Works tour revelation

Various articles have stated that up to 40 songs were rehearsed for the Works tour in 1984, which means about a dozen songs didn't make the cut.

I just heard from someone directly connected to the band in 1984 precisely what they were:

Great King Rat (longer version)
Brighton Rock (full song)
I'm In Love With My Car
Sweet Lady
White Man
We Will Rock You (fast)
Play The Game
Need Your Loving Tonight
Put Out The Fire
Las Palabras de Amor
Life Is Real (Freddie solo piano)
Life Is Real (Freddie/Brian acoustic duet)

Maybe tapes exist?

How would Sweet Lady and White Man have sounded in the 80s?

We know they rehearsed Long Away in 1977, but until now we otherwise knew very little about songs that didn't make the cut, so this is a pretty substantial bit of news.

Discuss !

Woooh!!! Would be great listen the rehersals!
Specially Life Is Real acoustic. Great discover Mr. Zappa!

They rehearsed Long Away in 1977 ? Please tell more...

Wow, nice. Las Palabras De Amor is especially interesting.

[QUOTE] [b]Apocalipsis_Darko wrote:[/b]

Woooh!!! Would be great listen the rehersals!
Specially Life Is Real acoustic. Great discover Mr. Zappa![/QUOTE]

They played Life is Real a few times on the Hot Space tour with the full band - Brian played acoustic on that, so it gives some idea of what it might have sounded like, if you factor out the drums, bass and Mandel's keys.
Freddie doing it solo on the piano would have been great - it's a shame they instead stopped including a Freddie solo spot like that.

I wonder if they'd have incorporated synths into Sweet Lady and White Man, perhaps even just to beef up the sound of the backing vocals, as they did on songs like Killer Queen on the Works tour, and Seven Seas of Rhye on the Magic tour. This'd apply more to White Man, as there's only one section with backing vocals on the live version of Sweet Lady, at least assuming that they kept the basic arrangement from the ANATO tour.

Thank you for finding this out and sharing!

[QUOTE] [b]Kevinrm15 wrote:[/b]

They rehearsed Long Away in 1977 ? Please tell more...[/QUOTE]

All four band members were interviewed individually in early 1977 (maybe the audio is on here somewhere?), and Brian reveals this tidbit in his.

The rehearsals for the Works Tour in July 84 were very intensive, that`s for sure. Occasionally a single rehearsal could be about twelve hours long.
Assumingly the 70`s tunes were kicked out pretty soon, "Life is real/Las Palabras" maybe kicked out later...but that`s just my personal speculation.

Sounds like a great and extensive setlist. I'm sure someone in the group figured out the new album mostly sucked.

>How would Sweet Lady and White Man have sounded in the 80s?

As shit as the rest of the songs sounded with the over-reliance on Spike and Roger's processed drum sound. An entirely forgettable peroid of the band's stage career.

Well said Benn - that tour mostly sounded dreadful. It's even more frustrating to hear this, with the knowledge that Queen were so rigid with their tour sets, and once decided on they never really altered then night to night - they could easily have slotted tracks in here and there.

[QUOTE] [b]cmsdrums wrote:[/b]

Well said Benn - that tour mostly sounded dreadful. It's even more frustrating to hear this, with the knowledge that Queen were so rigid with their tour sets, and once decided on they never really altered then night to night - they could easily have slotted tracks in here and there.[/QUOTE]

The Works tour ran from August 1984 through May 1985. They only rehearsed those tracks before they began touring, and presumably didn't play or think about them again for the entirety of the period in which they were touring. It's very unlikely that they'd have remembered how to play them up to a presentable standard for that whole time, so spontaneously slotting them in might not have been so easy.

Queen Official YT Channel is starting to upload videos of Tokyo '85, is a direct transfer of the VHS, but upscaled to 1080p.

That's a great great great find Bob congrats and thanks++ for sharing

Thoughts ? Sometime ago I posted an analysis of the setlist tour by tour with "new songs added", "songs dropped" and "older songs revived". One of the key takeaways was that from Jazz onwards room mainly had to be made for new material only, except for the Works 84 setlist !

Your discovery shows it could have been even crazier with reviving Sweet Lady and White Man o_O

It also shows that the setlist could have been closer to the Hot Space Tour than it finally was (WWRY Fast, POTF, Life Is Real even though it was seldom played)

Actually I have to disagree. I was lucky to see Queen twice in 1980 and they were great and wonderful. Saw them in 1982 and they were good – I thought they were better in 1980 actually. But in Leeds they were just fantastic. Have to say that all the Hot Space stuff they did was stupendous. You could see that they enjoyed playing those tracks. But the leap when I saw them in 1984 was incredible. The lights, the volume, the stage presentation was like nothing id ever seen from them. I saw them twice on that tour and it was maybe the best Id ever seen them. In 86 they seemed much more smiley and content with each other so it was a different experience really. In Manchester 86 for example they were fine but it was lacklustre after what I had seen from them before. But 1984 was great.
Id be interested to know if people are commenting how 84 was dreadful after just listening to rips/ audio or if you actually went to any of the gigs (by the way, im not saying that you cant enjoy it if you didn’t go to any of the gigs of course). Im just wondering if anybody else who went felt if Queen had jumped a few rungs up the ladder in their live progression, or did you think after seeing them that it wasn’t great and the gig was a step backwards.