Live at the Rainbow

Queen Live at the Rainbow 1974

This recording of Queen recorded live in the three concerts they played at the Rainbow theatre London 1974 (March and twice in November) was released September 8th 2014, forty years after the event. It's a strong set which contains some twenty tracks from the first three Queen albums. A year before A Night at the Opera and 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' this shows a band already on fire, already in command of their art. The Queen official site makes the clumsiest of references to this landmark concert from 31st March 1974: 'Few who turned up for that iconic performance could have predicted they would go on to become arguably the world's best and most successful rock group, although many more may have suspected it after this stunning show.' Looking backwards, the band have clear star quality and are here performing at the peak of their considerable abilities. The album serves as a definitive statement of the early Queen as a stellar live act. As such, it is also a transitional document marking the culmination of the band's early years before its classical period. It also underlines a fact that tended to be forgotten in the eighties, seventies Queen were a thrilling hard rock band with few peers. In the days before synthesisers and super clean production, Queen live were raw, visceral, loud, and exciting - a real rock'n'roll band who could rock the house. I don't make any purist distinctions here, Queen are Queen. But this concert supports the rock diehards who distinguish between the 'real Queen' and the 'pop Queen.' Although this is often presented as a distinction between seventies and eighties Queen, that doesn't quite work, with 'Killer Queen' present in the seventies and 'I Want it All' in the late eighties. But there was more rock early on and more pop later on.It's all Queen to me. This is a superb concert, with the band rocking hard. At the same time, the band is raw but never ragged. There are no rough edges to the performances, with the band delivering flawless performances. Critics could, here, accuse the perfectly executed hard rock of being clinical and mechanical. That would be a mistake. The musicianship is meticulous and masterly rather than mechanical, with the harmonious, melodic chemistry between band members on top of their game oozing quality without ever being less than thrilling. It is easy to play loud, it is easy to be exciting - the hard part is to be loud and exciting without ever losing control and becoming ragged. Queen were the whole package and this concert document offers undeniable proof of the truth of that statement. Queen Live at the Rainbow shows one of the great and truly classic rock bands in their prime.

Desite a range of sounds that Queen could draw on, these concerts from 1974 focus on hard rock. Brian May jokes about the fact that the poppier "Killer Queen" was at number two in the UK charts at the time, saying "we narrowly escaped having a number one single this week," before the tune is played for merely a minute as part of a medley of other songs. Compare that treatment with the raucous and full-length performance of the single's flip side "Flick of the Wrist,' as well as of other hard rock songs such as "Stone Cold Crazy" from the same album, as well as "Liar," "Keep Yourself Alive," and "Father to Son" from the first two albums. The band were still far more rock than they were pop. That said, Queen always had a remarkable stylistic range, as proven by "In the Lap of the Gods" and "White Queen (As It Began)" along with rollicking renditions of "Big Spender" and "Jailhouse Rock" in the encore.

This is Queen one year before A Night at the Opera, showing that before they were massive, Queen were ... massive. Queen, of course, came in time to be recognized as one of the all-time great live acts. They were the hottest ticket around by the time of their last tour, for the reason that people knew they delivered in live performance. That reputation was based primarily on the band's '80s performances in arenas and stadiums all over the world, but its substance is of a much earlier vintage. Live at the Rainbow proves that the band were already a top-notch live act that had been knocking audiences dead for years.

The concerts at the Rainbow were significant landmarks in the band's career. As the premiere rock club in London, Queen's headlining gigs at the venue meant that the band had 'made it.' Their performance is certainly a triumph. In fine, a brilliant and exuberant snapshot of how great and huge Queen were pre-"Bohemian Rhapsody" and the 'classic' incarnation of the band.