Queen + Rodgers: Singing in the rain

Written by The Rock Radio staff, July 2005 © The Rock Radio

Back in 1986 guitarist Brian May celebrated his 39th birthday with the only live rendition of the song "'39" during the Queen Magic Tour in Cologne's Muengersdorfe Stadion. 19 years later he returned to Cologne - and whist he and the place were still around, pretty much everything else had undergone changes.

In preparation for the 2006 World Cup, the stadium is no longer a simple football pitch but a hi-tech arena called Rhein Energie Stadion. And we all know what has happend to the band Queen since then. Freddie Mercury passed away and bass player John Deacon retired but - as they sang in 1991 The Show Must Go On. So the Queen + Paul Rodgers tour which started on March 28, 2005 with an exclusive Fan Club Gig in London's Brixton Academy was brought to the big open air shows. But there is the problem. Due to the outstanding stage presentation of Freddie Mercury, Queen were always a stadium band. However, for Queen+ the league is certainly indoors.

With both stage and setlist pretty much adapted from the spring tour ( 2 big screens an each side of the stage, a 25m long catwalk) and a decent greatest hits set, Queen + Paul Rodgers plus their audience of 26.700 bare the heavy rain for a solid 126 minutes. With the exception of the opener, "Reachin Out", and drummer Roger Taylor's great rendition of Sandy Nelson's instrumental "Let There Be Drums", the band was doing a pretty safe greatest hits set featuring crowd-pleasers like "I Want to Break Free", "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "Radio Ga Ga".

Heavy rain got Paul Rodgers to sing a few lines of "I'm singing in the rain" and that was the only time when he did not use his telepromter for the lyrics.

"Another One Bites The Dust" which was hardly played during the spring tour was the best song of the set, while Freddie Mercury was around in Cologne 14 years after his untimely death. Introduced by Brian May as "one of [his] best friends" before "Love Of My Life", on screen during "These Are The Days Of Our Lives" and as full playback-tape to "Bohemian Rhapsody" which closed the main set. There is hardly anything that you can add to that. But there were still four more of the big ones to come: "The Show Must Go On", "All Right Now" and the traditional finale with "We Will Rock You" and "We Are The Champions". For that - for promotional reasons - they got the German cast of the "We Will Rock You" musical to assist.

View photos from the Cologne concert

The setlist was as follows:

01 Reachin Out
02 Tie Your Mother Down
03 I Want To Break Free
04 Fat Bottomed Girls
05 Wishing Well
06 Another One Bites The Dust
07 Crazy Little Thing Called Love
08 Say It`s Not True
09 '39
10 Love Of My life
11 Hammer To Fall
12 Feel Like Making Love
13 Let There Be Drums (Cover of Sandy Nelson)
14 I'm In Love With My Car
15 Guitar Solo
16 Last Horizon
17 These Are The Days Of Our Lives
18 Radio Ga Ga
19 Can't Get Enough of Your Love
20 A Kind Of Magic
21 I Want It All
22 Bohemian Rhapsody

Encore Break

23 The Show Must Go On
24 All Right Now
25 We Will Rock You (with German WWRY Cast)
26 We Are The Champions (with German WWRY Cast)
27 God Save The Queen