Stadium Rock (Wardour-028 & Wardour-028S)
Nishinoomiya Stadium, Kobe, Japan – October 24th, 1982
Disc 1: Flash intro., The Hero, We Will Rock You (fast), Action This Day, Somebody To Love, Calling All Girls, Now I’m Here, Put Out The Fire, Dragon Attack / Now I’m Here (reprise), Love Of My Life, Yeah Yeah Yeah, Save Me, Get Down Make Love, guitar solo
Disc 2: Body Language, Under Pressure, Fat Bottomed Girls, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Spread Your Wings, Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting), Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, Another One Bites The Dust, Jailhouse Rock, Rock ‘n’ Roll medley, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen
Disc 3, taken from the analogue LP Get Down (Lora Records): Flash intro., The Hero, We Will Rock You (fast), Action This Day, Somebody To Love, Calling All Girls, Now I’m Here, Put Out The Fire, Dragon Attack / Now I’m Here (reprise), Love Of My Life, Yeah Yeah Yeah, Save Me
Disc 4: Get Down Make Love, Guitar Solo, Body Language, Under Pressure, Fat Bottomed Girls, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Spread Your Wings, Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting), Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, Another One Bites The Dust, Jailhouse Rock, Rock ‘n’ Roll medley, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen
For Stadium Rock the Wardour label present a new tape source for the Kobe performance (discs one and two of the four disc set or standing alone). It is paired with the older tape source previously released and available on the LP Get Down on Lora Records. The tape source for the two disc set and the first half of the four-disc set is brand new, not even circulating with collectors. It is excellent, very well balanced and detailed, one of the best from Queen’s tour of Japan in 1982. The only cut is a tape flip in “Body Language” which Wardour edited with the older source.
On this tour Queen gave some of their most unique performances. It seems they could never settle on which songs from the new LP they wanted to incorporate into the set list, so they changed the numbers all throughout the tour. This show in Kobe has the welcome addition of a two-minute fragment of “Spread Your Wings”. Freddie plays a unique arrangement of the piece and sings the first verse and says, “I’ve forgotten the chords” before banging the piano for “Saturday Night’s Alright”. The Elton John piece then segues directly into “Bohemian Rhapsody”.
Brian May plays the opening to “It’s Late” as an introduction to one of the most unique versions of “Now I’m Here” on record. Several of the Japan shows contain the Hot Space track “Put Out The Fire”, but before they get into that they play some bars of “We Can Work It Out” by The Beatles and “Shake Rattle & Roll”. The encore consists of the first half of “Another One Bites The Dust”, which segues directly into “Jailhouse Rock”, “Brown Sugar” and other tunes including “Shake Rattle & Roll” (again) before Freddie tries two times to end it! “We Will Rock You” is included in its entirely (some sources miss this tune). Some say that “Teo Torriatte” was played, but there is no evidence to support that claim.
The LP source on discs three and four is one of the best sounding audience tapes from the era. The used an excellent vinyl source and declicked it making it sound very nice. They also spliced in the first tape source for “We Will Rock You”. Wardour have corrected the speed problem. The two-disc set is probably enough for most collectors although it is nice to have the two sources available. It isn’t superfluous as was the four-disc At Last Budokan release which presented to versions of the same tape, the second of which was unlistenable.
