| City: | Zürich, Switzerland |
| Venue: | Hallenstadion |
| Date: | November 23, 1980 |
| Setlist: | Jailhouse Rock, We Will Rock You (fast), Let Me Entertain You, Play The Game, Mustapha, Death On Two Legs, Killer Queen, I'm In Love With My Car, Get Down Make Love, Need Your Loving Tonight, Save Me, Now I'm Here, Dragon Attack, Now I'm Here (reprise), Fat Bottomed Girls, Love Of My Life, Keep Yourself Alive, drum/guitar solos, Battle Theme, Brighton Rock (ending), Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, Another One Bites The Dust, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen |
 
 
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This is the opening night of the European tour, the first Queen tour for which there is some kind of documentation of every show. Freddie has a word with the crowd before Mustapha. "Ok, just a thought. For those of you who don't know, tonight is our first night of the tour, and it's nice to see so many of you here." He then shouts, "Take that!" as he pours some beer on the front rows. Brian May did his homework on the 6-week break and practiced the last bar of the Save Me solo, as he hadn't played the scale run up to this point in the song's touring life. He would never miss it again. John Deacon's medium rocker Need Your Loving Tonight has a permanent place in the setlist for now, replacing You're My Best Friend. Brian takes note of Switzerland's multilingualism before the brief acoustic segment, which remains a single song on this tour. "Good evening, guten abend, bonsoir, etcetera. Glad you're making a lot of noise, because we're gonna do something extremely quiet and delicate now. You'll get a little more woken up later on. This is called Love Of My Life." Instead of beginning the song, he continues: "We came here about a year and six months ago, I believe. And we made a live album, some of the tracks from which were in this stadium [a true statement!]. And on that you sang very well, so I hope you're going to sing tonight, ok?" The band have introduced Battle Theme (for which Brian happily uses his analog delay) from the soon-to-be-released Flash Gordon soundtrack to their set. For the next few gigs they would conclude the piece at what is the 42-second mark of the album version, and then transition back into Brighton Rock. They would also add Flash and The Hero later in the tour, and Vultan's Theme would be heard in a few months later in Japan. This article by David Wigg speaks about the tour as a whole, but particularly mentions some rock star backstage shenanigans after this gig. The second set of photos seen above was taken by Danilo Varello. This article from a 1981 Italian magazine contains some pictures from this show: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 |
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| Recording length: | 95 minutes (2 CD, complete) |
| Quality: | A- |
| Source: | Audience |
| Lineage: | AUD > ? > Cassette > Technics RS-B66W > Edirol R-09 > 16 bit/48 kHz > xAct > WAV (16/44, GoldWave speed correction) > FLAC level 8 |
| Track listing: | Jailhouse Rock, We Will Rock You (fast), Let Me Entertain You, Play The Game, Mustapha, Death On Two Legs, Killer Queen, I'm In Love With My Car, Get Down Make Love, Need Your Loving Tonight, Save Me, Now I'm Here, Dragon Attack, Now I'm Here (reprise), Fat Bottomed Girls, Love Of My Life, Keep Yourself Alive, drum/guitar solos, Battle Theme, Brighton Rock (ending), Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mothr Down, Another One Bites The Dust, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen |
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This is an excellent recording of the first night of the tour. This show often circulated without the second encore, as in this case. The last three tracks are patched in from another version (certainly the same audience source), and sound almost identical to the rest of the show. Higher generation copies of the audience tape may appear to be longer, but they run too slow. |
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| Recording length: | 2 CDR, complete |
| Quality: | ? |
| Source: | Audience |
| Lineage: | "Loving Swiss Tonight" (Breakdown) |
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| Track listing: | Jailhouse Rock, We Will Rock You (fast), Let Me Entertain You, Play The Game, Mustapha, Death On Two Legs, Killer Queen, I'm In Love With My Car, Get Down Make Love, Need Your Loving Tonight, Save Me, Now I'm Here, Dragon Attack, Now I'm Here (reprise), Fat Bottomed Girls, Love Of My Life, Keep Yourself Alive, drum/guitar solos, Battle Theme, Brighton Rock (ending), Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, Another One Bites The Dust, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen [cut] |
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Breakdown bootlegged the upgraded copy of the audience tape in July 2012, about a month after it came out. |
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| Recording length: | 6 minutes, incomplete |
| Video/Audio quality: | B |
| Source: | Audience |
| Lineage: | AUD > Super 8 master > ? > youtube |
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| Track listing: | Love Of My Life [cut] |
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Two reels of Super 8 footage exist from this show. The footage is so fragmentary that most of the songs are difficult to spot. |
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