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Rating: There is a reason.
If a bunch of music critics got together, watched, selected, evaluated, left the room, and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the best rock music performance of all time," then there is clearly a reason.
The Live Aid was not an easy event. Connecting a billion and a half people via satellite, one way or another, has its difficulties. Then consider that it was 1986, with the technology being what it was, you understand that it was more or less a half miracle.
Bob Geldof, the organizer of the largest fundraising event ever, decided to create something enormous, impossible, and unrepeatable. He agreed with all the television stations that all tapes containing images of Live Aid were to be destroyed. In short, it had to be done, it had to make a splash, and that's it. Pure selfishness.
Some decided to destroy everything. Some were happy, judging their performance below average. Fortunately, someone else decided not to destroy anything, or just burn a little something.
By divine intervention, today we can enjoy the Queen at the Main Show of Live Aid in terrible audio/video quality, live from Wembley Stadium, on that distant day of Live 13 July 1986. Quite a few years ago. It must have gone like that.
Some God must have said: "Oh my, I've got Mercury doing that down there and I'm supposed to burn it too? No. For eternal memory."
So let's enjoy it.
The songs are what they are, the most Pop(ular) of the group, the stadium hits, the radio hits. But it doesn't matter.
If Mercury, on that 13th of July, had decided to sing "Silent Night," I'm sure no one would have noticed. Seventy-five thousand are present at Wembley, it's evidently hot. It doesn't matter to anyone. The stage is a 2 x 3 attic crammed with instruments. It doesn’t matter. Probably not even Freddy's famous queen cape could have fit entirely, but it wasn’t too much of a problem.
That the frontman of Queen was a stage animal, this was known to everyone. But few knew how much of a beast he was, how hungry for energy he was. An inexhaustible container. Each of the seventy-five thousand throws just enough that he, a bottomless well, absorbs it all.
And upon reaching the stage, he explodes.
Yes, the others are there too. There’s a Taylor on drums missing a few notes of double voice. There’s a Brian May who, poor guy, can't hear himself and has guitar feedback. There’s a John Deacon who, even, sings and attempts some dance steps.
But they're on another side of the recording. They can't be on the same one as Mercury, because he takes up an entire side of the tape. And it's not enough.
He sings like never before. The famous Wembley concert that Queen held previously is well below Freddy's vocal expectations. This is above. Hearing him hit notes, you suffer with him in the high notes, you hope it never ends, you still offer him your energy after 25 years. Again. To help him climb higher, and higher still.
He laughs, dances, moves, is there. He's on stage.
He's not elsewhere. He wouldn't want to be anywhere else. You can see even from Toronto that he's there because he wants to be. And, damn it, he’s there flawlessly. The vanishing point of all glances, absolute concentration of some odd impulse to man, as few had been seen, unknown as quarks and neutrinos. To study. Not to repeat.
It’s easily found online, luckily. Free, as it should be. It's a monument to man, whoever he may be, and to what he can give, in every sense. If it had been for sale, it wouldn’t have made sense. And those who tried to sell it did not understand its meaning.
Don't miss these Queen moments here. Whether you like them or not. See how many people a single individual with a strange face can handle. See how many hands can clap together. See what can be done with a terrible sound system, an idiot at the mixer, and a lot of energy.
Besides, if someone dared to say that this is the best musical performance ever, there is a reason.
Oh yes, there is.
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