City: | Slane, Ireland |
Venue: | Slane Castle |
Date: | July 5, 1986 |
Setlist: | One Vision, Tie Your Mother Down, In The Lap Of The Gods...Revisited, Seven Seas Of Rhye, Tear It Up, A Kind Of Magic, Under Pressure, Another One Bites The Dust, Who Wants To Live Forever, I Want To Break Free, impromptu, Gimme Some Lovin', Keep Yourself Alive (improv), guitar solo, Love Of My Life, Is This The World We Created?, (You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care, Hello Mary Lou, Tutti Frutti, Bohemian Rhapsody, Hammer To Fall, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Radio Ga Ga, We Will Rock You, Friends Will Be Friends, We Are The Champions |
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Nearly 100,000 people poured into the grounds (and plenty without tickets) starting when the gates opened at 9am - a full nine hours before Queen were due to appear, and four hours even before the first supporting group was due on stage. Some brave souls came up the River Boyne in canoes, trying to get in the back way! With plenty of people admitting themselves into the show like this, it's impossible to calculate an accurate attendance for the gig. But the paid attendence of 92,000 was the largest for a show in Slane to date; even bigger than Bruce Springsteen's concert the previous year. A fan recalls there wasn't much atmosphere to begin with because the show began and ended in daylight, due to a lack of lighting on the Slane site. Plenty of people in the audience got drunk and, combined with the steady rainfall, it led to some problems all afternoon. It began with various objects being thrown at the opening acts. Suzanna Hoffs of The Bangles said at one point, "We're sorry you're getting wet. We are too, but at least you can't get electrocuted!" Sam Coates was in the audience and recalls, "One thing I clearly remember was a guy getting on stage and running at Freddie. Freddie very cool; he put his arm around him and walked him down the steps and led him to the security staff who escorted him off-stage." Around this point he tapped a security guy on the shoulder and told him, "This is your job." Queen's set was recorded by the band on a mobile 24 track studio. Someone staggered past the equipment at the end of Seven Seas Of Rhye, pulling out a cable. At this same moment, the band stopped playing due to a fight among some drunken people in the audience. Freddie has a stern word with the trouble-makers, transcribed here in full: "Hey! Will you guys stop this shit? Just stop it over here, okay? Will you calm down? Otherwise we're not gonna do the show! You guys are ruining it for the people out there, okay? Everybody stand up and move back a bit, come on." He then asks someone else if they're okay, and continues. "Just calm down a bit. This is stupid. We don't like it like this." He then seems to address the bouncers, hoping to get some people ejected (either that, or some people got hurt and needed attention): "We have to take care of them now." He follows with a vocal exchange with the audience, hoping to improve the atmosphere. They skip the bit of Liar, and Brian leads the band into Tear It Up. Freddie gives his usual rumour speech before Who Wants To Live Forever, and adds, "I want you people to be the first to know we're not splitting up. We'll always be together." At this point, he's trying anything to lighten up the chaotic atmosphere. "This is a new song for us to do, and we'd like to do it especially for you, but why don't you just calm down, okay?" He then pleads, "Can you make this a peaceful event, huh? Please give it a try!" After the impromptu, the band play their longest version of Gimme Some Lovin' followed by a brief improv of Keep Yourself Alive - the last live reference to the song. Then in his solo spot Brian plays a couple verses of Danny Boy. Before Love Of My Life, Brian says, "It's good to be back in Dublin. It turned out alright after all." He wouldn't be feeling this way for much longer, as he is later hit by a beer can and as a result he almost refuses to play the encore - the band have to talk him into it. He later said this particular moment was his worst ever concert experience. "It was certainly more chaotic than normal," he reflected on another occasion, adding that some crowd members tried to force their way backstage. Roger later recalled how he had "never seen so many people consume so much alcohol." Before Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Freddie fittingly says, "This song is dedicated to anybody who doesn't think he's crazy tonight." To speed things up, there is no