After their appearance at Live Aid in 1985, Queen embarked
upon the largest tour of their career: the Magic Tour beginning with two
sell-out shows at Wembley Stadium, going along behind the Iron Curtain in
Budapest and concluding with the triumphant concert in front of 120,000 fans in
Knebworth. Along the way there will be trials and tribulations as life on the
road only promises… those and some good parties.
So the final instalment in the
‘Torpedo Twins’’ features heavily on Queen’s life on the road: touring,
preparing for concerts, partying and everything in between. This final chapter
of the trilogy also features the band as well as other artists and musicians
talking about the life of a rock star, what it means, and what gets taken away
from it. One particularly memorable interview comes from Elton John talking
about how the normality of life is taken away: “you ask Freddie how much a pint
of milk costs, forget it. He’ll be able to tell you the price of nail lacquer”.
After their appearance at Live Aid in 1985, Queen embarked upon the largest
tour of their career: the Magic Tour beginning with two sell-out shows at
Wembley Stadium, going along behind the Iron Curtain in Budapest and concluding
with the triumphant concert in front of 120,000 fans in Knebworth. Along the
way there will be trials and tribulations as life on the road only promises…
those and some good parties.
The doco opens with Queen’s performance at Live
Aid in 1985, which is an amazing concert that raised awareness for AIDs in
Africa and features a myriad of bands and artists and although they only had
fifteen minutes or whatever and were without their usual lights and equipment,
Queen got on stage and did six songs and just stole the show. During a time when the band were going through a
stage of uncertainty and confidence lacking, the reaction of the crowd to their
songs without the aid of their show devices and effects wrenched them back on
track and kicked off the biggest European tour of their career in 1986.
From there
we get an insight into just how huge
a scale a Queen concert sits on. The amount of equipment, lighting, and special
effects that are desired for the show sit on a huge level and we get an insight
into how frantic, diligent, committed, and important a roadie is on tour.
Whether it be doing sound check or packing and unpacking Freddie’s copious
pairs of false breasts, the roadies and everyone who works behind the curtain
of a rock concert just are so committed and work so hard and they often don’t
get the praise that they deserve. Of course we’ve got some great behind the
scenes footage of the band backstage, chatting with Mick Jagger, greeting their
families, and then later on… partying. It’s a great way to end the trilogy
really and the doco features some wonderful snippets of interviews from the
band and their colleagues.
Featuring interview contributions from Bob Geldof,
Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Patti Labelle, Fish, Mike Peters, Divine, Gary
Moore, Rod Stewart, Diana Ross, Wendy O.Williams, Cliff Richard, Keith
Richards, Elton John, Samantha Fox, Roger Daltrey, and Little Richard, Magic Years Volume 3 is a great close to
a great documentary series of my all time favourite band.
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