City: Birmingham, UK
Venue: Birmingham National Arena
Date: September 1, 1984

Setlist:
Machines (tape), Tear It Up, Tie Your Mother Down, Under Pressure, Somebody To Love, Killer Queen, Seven Seas Of Rhye, Keep Yourself Alive, Liar, It's A Hard Life, Staying Power, Dragon Attack, Now I'm Here, Is This The World We Created?, Love Of My Life, Stone Cold Crazy, Great King Rat, keyboard/guitar solos, Brighton Rock (ending), Hammer To Fall, Another One Bites The Dust, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting, Bohemian Rhapsody, Radio Ga Ga, I Want To Break Free, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen


                             

Freddie's vocal introduction to Somebody To Love is very beautifully drawn out. He then says, "fuckin' let's do it", and jumps into the infamous piano theme of the song.

During the improv section of Keep Yourself Alive after the first chorus, Brian plays part of the solo from Dead On Time off the Jazz album.

On many nights of this tour, Freddie mentions the rumours of Queen splitting up which have come to light because it's a known fact by now that he has been working on a solo album. Tonight after It's A Hard Life, he says the journalists can fuck off, and adds, "as long as you want us to be on this stage, we'll come back." It is no coincidence that he makes this speech before introducing the next song, Staying Power. Originally a song about relationships, Staying Power is given a somewhat new meaning on this tour amidst all the band breakup rumours.

Before Is This The World We Created, Brian tells everyone that they're much better than last night's audience (they really are an enthusiastic bunch, as is clearly heard on the recording). He then tells a little story about his new guitar, the solid-body Gibson Chet Atkins classical electric: "Roger is a collector of guitars, and in his travels around the world he found this little job, which is very strange as it hasn't got strings [nylon, as opposed to steel]. So it sounds like a spanish guitar, and we use it for this particular song. So if you listen to this, you'll get a chance to sing after this, alright?"

After the masses sing Love Of My Life, Freddie tells them, "What a superb bunch you are."

Brian's solo is significantly shorter tonight, perhaps due to a review stating how last night's only low point was how the guitar workout was a bit long. The end section of Brighton Rock follows, and then Freddie introduces the next song. "Ok, we're gonna do something that Brian's written. This is gonna be our new.. our next single release. Thank you for buying all the other ones, by the way. If you buggers don't buy 'em, we won't be here! Enough of this crap. This is called Hammer To Fall."

As soon as the audience sees Freddie with his Telecaster on they begin to sing the chorus of Crazy Little Thing Called Love. He urges them to "get it a bit faster" and then he begins the song.

Before Bohemian Rhapsody, Freddie leads the band into a brief version of Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting, something which would happen many more times throughout the tour.

Sheer Heart Attack has been in the encore for the first few shows of the tour, but it would be dropped from the set for good after this show in favour of Jailhouse Rock. The encore numbers would remain untouched through 1985.

Although 1984 presented the more ambitious choice of songs, Queen took much less time settling comfortably into a setlist than they had done on their previous world tour. There would only be a couple more minor changes throughout the month.

More pictures from this show can be found at http://www.repfoto.com. You have to register as a user.


Recording length: 101 minutes (2 LP, complete)
Quality: B+
Source: Audience
Lineage: "Ga Ga" LP

 
Track listing:
Machines (tape), Tear It Up, Tie Your Mother Down, Under Pressure, Somebody To Love, Killer Queen, Seven Seas Of Rhye, Keep Yourself Alive, Liar, It's A Hard Life [cut], Staying Power, Dragon Attack, Now I'm Here, Is This The World We Created?, Love Of My Life, Stone Cold Crazy, Great King Rat, keyboard/guitar solos, Brighton Rock (ending), Hammer To Fall, Another One Bites The Dust, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting [cut], Bohemian Rhapsody, Radio Ga Ga, I Want To Break Free, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You [cut], We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen


The recording used for this 1985 bootleg LP runs a tad slow (and even slower on sides 3 and 4). The left channel largely cuts out at the end of Keep Yourself Alive, and the balance slowly restores back to normal for the next half minute of Liar.

Some of the banter is missing due to tape flips.


