City: Cologne, Germany
Venue: Sporthalle
Date: February 1, 1979

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, Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Dreamer's Ball, Love Of My Life, '39, It's Late, Brighton Rock, Keep Yourself Alive, Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen


   

 

                                                       
   
         

This is a pretty energetic show with many wonderful musical and vocal moments, and Freddie sounds relatively strong by early 1979 standards.

Highlights of the show include If You Can't Beat Them, Now I'm Here, and Brighton Rock.

Mercury attempts to introduce Now I'm Here, but an audience member interrupts him. "No, it's not Tie Your Mother Down. That comes later!"

Before Love Of My Life, Freddie says: "We have a song right now that requires a very, very big choir. And that is you. So we're gonna give you the first few lines in this next song, and you can take it wherever you want." After the song, Brian formally introduces Roger and John back to the stage. "And on wondrous vocals, Mr. Freddie Mercury."

Freddie forgets most of the words in the first chorus of It's Late. Later he introduces Bohemian Rhapsody from the piano, something he rarely did after the A Day At The Races tour.

Brian gives a great performance as well, although his G-string is very out of tune on Sheer Heart Attack (but considering the nature of how the song is performed, it still works). And then at the final peak of the show, just before the final "Of the world" during We Are The Champions, he plays a completely wrong chord, hitting the 7sus4 chord in B instead of C.

Here is a brief write-up about the show, referring to a record-setting audience. It also says, "Before the carnival there are a few rock concerts in the Sporthalle, starting off with sold-out Queen and Udo Lindenberg concerts. Uriah Heep and Status Quo sold thousands of tickets for their concerts as well."

The first 29 pictures were taken by Wolfgang Trabitzsch (and later colour-corrected by Nino Trovato, along with pics 30 to 32).


Recording length: 90 minutes (2 LP, incomplete)
Quality: B+
Source: Audience
Lineage: "Save Me" LP

   
Track listing:
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 [cut], Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Dreamer's Ball [cut], Love Of My Life, '39, Brighton Rock, Keep Yourself Alive


Released in the early 80s, this was the first bootleg of this show. It runs about a quarter tone too slow.

Now I'm Here is split between sides 2 and 3.

The third scan is of an overstock copy, where they just used a cheap insert (the company ran out of covers but had a few LPs left). Thanks to Andreas Voigts for the information and cover scans from this bootleg and countless others.


Recording length: 44 minutes (1 LP, incomplete)
Quality: B
Source: Audience
Lineage: "Don't Stop Us Live" LP

 
Track listing:
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 [cut], You're My Best Friend, Now I'm Here, Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings


In 1983 a German bootleg label tried to pass this off this portion of the "Save Me" LP as being from two nights later in Düsseldorf. To illustrate their efforts, the tape plays back a bit quicker, and Freddie's "Hello Cologne" is edited out (and the first track is cut out entirely to make for an easy fade-in). Others have since labelled this recording as Hamburg '79.

On first glance, this recording seems to be from a different audience source since the quality is noticeably worse, and (what sounds like) an audience member playing a tambourine throughout the show on the Save Me LP isn't present here. But it is possible that the sound may have been added by bootleggers after the fact to furthermore obscure this version from the others. If this isn't the case, then this taper's location was very close to the first source's taper, and the tambourine wasn't picked up in the mic while everything else nearby was - all the other audience noise is identical to the other copies of this source.


Recording length: 90 minutes (2 LP, incomplete)
Quality: B
Source: Audience
Lineage: "We Will Rock You Alive" LP

 
Track listing:
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 [cut], Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Dreamer's Ball [cut], Love Of My Life, '39, Brighton Rock, Keep Yourself Alive


This 1988 bootleg is a copy of Save Me, but in worse quality. The bootleg company used the sleeve of a Gary Moore bootleg, probably because they had extra copies of the LP lying around and wanted to save money.


Recording length: 44 minutes (1 LP, incomplete)
Quality: B+
Source: Audience
Lineage: "By Appointment Only" LP

 
Track listing:
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, Now I'm Here [cut]


A fragment from the Cologne audience recording was released in 1992. I'm In Love With My Car is included, but is not listed on the cover.


Recording length: 79 minutes (1 CD, incomplete)
Quality: B+
Source: Audience
Lineage: "Live In Cologne" (Golden Stars) silver

   
Track listing:
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, Now I'm Here [cut], Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Love Of My Life, '39, Brighton Rock [cut], Keep Yourself Alive


Released in 1990, this was the first version of this show to emerge on CD. While it seems to be about the same tape generation as the LPs (maybe one generation worse), the equalization focuses more on the mid range.

Three minutes of Brian's solo in Brighton Rock are cut (right after Roger's tympani solo), probably so that everything could fit onto a single disc. Of course, the irony is - had they speed corrected the recording, they wouldn't have had to cut the song.


Recording length: 79 minutes (1 CD, incomplete)
Quality: B+
Source: Audience
Lineage: "Live In Cologne" (Golden Stars) silver

     
Track listing:
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, Now I'm Here [cut], Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Love Of My Life, '39, Brighton Rock [cut], Keep Yourself Alive


This is a 1992 re-release of "Live In Cologne" from the same label.


Recording length: 79 minutes (1 CD, incomplete)
Quality: B+
Source: Audience
Lineage: "Live In Cologne" (Live Storm) silver

 
Track listing:
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, Now I'm Here [cut], Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Love Of My Life, '39, Brighton Rock [cut], Keep Yourself Alive


This is a 1994 re-release.


Recording length: 79 minutes (1 CD, incomplete)
Quality: ?
Source: Audience
Lineage: "Live In Cologne" silver

Track listing:
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, Now I'm Here [cut], Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Love Of My Life, '39, Brighton Rock [cut], Keep Yourself Alive


This is a fourth silver copy, released in 1999.


Recording length: 118 minutes (2 CD, incomplete)
Quality: B+ / B
Source: Audience
Lineage: AUD > ? > CDR (x)
Track listing:
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, Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Dreamer's Ball [cut], Love Of My Life, '39, It's Late, Brighton Rock, Keep Yourself Alive, Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions [cut], God Save The Queen


This is the pre-LP/pre-silver tape used for the bootlegs listed above. The quality varies throughout, with much of it sounding a couple tape generations worse than the source tape used for "Save Me" - although It's Late fortunately sounds just as good.

The audience chant relentlessly for Mustapha before the encores, even though Mercury already sang the intro earlier in the show !


Recording length: 107 minutes (2 CD, incomplete)
Quality: B
Source: Audience
Lineage: AUD > ? > CDR (x)
Track listing:
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 [cut], You're My Best Friend, Now I'm Here, Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Dreamer's Ball, Love Of My Life, '39, It's Late, Brighton Rock, Keep Yourself Alive, Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen


Sheer Heart Attack is missing from this second audience source. The tape plays too fast.


Recording length: 2 CD, complete
Quality: A- / B+ / B
Source: Audience
Lineage: "More Complete Cologne 1979" (Uxbridge)

     
Track listing:
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, Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Dreamer's Ball, Love Of My Life, '39, It's Late, Brighton Rock, Keep Yourself Alive, Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen


Uxbridge released a merge of sources in 2012.




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