Remembering Queen Live at Wembley ’86

When Queen took to the stage at Wembley Stadium, they were the biggest live attraction in Britain if not the world, Freddie Mercury was at the top of his form, and the crowd at Wembley roared in his hands. The Live at Wembley Stadium ’86 DVD and CD set is, without doubt, pure class and worthy of a place in anyone’s record collection; in terms of live recordings, this is historic.
I’ve been watching and listening to this event since I was a kid. My parents had videos full of music videos and concerts and I must have watched them all to the point of wearing them out when I was younger. Dad taped this one from the Channel Four broadcast, it was taped after David Hepworth talked to David Hepworth on the Born in the USA tour and before a Prince’s Trust concert but…I digress. The point is, I didn’t have to re-listen / re-watch this to write any words about it and I make no apologies for saying it’s the absolute bollocks of live documents.

We are a few weeks away from the release of the album Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. The words highly and anticipated would be used here but you can take that as a given. When Noel’s former group imploded so publicly and the Brothers Gallagher went their separate ways everyone waited to see what roads each took but the writing was already on the wall; Liam carried on driving in a new motor made of trusted parts. It’s good that they continued, there is an audience out there for them. There are some that will like both Noel’s and Liam’s offerings, some that like either and some that like neither. The latter lot probably don’t think Oasis did anything remotely noteworthy after 1995.


The wait was nearly over; “I can do it, I can do it, I can actually ring up the radio station and request a song off it!”