Part  3.  Rehearsing Magic

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Freddie Mercury, Queen Magic Tour 1986 Photograph by Neal Preston ©Queen Productions Ltd
Freddie Mercury, Queen – Magic Tour 1986 Photograph by Neal Preston ©Queen Productions Ltd

“Queen The Greatest Live”

The Greatest series returns with
a year long celebration of Queen Live.

A 50-week YouTube series going behind the scenes to reveal what goes into creating a Queen show featuring moments from iconic performances and demonstrating why the band is regarded as the ultimate live act. https://Queen.lnk.to/TheGreatestLive

Freddie Mercury. Queen Magic Tour 1986
Queen The Greatest Live Episode 3. Rehearsals – Part  3.  Rehearsing Magic.

In preparation for their massive, and ultimately final, stadium tour of Europe with Freddie in 1986, Queen embarked on a series of full production rehearsals to test all elements of their extraordinary show.  Some of those rehearsals were captured on a home movie camera, giving a rare insight into the amount of preparation that went into these Magic shows.

QUEEN The Greatest video series continues Friday February 3rd with rare fly-on-the-wall rehearsal footage from 1986’s The Magic Tour

On Friday February 3rd, the hugely popular YouTube video series Queen The Greatest Live returns with Episode 3: a rare glimpse into the band’s preparations for The Magic Tour. This epic 1986 tour saw Queen rocking Europe’s most iconic stadiums – and proved to be their final shows with Freddie Mercury.

This latest episode cuts classic footage from the Magic shows with a secretly taped film of the lineup in rehearsals, giving viewers an unprecedented snapshot of the band’s pre-tour drill.

With lavish production and a setlist that ran close to 30 songs, The Magic Tour was an ambitious 26-date undertaking whose staging demanded countless hours of work behind closed doors.

While the lineup would typically choose to rehearse the material in private, Episode 3 invites viewers to become a fly on the wall as Freddie leads Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon through Tear It Up, I Want To Break Free and Now I’m Here with the same mic stand-twirling abandon of the stadium shows themselves.  

“We don’t know who shot it, but it was clearly someone with access to the rehearsals who took the initiative and shot it on their home movie camera,” explains Queen’s long-standing multimedia collaborator Simon Lupton. “From the angles and quality, it certainly wasn’t official and the band – and presumably management – were unaware!”

Simon continues: “Although it would have been very much frowned upon at the time, it now gives us a rare and fascinating insight into the rehearsal process. The tape came to light in about 2003, I think, when a collector unearthed it thinking it was a copy of the TV broadcast of Live at Wembley, only to discover this rare gem.”

The Magic Tour – 26 dates played over an eight week period – incorporated the UK and nine European countries included Queen’s first and only show in Budapest, Hungary and their only concert at Knebworth Park, Hertfordshire, which would prove to be Queen’s very last concert. Sadly for us that historic final show was never officially filmed although there are thought to be many privately filmed recordings out there still to potentially be discovered…

View Queen The Greatest Live Episode 3. Rehearsals – Part  3.  Rehearsing Magic
https://youtu.be/ELt35f5c_7M

YouTube Playlist Link: https://Queen.lnk.to/TheGreatestLive

Next week :  Episode 4: The Soundcheck