Eastern Promise

’The Cosmos Rocks’ Tour begins

’After Queen and Paul Rodgers performed a brilliant record-breaking special anti-AIDS concert in Freedom Square, Kharkov, Ukraine before an audience of 350,000, it was finally time for the official start of the tour in the Olympic Sports Complex in Moscow…

At exactly 20.02, the lights went out and the World Champions commenced the rock event of the year with majestic opulence…

A video screen showed not only the action on stage but songs were individually backed by mini-films or intricate computer animations, illustrative of the music. Queen and Paul Rodgers gave the Russian fans exactly what they wanted: Hits and more hits – the first nine numbers lined up one Queen classic after another…’(1)

So Queen and Paul Rodgers have now officially started rocking the cosmos – or, at least, some parts of the planet that were once just about as inaccessible to a rock band as outer space itself; they have reached places where Queen never performed – areas of eastern Europe that were once part of the Soviet Union. On the one occasion the group played behind the ’Iron Curtain’ (if excluding the 1979 concerts in the more liberal Yugoslavia), in Budapest in 1986, it is recorded that ’for the first time ever the Soviet Union magnanimously allowed its citizens to be bussed into Hungary’ (2) – one of the definitive signs that the ‘Cold War’ was gradually thawing. A few years later, after it was actually over, Roger revealed that the band had been invited to Moscow: ‘We were recently asked if we would play in Red Square supported by the State Ballet…’ (3) Such a request would never have been forthcoming in the divided world that had previously existed, where the ‘space race’ was just one facet of East-West competition. But who knows, after these recent Moscow gigs, a whole new definition of the word ‘Cosmonaut’ might now be needed!

Then Berlin …returning to a tour venue of yesteryear, but in those days, of course, Queen played in the west part of the then divided city. The location of this next piece of cosmos-rocking placed us in the former east - near to a street that was once called the ‘Leninallee’. So another piece of history was made, when, just over thirty years after Roger and Brian crossed the Wall through ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ on a deeply moving visit (4), this latest Berlin show got underway:

’An audience of around 8,000 filled the Velodrom, as the band emerged from the stage smoke to the roar of lightning and thunder with the new song ’Surf’s Up, School’s Out’. (5)

A leather-jacketed Paul, sporting a harmonica, made a crest-of-a-wave entry with vocal effects provided by Spike. There followed those two trusty openers, ‘Tie Your Mother Down and ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’, and then came ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ with an absolutely bullet-ripping rhythm. The intervening energy of ‘I Want It All’ preceded Paul’s announcement of the next number with the question, ‘You wanna break free with me baby…?’ And we were off, two of John’s greatest being among those songs carrying us…

‘The stage show was appropriately sumptuous for Queen. Vast trusses of light were ever ascending and descending; the sound was excellent, right to the technically zapped-up choral singing. Brian May was brilliant with the typical Queen broadsides on the guitar; Roger Taylor pounded a mighty beat. In the middle of the show, each of the three main performers was able to present his solos. Paul Rodgers sang a solo ballad playing guitar and the audience sang along for Brian May’s personal venture with ‘Love of My Life’…(6)

Thanks to a slick operation by the technical crew to assemble and dismantle the drum kit, an exercise that may become as legendary as the show itself, Roger was able to perform his drumming craft on the catwalk, right among the audience. Thus he accompanied Brian for ’’39’, which Spike, Jamie and Danny joined half way through, creating a rousing new genre - the space shanty! Roger’s drum solo and ’I’m In Love With My Car’ followed, and he appeared to be relishing his new-found opportunity - no longer back-of-stage for his lead pieces. Away from the drums, he also played some well-known Queen riffs by means of a novel percussion-string-combi with Danny. ’Say It’s Not True’ was performed as on the album, with vocals from Roger, Brian and finally, with a tremendous crescendo, Paul.

I found the video screen images a useful accompaniment in the case of some songs, particularly ‘Bijou’, where there appeared an eye, blinking and awake, invisibly shedding tear upon tear, I felt, through the strings of Brian’s guitar. There was also a poignant depiction of Freddie for the vocal part. However, by ‘Radio Ga Ga’, now sung entirely by Paul, I had grown ‘tired of all this visual’ and really just wanted to concentrate on the way his voice, with its extraordinary quality, completely filled the place. I kept wondering if the microphone stand he was so frequently gyrating would be magically turned into rotor-blades, allowing him simply to take off, transporting the entire Velodrom with him!

All in all, two and a half hours of pure bliss, which received total appreciation:

‘The audience was enthusiastic about the band’s new line-up and acclaimed the new songs like ‘C-lebrity’ and ‘War Boys’. As the rockers also sang the legendary hits of the original band like ‘We Are The Champions’, you could not top the atmosphere in the Velodrom as the audience joined in, full of elation’. (7)

The encore had started off with ’Cosmos Rockin’’, towards the end of which Paul changed the words, justifiably boasting, ’We got Berlin rocking’!

It had been such a truly sensational show that I left the venue feeling a buzz all over from the sheer electricity of the evening! Watch out! The tour is slowly heading west...

With thanks to Jim Stevenson and to Alex Smirnov (www.meddows.com)

1. Part of Christian Rischer’s fan review of the Moscow Show on 15.9.08 (www.austrianqueenfanclubvienna.at)

2. ‘Behind The Brian Curtain’ from ‘Sounds’, January 1987

3. Martin Gross, ‘Metal Hammer‘, Summer 1991

4. ‘As It Began’, Jacky and Jim’s biography

5. ) Parts of Peter E. Müller’s press review of the Berlin Show on 21.09.08 in the

6. ) Berliner Morgenpost’(www.morgenpost.de), 22.09.08

7. Part of a press review from www.noows.de, 22.09.08

For more about the German leg of 'The Cosmos Rocks' tour, especially this early part (with more history), see Spike's Newsletter

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