Queen's iconic set at the 1985 Live Aid charity concert is now part of music history, but band members Brian May and Roger Taylor have revealed that it nearly didn't take place.
In an interview with the U.K.'s Radio Times, the two musicians shared that when Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof first reached out, the band, and especially frontman Freddie Mercury, weren't particularly enthusiastic about the idea.
"We weren't touring or playing, and it seemed like a crazy idea, this talk of having 50 bands on the same bill," guitarist May said in the interview published Tuesday.
"We thought it was going to be a disaster. Freddie, in particular, said, 'I haven't got the right feeling for this.' He wasn't the leader of the band, but if he dug his heels in, there was no dragging him, so we parked it."
But as May recalled, Geldof approached them a second time, and with the growing buzz surrounding the concert, Queen eventually chose to take part.
"I said to Freddie, 'If we wake up on the day after this Live Aid show, and we haven't been there, we're going to be pretty sad.' He said, 'Oh, [expletive] it, we'll do it,'" May said.
Faced with a 17-minute time limit set by Geldof, the band found it challenging to plan their performance. Compounding the situation, drummer Taylor said they were all feeling quite nervous.
"We hadn't been on the Band Aid single, and we felt relatively senior compared with a lot of the younger acts. It wasn't necessarily our audience because we were a very late addition," he said.
"And it was daylight, which we don't like because the stage lights have no effect. Plus it was so thrown together on the stage, we just had to hope all the elements would come together," Taylor added.
"I wouldn't say we doubted our own skills, but we had … technical apprehension," he said.
The band went on to give one of its most memorable performances.
"It wasn't a Queen audience. So we went on not knowing if they'd even know what to do," May said.
"They didn't think about it, they just did it," he added. "Every single hand seemed to be in the air."
The Live Aid lineup that day also featured Dire Straits, Paul McCartney, Sting, and Phil Collins. During their set, Queen, with Mercury, May, Taylor, and John Deacon, redefined their legacy in music history with the performance.
"That was entirely down to Freddie," May said years later. "The rest of us played OK, but Freddie was out there and took it to another level."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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