Madison Square Garden

While we are all talking about the next DVD to hopefully be from the '70s, and name-dropping those commonly known concerts of which we know footage exists, one of the most famous and prestigious venues in the world is never mentioned: New York's Madison Square Garden !

Led Zep's "The song remains the same" was meant to be the definite concert-movie and was filmed there.
An american journalist reviewing "Sheer Heart Attack" wrote "they will be playing Madison Square Garden next year !"
All the "Live at MSG" albums and bootlegs from loads of artists - it's the overall impression that you have only really made it, when you played the Garden !

I have NEVER ever heard of any existing footage from Madison Square Garden '77-'82.
Hammy, Rainbow, Munich, Tokyo, Houston, Montreal, Wembley and so on - but never the Big Apple. I once read that it was too expensive to hire a filmcrew in the USA, and that this was the reason for them to film WWRY in Montreal. But considering that, why was Houston filmed, if it's way too expensive ? At a time before their commercial peak ?

Assuming that there is no official Queen-Footage from New York, what about the documentary snippets from "Magic Years": the band dressing up backstage, the news-bit with "Freddie Mercury is one of life's originals" with the band walking around what seems to be a shopping mall, the mud-wrestlers which are said to be from N.Y. ? Maybe there was TV-coverage of one of the Garden-shows ? (like Munich)

I hope that Houston will get a proper release someday, but "Queen - Live at the Garden" doesn't sound too bad either, doesn't it ? ;-)

Can anyone shed light on this ?

I can only remember the shots of We are the champions and We will rock you from the 77 tour... I dunno if the whole set was filmed...

maybe www.queenconcerts.com can help...!

Maybe I was wrong in the last post but I seem to remember that footage from a documentary... Am I wrong or the documentary.. ?!?

OMG it would definately rock!
It will not happen though *sigh*

I'm fairly certain that MSG has a restriction of sorts as to exactly what can and can't be filmed / broadcast for release. I think sport is treated differently to music.

There would also have to be some kind of contract clause when agreeing to let a band play there that the holding company of "The Garden" would receive x-percent of sales from anything that is sold that features the name / logo etc; that may well then prove too expensive and therefore prevent a band releasing their film of an MSG show.

The Who must have played there 30 times over the years and nothing has been released from there (nothing officially exists as far as I'm aware, but the archives are stuffed with material). From what I can work out Zep are the only band to have put anything out and I would imagine that Peter Grant had any dodgy clause ironed out well before playing there.

Thomas Tønnesen wrote:

Maybe I was wrong in the last post but I seem to remember that footage from a documentary... Am I wrong or the documentary.. ?!?

I think those snippets stem from Houston, I remember them from "Magic Years" as well...

Benn wrote:

I'm fairly certain that MSG has a restriction of sorts as to exactly what can and can't be filmed / broadcast for release. I think sport is treated differently to music.

There would also have to be some kind of contract clause when agreeing to let a band play there that the holding company of "The Garden" would receive x-percent of sales from anything that is sold that features the name / logo etc; that may well then prove too expensive and therefore prevent a band releasing their film of an MSG show.

The Who must have played there 30 times over the years and nothing has been released from there (nothing officially exists as far as I'm aware, but the archives are stuffed with material). From what I can work out Zep are the only band to have put anything out and I would imagine that Peter Grant had any dodgy clause ironed out well before playing there.

Thats very interesting, thanks Benn. I did not know that the holding company of MSG is that restrictive. But does Queen-footage actually exist ?

Yep, absolutely right, Peter Grant could handle these kinda things - I think any holdings official would've been frightened to death to tell him "no"... :-)
There was a special edition of a german music-mag recently, featuring the history of Led Zep. He must have been the mightiest man in Rock in those days ! Quite impressive biography.
And the snippets of him accusing a concert promoter of illegal T-shirt sales in "The song..." are hilarious: "Talk to me you silly cunt, I'm the manager of the group !" ;-)

Also Pink Floyd played a four night stand at Madison Square in July of 1977 and Roger Waters called the lighting people "dumb mother f***ers" and flipped when people lit off fireworks. All four of those shows are available via bootleg. Also, Floyd played there in 1987 and that show was filmed by a fan and is on the bootleg market.

I hear their concert in MSG in Feburary 5th 77 was terifically great in many ways. And I've read some long reports about it in the books I have. They were making every effort to open up a new market in USA through "ADATR" tour in those days, which was considered to be successful. But I wonder there is any live materal from it???
I think it's a shame that there are few from American tours.

Big Spender - There is an audio bootleg of the Feb. 5, 77 MSG show available.
The sound quality is quite good and the band is in top form. They are definately on a high playing the Garden for the first time.

i don't believe they have a full show of the garden, but it's strange that i'v havn't seen footage of any garden shows, it would rock, and possibly be even a hit.

I'll tell you now there is no way the next concert release will be a U.S one. It will be a U.K one. One of the Hammersmith's I hope and bet. They should do the both of them on a disc each.

I went to at least one concert every year that Queen performed at MSG and I have to say, the ADAR and Jazz were the 2 best. The crowd at the Races concert was more sophisticated and subdued , but the band played a pretty tight gig and Brian's guitar work was awsome. Freddies vocals weren't his best though. The crowd at the Jazz concerts were younger and more lively and noisy and Freddies vocals were on. Though the Hot Space concert was pretty good I remember seeing at lot of empty seats. That was a shame. It was like the beginning of the end of Queen here in the states.

Thats great, RockitPJ ! Someone who was actually there !
Are there any more interesting facts or anecdotes from these shows that you would like to share with us ? I would love to hear more !

As far as film footage is concerned, the only footage I have seen is the backstage interviews.
Never seen anything from the actual concert. I once had an audio bootleg copy of the ADAR concert
but that was damaged in an apartment flood and my Mom tossed it not knowing what it was.
By the way the quote "If I look half as good to you people as you do to me, I must look good."
Is by Brian from this concert. I thought it was a great pick up line so I memorized it. Heehee