“It came off the rails quite significantly”: Brian May reveals Queen’s legendary Live Aid performance “nearly fell apart”
Queen’s 1985 Live Aid performance has gone down in history as one of the most iconic shows of all time.
But you might not know that in the dressing room, Brian May and the rest of the band were plagued with doubts about their impending set.
In light of Live Aid’s 40th anniversary, May shares with the Radio Times some deep worries Queen had beforehand, including “how difficult it was going to be to change over between groups”. That wasn’t the only thing on their minds, as May goes on to explain.
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Live Aid’s audience of 72,000 “was not a Queen audience”, May says, and because of this, the band “went on not knowing if they’d even know what to do”. Though as Queen quite literally ran onto the stage from the adrenaline kick of the crowd’s “deafening” response, they quickly felt they “were at home”.
May knew then that Queen had caught the zeitgeist, putting this down to their early adoption of the music video. “It was the beginning of the video age taking over the world, as predicted in Radio Ga Ga — funnily enough, that’s what the song is about” he says, and at the gig, “Every hand seemed to be in the air.”
Coming off-stage, May was reflective, thinking that it “went okay”, but [was] also very aware of the places where things nearly fell apart. It came off the rails quite significantly at the end of Hammer to Fall.
“If you look at it, you might think that was on purpose, but it wasn’t, because there were little tweaks and nobody quite knew who we were.” Even still, May has the rather Zen philosophy that “live shows aren’t perfect” and that “most of the things we tried worked out.” He still remains somewhat critical of his own performance that day but has nothing bad to say about Freddie Mercury, who “had been great”.
Rounding off their Radio Ga Ga performance, Mercury’s crowd-rousing “Ay-oh!” chant would become one for the ages. This a cappella call-and-response, according to May, was “on the cards” but that they “just didn’t know whether [Mercury] was going to feel right about it. But he was so bold”. Mercury’s chant would be later dubbed “The Note Heard Around the World” because of its massive global reception.
Beyond Queen’s haphazard but ultimately show-stopping set, May also acknowledges the bigger picture of Live Aid as a fundraising concert for Ethiopia’s famine: “It was one of the few moments in anyone’s life that you know that you’re doing something for all the right reasons.”
While Live Aid raised millions for the Ethiopian famine, it did not come without criticism, with ex-BBC correspondent Michael Buerk saying to Greatest Hits Radio [as reported in The Independent] that his: “First reaction [to Live Aid] was real anger that I thought superficial, grandstanding pop singers were riding on the back of these people who I felt very protective of.” Bob Geldof, who organised the event, rejected claims of being a “white savour”, calling this “the greatest load of bollocks ever.”
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