City: | Toronto, ON, Canada |
Venue: | Maple Leaf Gardens |
Date: | December 4, 1978 |
Setlist: | We Will Rock You (fast), Let Me Entertain You, Somebody To Love, If You Can't Beat Them, Death On Two Legs, Killer Queen, Bicycle Race, I'm In Love With My Car, Get Down Make Love, You're My Best Friend, Now I'm Here, Spread Your Wings, Dreamer's Ball, Love Of My Life, '39, It's Late, Brighton Rock, Fat Bottomed Girls, Keep Yourself Alive, Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen |
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Here's a review of the show from the next day's Toronto Sun. The setlist remained the same on the second night, as confirmed by Stephen Greenaway (who snapped the second set of pics seen above). Reproduced here with his permission is an excerpt from his book, "Not Only Am I With The Band..." "Ben and I were fortunate enough to see Queen three times at Maple Leaf Gardens. This show was the last of the three times that I saw them live. All of this was prior to their albums “The Game” and “Hot Space”, and so the set list was still rife with older numbers, deep cuts and other interesting and unexpected tidbits. This was before 80% of their show became choked with their hits. For this tour, there was a runway extending from the front of the stage, stretching out about four rows into the crowd. Ben and I had seats in the sixth row, just slightly off centre stage left. We were in heaven, man. Lots of smoke, a clap of thunder, and a solid wall of blazing white lights signaled the start of another Queen show. There was absolutely nothing subtle about these lads. A guitar riff, a drum roll, and then there was Freddie, emerging from the smoke, decked out in a shiny patent leather biker’s outfit baptizing us with his every word. We will rock you indeed. Queen proceeded to rock our world for the next two hours. Ben and I came to the show armed with our cameras and six or seven rolls of film apiece. We vigorously shot our hearts out, as it were. At the beginning of “Keep Yourself Alive”, Freddie wandered onstage madly slapping away at a tambourine. Stage right, he tossed the tambourine into the crowd. Without missing a beat, he grabbed another tambourine from a roadie and made his way stage left where he tossed it into the audience. A third tambourine materialized and Freddie made his way centre stage where he tossed it into the crowd, directly at Ben and I. It fell a few yards short but everyone within four rows of its impact made a dive for this artifact. Ben and I soon found ourselves trying to brace the row behind us from collapsing in, and crushing our row under their combined weight. All thoughts of photographing the show, what song they were going to play next and how this show compared to the other two times I had seen them evaporated from my head, replaced instead by the certainty that my legs were going to give out at any second. In that instance, I could see myself carried out on a stretcher, a paramedic desperately trying to breathe life back into my corpse. Live fast, die young, and leave a handsome corpse. My life passed before my eyes, and I was mortified by the fact that it didn’t hold my attention. Just as it felt as though my legs were gong to give out under the strain, several of Queen’s security crew waded into the crowd and started tossing bodies out of the way. “Thanks,” I yelled to the burly ape who had just hauled three people off of my back. Sallright,” he yelled back in reply. Man, that was too close for comfort. Then there was the penguin. Have I mentioned the penguin? There was a girl about four rows in front of us who came to the show with a plush penguin toy. Queen’s guitarist, Brian May, had made a comment in an interview regarding penguins. “They are classy birds, all decked out in tuxedos as they are.” Or something to that effect anyways. Don’t believe me? Check out the cover of the first Queen album, and you will find a number of these flightless water fowl. Hell, Brian even went so far as to dress up as a penguin as part of the photo montage on the back cover. Brian, it seemed, had a thing for penguins. Problem was, every time that I would go to grab a photo of Brian, this chick would thrust her penguin in the air, ruining my shot. With the music thundering away, there was little that I could do about this unfortunate situation short of throwing something at her. So I did a slow burn each time she gave me the bird, as it were. Things came to a head during a quiet portion of Brian’s guitar solo in “Get Down Make Love” after I managed to capture yet another photograph of the penguin enjoying Queen in all their splendor. “He doesn’t give a fuck about your penguin!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. The penguin immediately disappeared back down into the crowd. The folks behind her, who must have been growing pretty impatient with the stupid bird by this point, let up a cheer. Hell, I had better lungs than I thought I had, because even Brian May himself glanced in the direction of my voice, a bemused smile playing on his lips." Also recall that Brian dressed up as a penguin for the I'm Going Slightly Mad promo video in 1991. The first four pics were submitted by David van Dijk. |