Freddie Mercury served as the lead singer in the rock band Queen, founded in 1970, and produced popular tracks such as “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions,” a song that has gained popularity at sporting events.
This kind of success was heightened by their outstanding 1985 performance at the Live Aid concert, which was held at the Old Wembley Stadium, and it is still considered the high point of the band’s history.
Freddie Mercury’s last performance with the Queens was at Knebworth House during The Magic Tour in 1986
In 1986, the group embarked on The Magic Tour, a European musical journey to promote their album A Kind of Magic. The tour consisted of 26 performances across Western Europe, with the most successful concert of it taking place at Knebworth House on August 9th, attracting a crowd of over 120,000 fans.
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The event remains a pivotal juncture in the band’s chronicle as it marked Mercury’s final live performance with the band before he died from AIDS five years later in 1991, just barely a day after making a public announcement about his diagnosis.
There is a bootlegged recording of Freddie Mercury’s last concert with the Queens
At the Knebworth House performance, the band made a flamboyant entrance in the extravagant ‘Magic Helicopter,’ adorned with artwork from the A Kind Of Magic album. The evening’s performance was a tour de force, as they thrilled the audience with their unending repertoire of hits like “Under Pressure,” “Another One Bites The Dust,” “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” Ironically, despite the future importance it would acquire, the show was never recorded for future generations to enjoy.
However, Henry Lytton-Cobbold, the present occupant of Knebworth House who also witnessed the performance during his 20s, revealed that although there is no official recording, a member of the audience made one. “Can you believe that on Freddie Mercury’s last concert, the great showman, no one actually pressed record?” he said. “There’s a Dutch bootleg of somebody filming a screen at the back of the audience for the whole show, so there’s a record of it, but no proper film.”