Queen & Paul Rogers - 15/07/05 - Hyde Park

This show was postponed by a week, due to the London transport bombings on Thursday 7th of July, 2005, that killed 56 people and brought the capital to a halt. Various events were cancelled or postponed and this was one of them; pushed back a week to the next Friday. In the intervening week, the band announced that any emergency services people who had been on duty through the bombings would be offered free tickets. A traditionally apolitical band, the Queen members didn’t comment any further on what had happened.
And so, the next Friday we assembled in Hyde Park for the resurrection of a band mostly dormant for 25 years. Janet & I had lashed out on gold-circle tickets. These worked a treat as the area wasn’t full and we could stand at the back, out of the crush, but still see what was going on with Brian May’s hair.
The support band was Razorlight, one of those bands with a brilliant first album that they never manage to better. At this point Johnny Borrell was a bit of a prat, with more mouth than sense, but they were good starter.
It was always hard to fathom why Paul Rogers was the first person invited to sing with Queen for a tour. Wikipaedia tells me he’d got on well with Brian May at a couple of random gigs, but he was never an obvious fit, being a blues-rock performer, rather than something more extravagant. However, my biggest quibble was the lack of John Deacon on bass. If you change the bass player, you change the sound and it just felt wrong to call the band Queen.
But, then, they came on stage and I didn’t really care. They started as is required with ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ and went on to play a standard Queen greatest hits set. With Free songs in it. In some ways, the Free songs were the best bit. I love ‘Wishing Well’ as does Janet, and to hear Brian May rip into a bit of blues guitar was a thrill. The band were professional, but lacked spark, and at moments it felt a bit like a tribute band, but even so, to hear these songs played live, 30 years after I saw Queen play Wembley stadium was fabulous.
They played Bohemian Rhapsody, but with Freddie Mercury’s video-taped vocals throughout, and as usual the operatic section was off tape. During that we got a video montage of the band and one of the biggest cheers of the night was when John Deacon’s face appeared (so I wasn’t the only one).
For the encore, they brought on some of the emergency services folk who had accepted a ticket and it was a lump in the throat moment. They finished with an ‘orrible version of ‘Alright Now’ and then the traditional ‘We Will Rock You/Champions’ double and with a whoosh of fireworks it was all over. Leaving Hyde Park it felt like the start of a return to normality in London, exorcising the last week with a bit of regal rock & roll.