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Review
by Collectors
music reviews
Not Fade Away documents the first of
four nights at the Wembley Arena in London on the Works tour.
Gypsy Eye utilize what is a very good and clear audience recording of the
event. However, they remastered it too hard and it sounds very
brittle, crispy and distorted. It produces tremendous amount of
listening fatigue and it winds up being one of Gypsy Eye’s worst
efforts.
It’s a shame too because this is a very
enjoyable performance. The first show in London sees the band
playing with a tremendous amount of energy. This is one of the best
shows from the Works era on tape with gutsy performances of
“Tear It Up” and “Tie Your Mother Down.”
“Somebody To Love” starts off the medley
very quiet. Freddie prolongs the intro and encourages the audience
to sing along. It is played up until the gospel middle before segueing
into “Killer Queen,” and bits of “Seven Seas Of Rhye,”
“Keep Yourself Alive” and finally “Liar.” Just like in
the previous evening in Birmingham, Freddie jokes around before attempting
the high notes at the beginning of “It’s A Hard Life,”
saying: “I’m gonna try the fucking thing.” He tries but
the results are painful to hear.
Before “Staying Power” Freddie addresses
the break-up rumors, saying they are “unfucking true…if you want us to
be here, we’ll be here every night.”
Brian becomes chatty before the acoustic
interlude. Before playing “Is This The World We Created?” he
tells London: “It’s very nice to be back. We spend a lot of our
time going all around the world, to all the four corners of this strange
place that we live in, and when we come back here it’s … feels
something special. I don’t know what it is. It’s home. We’re kind of
more exposed and naked than anywhere else. I don’t know what it is, but
it’s great. So this is something to listen to if you wanna cool down for
a sec.”
During the guitar solo the lights
malfunction and after “Brighton Rock” Freddie says:
“Something happen to our lights or something? Are the lights okay? These
million-dollar lights are fucked up! The honest truth, can you believe it,
we pay all this million pounds, or whatever you read about, for the
lights, and there’s one plug that works the whole damn thing. And
that’s got a fuse or something.”
Loose enough to improvise, Freddie gets into a bit of Buddy
Holly’s “Not Fade Away” while tuning his guitar for ”Crazy
Little Thing Called Love.” He sets the rhythm and Roger Taylor
joins in on drums. Freddie doesn’t remember all the words and ends
by singing: “I’m gonna get you, I don’t know the words.”
Overall this is another very effective show before they began to run out
of enthusiasm in early 1985. Not Fade Away is a good choice for a
silver title, but Gypsy Eye truly dropped the ball on this one and ruined
what would have been an excellent release.
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