Recording length: 101 minutes (2 CD, complete)
Quality: B+
Source: Audience
Lineage: "Ga Ga" (QU) silvers

     
Track listing:
Machines (tape), Tear It Up, Tie Your Mother Down, Under Pressure, Somebody To Love, Killer Queen, Seven Seas Of Rhye, Keep Yourself Alive, Liar, It's A Hard Life [cut], Staying Power, Dragon Attack, Now I'm Here, Is This The World We Created?, Love Of My Life, Stone Cold Crazy, Great King Rat, keyboard/guitar solos, Brighton Rock (ending), Hammer To Fall, Another One Bites The Dust, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting [cut], Bohemian Rhapsody, Radio Ga Ga, I Want To Break Free, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You [cut], We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen


This 1998 bootleg was packaged to look very similar to the LP of the same name. Musically it seems to be the same content as the LP, but there are no fragments of vinyl in the sound.


Recording length: 103 minutes (2 CD, complete)
Quality: A-
Source: Audience
Lineage: AUD > Master Cassette > WAV > CDR (x)
Track listing:
Machines (tape), Tear It Up, Tie Your Mother Down, Under Pressure, Somebody To Love, Killer Queen, Seven Seas Of Rhye, Keep Yourself Alive, Liar, It's A Hard Life, Staying Power, Dragon Attack, Now I'm Here, Is This The World We Created?, Love Of My Life, Stone Cold Crazy, Great King Rat, keyboard/guitar solos, Brighton Rock (ending), Hammer To Fall, Another One Bites The Dust, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting, Bohemian Rhapsody, Radio Ga Ga, I Want To Break Free, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen


This is source 2, in great quality.


Recording length: 83 minutes (2 CD, incomplete)
Quality: A-
Source: Audience
Lineage: AUD > Cassette (x) > WAV > FLAC level 8
Track listing:
Machines (tape), Tear It Up, Tie Your Mother Down, Under Pressure, Somebody To Love, Killer Queen, Seven Seas Of Rhye, Keep Yourself Alive, Liar, It's A Hard Life, Staying Power, Dragon Attack, Now I'm Here, Is This The World We Created?, Love Of My Life, Stone Cold Crazy, Great King Rat, keyboard/guitar solos, Brighton Rock (ending), Hammer To Fall, Another One Bites The Dust, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting, Bohemian Rhapsody


This third audience source emerged in October 2010. It was taped closer to the stage, but it has a fair amount of tape hiss.

There is some periodic tape warble heard throughout the recording, but nothing that greatly hinders the listening experience.


Recording length: 6 CDR
Quality: ?
Source: Audience
Lineage: "Finest Hour" (Uxbridge)

     
Track listing:
Machines (tape), Tear It Up, Tie Your Mother Down, Under Pressure, Somebody To Love, Killer Queen, Seven Seas Of Rhye, Keep Yourself Alive, Liar, It's A Hard Life, Staying Power, Dragon Attack, Now I'm Here, Is This The World We Created?, Love Of My Life, Stone Cold Crazy, Great King Rat, keyboard/guitar solos, Brighton Rock (ending), Hammer To Fall, Another One Bites The Dust, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting, Bohemian Rhapsody, Radio Ga Ga, I Want To Break Free, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen


A 6 CDR set containing all three nights in Birmingham was released by Uxbridge in early 2011.

For the second night they used source 2 and EQ'd it a bit.


Recording length: 102 minutes (2 CD, incomplete)
Quality: B
Source: Audience
Lineage: AUD > Master Cassettes > Cassettes > BASF Cromdioxid II C60s > WAV > FLAC level 8
Track listing:
Machines (tape), Tear It Up, Tie Your Mother Down, Under Pressure, Somebody To Love, Killer Queen, Seven Seas Of Rhye, Keep Yourself Alive, Liar, It's A Hard Life, Staying Power, Dragon Attack, Now I'm Here [cut], Is This The World We Created?, Love Of My Life, Stone Cold Crazy, Great King Rat, keyboard/guitar solos, Brighton Rock (ending), Hammer To Fall, Another One Bites The Dust, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting, Bohemian Rhapsody, Radio Ga Ga, I Want To Break Free, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen


A fourth audience source emerged in March 2012. This is the worst of the four sources.




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