Queen have released a live video of Crazy Little Thing Called Love, filmed just two weeks before Freddie Mercury‘s final show with the band.
The clip comes from the 4K version of Queen’s 1987 concert movie Queen Live In Budapest, which has been restored from the original 35mm footage by Sir Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post Production facility in New Zealand.
Now titled Queen: Budapest, the film is currently enjoying a limited run in cinemas worldwide, and will be released on double CD, DVD, Blu-ray and triple vinyl on October 30.
Queen: Budapest was filmed in July 1986 at the Népstadion in Budapest, Hungary, and was the first time a Western rock band had taken a stadium show behind the Iron Curtain.
“We were so tight by then, we were able to signal to each other subconsciously where we were going to go,” guitarist Brian May tells Classic Rock. “We were at the absolute peak of functioning as a band.”
Over the following fortnight, the band would play in France and three shows in Spain, before Freddie Mercury’s grand finale at Knebworth in Hertfordshire, UK.
“I distinctly remember backstage after Knebworth, Freddie with a drink in his hand, saying: ‘I can’t do this any more after this,’” May tells Classic Rock. “We all looked at him as if to say ‘Okay,’ because that was the kind of stuff Freddie would always say. But I think at that point he knew his life was going to change radically and he wouldn’t be able to do it any more.”
“Knebworth was our last show with Freddie, and it was flawless,” adds drummer Roger Taylor. “I remember thinking: ‘God, it’s so easy!’ But nobody thought to record it.”
Brian May and Roger Taylor are interviewed at length about Budapest and Knebworth in the new issue of Classic Rock, which is published tomorrow (October 9) and available to order online now.
Queen: Budapest is available to pre-order now. For cinema screenings, visit queenbudapest.com.
(LouderSound)
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