second encore break between Radio Ga Ga and We Will Rock You. Being in Ireland, Freddie wisely doesn't come out with a British flag for the latter. Like in 1984, God Save The Queen isn't played as the band leave the stage, nor does Freddie dress up as the Queen, both measures taken so as not to upset (roughly half) of the audience. He did, however, come on stage at the beginning of the show with the crown (as seen in pics 4 and 33), which may have contributed to the anxiety of some audience members close to the stage. About an hour of the show was filmed from the audience. The first segment is quite distant, but the filmer made his way to near the stage by mid-show, and captured the atmosphere very well. Some footage from this show (mostly of One Vision) was shown on a TV news report the next day. In 1999, some of this footage was shown on "Reeling In The Years" (named after the Steely Dan classic), a show on the Irish TV station RTE 1 that recalls past (often music-related) events in Ireland. There was also a TV report with DJ/television presenter Dave Fanning confronting people selling unofficial Queen merchandise. Here are a few revealing reviews and write-ups surrounding the show, submitted by Mark Bowles: 1 2 3 4 5 When asked about the gig in a 2013 interview, Roger recalls, "That one was pretty hairy, from what I remember. I mean really hairy. The size of the crowd was incredible. There was so much mud and drunkenness. Freddie stopped the show at one point. People had been there for hours and dehydrated from drinking. Well, it's rock 'n' roll, isn't it?" Photos 10 through 27 were taken by Stevie Shanks (not anyone else who is trying to take credit for them), photos 42-45 were taken by John McGerr, and photos 51-53 were taken by Eric Luke. Pics 28 and 29 were taken by someone known only as Gary. Many of the other photos were submitted by Lukáš Bosík, Janneman, Alessio Rizzitelli, and Fabio Minero. The backstage pics were taken about an hour before Queen hit the stage. Here are a couple pro pics: 1 2 |
Recording length: | 98 minutes (2 CD, incomplete) |
Quality: | B |
Source: | Audience |
Lineage: | AUD > ? > Cassette (x) > CDR (x) > WAV (GoldWave speed correction) > FLAC Level 8 |
Track listing: | One Vision [cut], Tie Your Mother Down, In The Lap Of The Gods...Revisited, Seven Seas Of Rhye, Tear It Up, A Kind Of Magic, Under Pressure, Another One Bites The Dust [cut], Who Wants To Live Forever, I Want To Break Free, impromptu, Gimme Some Lovin', Keep Yourself Alive (improv), guitar solo, Love Of My Life, Is This The World We Created?, (You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care, Hello Mary Lou, Tutti Frutti, Bohemian Rhapsody, Hammer To Fall, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Radio Ga Ga, We Will Rock You, Friends Will Be Friends, We Are The Champions, DJ speech |
Now I'm Here is missing from this high gen copy. The end of Tear It Up and beginning of A Kind Of Magic are cut, but are patched in with the soundtrack from the audience-shot video. |
Recording length: | 99 minutes (2 CD, incomplete) |
Quality: | A- |
Source: | Audience |
Lineage: | AUD > Master > 1st Gen Cassette > WAV > CDR (1) |
Track listing: | One Vision [cut], Tie Your Mother Down, In The Lap Of The Gods...Revisited, Seven Seas Of Rhye, Tear It Up [cut], A Kind Of Magic [cut], Under Pressure, Another One Bites The Dust [cut], Who Wants To Live Forever, I Want To Break Free, impromptu, Gimme Some Lovin', Keep Yourself Alive (improv), guitar solo, Now I'm Here, Love Of My Life, Is This The World We Created?, (You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care, Hello Mary Lou [cut], Bohemian Rhapsody, Hammer To Fall, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Radio Ga Ga, We Will Rock You, Friends Will Be Friends, We Are The Champions |
This version was apparently purchased from the taper the day after the show. Over the years some of the tape became damaged, rendering part of Hello Mary Lou and Tutti Frutti to be pure static. There are some tape speed and/or warble issues in One Vision, Tie Your Mother Down, Who Wants To Live Forever, Love Of My Life, and Radio Ga Ga, and there is some distortion in first half of Bohemian Rhapsody (for some reason the tape was overblown at this point of the transfer). The speech by a local DJ at the end of the show is missing on this version of the tape. Both versions of the audience recording are missing small bits of One Vision, Tear It Up, A Kind Of Magic, and Another One Bites The Dust. On this version, however, there is a bit more tape in the spots around some of the cuts. |