In June 1984, Roger Strange Frontier released his second solo album. Also in June, Guild Guitars released a copy of Brian's Red Special homemade guitar. She was named BHM1, and Brian himself followed all stages of its production. Unfortunately, a year later, Brian and Guild had a dispute over the design of the tool, and Guild stopped production.
In August, Queen went to Belgium - this was the beginning of The Works tour. In October, they ended up in Bofutatswan in South Africa and gave a series of concerts in Sun City at the famous Super Bowl Stadium. The problems were full. Freddy had difficulties with his voice, and the concerts had to be canceled. But all these were trifles in comparison with what awaited them upon returning home. As apartheid laws reign in South Africa, their trip provoked discontent from the general public. The group justified their behavior by claiming that they were out of politics, that they went to play music for people and nothing more.
Queen's first full-length concert video was released in September 1984. We Will Rock You was filmed at two shows in 1981 in Montreal. Throughout September, at least 9 Queen albums were among the top 200 in the UK.
1985 was the year of the Rock in Rio festival. He was declared the largest rock festival of all time in the world and was led by his group Queen. The entire festival was filmed and broadcast by South American television, but only Queen received permission to release her concert on video - Live In Rio was released in May 1985. The band gave their very first concert in New Zealand on April 13, 1985, at Mount Smart Stadium in Auckland. Upon arrival, the group was greeted by a crowd of anti-apartheid protesters. To watch Queen's concert, Tony Hadley, lead singer of Spandau Ballet, flew in from Australia, where his band toured and was honored to join Queen during an encore.
Solo album Freddy Mr. Bad Guy was released on April 29th - the group performed at that time in Australia. The concert in Melbourne had to be played without any lighting installation at all since the computer system that controls the light failed. After an Australian tour, lavishly flavored with problems, not the least of which was continuous rain, the group headed for Japan. Their concert at the Tokyo Olympic Basin was filmed by NHK for Japanese TV shows.
June 13, 1985, went down in history as Live Aid Concert Day. The whole world, with bated breath, watched the performances at the London Wembley Stadium and in Philadelphia. Queen was one of many popular bands to present their 20-minute program. The whole world watched them - both the public and the press unanimously recognized that Queen was the highlight of the program. This event was a turning point in the history of Queen.
Shortly before that, they decided to take a break and rest from each other, but that day brought them together again, charging them with new strength and enthusiasm. The first result of this new rush of inspiration was the song One Vision. Russell Malkakhi turned to Queen with a request to write music for the film - a fairy tale about the immortal Scot, nicknamed Highlander. In an interview, Malkakhi said that Queen was the first group that he remembered when he thought about the music for the film.
In March 1986, John formed The Immortals to record several musical compositions for the Biggles movie. They recorded only one song - No Turning Back, and the group broke up.
On June 2, Queen released their 14th album, A Kind Of Magic, with music for the film Highlander. The album started on the UK charts immediately under the first number and for 13 weeks in a row kept in the top five.
On June 7, Queen's car started working again - the "Magic Tour" in Europe began. The first concert in the UK was in Newcastle, at the football stadium in St. James's Park. The group and impresario Harvey Goldsmith transferred all the proceeds of the concert to the International Children's Fund. On July 11, the Royal Tornado, as Freddy called it, reached London. There were two sold-out concerts at Wembley Stadium. During one of the concerts, four huge inflatable figures made in the form of characters from the album A Kind Of Magic were launched directly from the public and soared into the night sky. The second performance was shot by Tyne Tees - directed again by Gavin Taylor - for subsequent television broadcasting.
To be continued in the next part https://zen.yandex.ru/media/id/5d6273f204af1f00aeac207e/a-brief-history-of-queen-part-6-5d91ef53aad43600adeceafb