August 9th 2016 marked the 30th Anniversary of Queen’s last concert, at Knebworth, with the Legendary Freddie Mercury at the helm.
Queen’s performance at Knebworth on August 9, 1986, was the final date of the band’s hugely successful Magic Tour.
Having already sold out gigs at Wembley Stadium, singer Freddie Mercury, guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and bassist John Deacon added a massive outdoor show at the iconic Hertfordshire venue.
A picture of the band’s arrival by helicopter was later used as part of the gatefold sleeve for a live album of the 1986 tour.
However, Mercury was soon after diagnosed with AIDS, and subsequently passed away in 1991.
The rock band stopped touring as a group until 2005, making the Knebworth concert the last time the four members of Queen performed live on stage together.
Knebworth House’s Henry Lytton Cobbold remembers the gig well, both as Freddie Mercury’s last concert and for the fact that they didn’t push the “record” button on the video footage.
He said: “That’s the big horror of the Queen concert. There were big screens all around the arena, including one massive one on top of the stage, and they filmed the whole thing but didn’t press record. So although they had the sound desk mix from that show, the only visual images are tiny little bits of news clips.
“Can you believe that on Freddie Mercury’s last concert, the great showman, no one actually pressed record? There’s a Dutch bootleg of somebody filming a screen at the back of the audience for the whole show, so there’s a record of it, but no proper film. So the concert becomes a bit mythological because of that.”
Of the band’s performance, Henry added: “It was fantastic. They were at the top of their game. Having done Live Aid the year before, this was taking that and really conquering the world with that particular tour. We didn’t know at the time, but sadly it was Freddie Mercury’s last show. But boy, to arrive in style with that helicopter shot and to give that performance.”
The Queen + Adam Lambert 2016 Summer Festival Tour is a summer stadium/festival tour by British rock band Queen and American vocalist Adam Lambert. The tour began on 20 May 2016, in Lisbon, Portugal at the Bela Vista Park and will continue throughout Europe and Asia, concluding on 30 September 2016 at the Impact Arena in Bangkok. This will be the band’s first ever live performance in Thailand.
Tickets are available for the Bangkok concert via www.thaiticketmajor.com.
