11 November 2020
Newsdesk
The ‘Don’t Stop Me Now' hitmakers’ guitarist has admitted that when he and his bandmates - late frontman Freddie Mercury and bassist John Deacon, and drummer Roger Taylor, 71 - got off stage they just thought "that went kind of OK" and never envisaged the dual-venue benefit show at London's Wembley Arena in July 1985, which also featured performances from the likes of David Bowie and Madonna, would become a significant part of their legacy.
Speaking about the performance - which saw them perform mega-hits such as 'Bohemian Rhapsody', 'Radio Ga Ga', 'We Will Rock You' and 'We Are The Champions’ - being recreated for their 2018 biopic 'Bohemian Rhapsody’, in which Rami Malek portrayed Freddie, Brian told TalkRADIO: “It was so strange kind of reliving it for the movie.
“They recreated it so incredibly faithfully, and to be there on that set was really spine chilling; it brought it all back. And at the time, we weren’t aware of what an epoch-making thing it was, really. We came off [thinking], ‘Well, that went kind of OK.’ But we didn’t realise that it had made such a lasting impression on the ether. … It sort of lives on, doesn’t it?”
Speaking of Freddie's "wonderful” showmanship and stage presence, the 73-year-old rock legend added: “He had a great spatial awareness, and that’s something very important.
“If you’re working with people on a stage, you need to have musical contact, but you also need the kind of physical chemistry going on — the awareness of where you are and where you’re aiming your energy. Freddie was wonderful for that, and we just clicked from the very beginning.”
