Queen was one of my favorite bands in the 70’s and i saw them live four times from 1977 to 1980, every time at Madison Square Garden.
Everyone says Mercury was a great front man, if not the best- i disagree. I found him to be arrogant, condescending and insulting on stage. Queen also had trouble getting the same sound from their songs on stage compared to vinyl, due to all the overdubbing in the studio.
Once they started with the Fat Bottom Girls, Bicycle, Flash Gordon crap, i split.
WOW. We must have seen two different bands. Maybe they didn’t feel threatened when they played in CT. ;) I never got the same impression as you did, Queen was the best overall show I’ve ever seen. When it came to special effects, Blue Oyster cult was up there for me.
Funny - the Flash Gordon soundtrack was one of the few things they did that I liked - guess because I wasn’t a fan otherwise and it was deliberately over the top and campy. Hilarious lyrics.
Many of Queen’s best known hits would have been near impossible to duplicate from studio to live stage, without a full choir on stage with them. I don’t think they ever toured that way. The song “Liar’was guitar driven, that could have been performed as recorded, but most of the songs on album “Sheer Heart Attack” (Brighton Rock, Killer Queen and Leroy Brown) were intricate barbershop type harmonies, that would need restructuring for live performance. This may have taken the spotlight off of Freddie M. Maybe he didn’t want that.