News of the Queen

Queen are currently on tour in the US. This time they're doing their best without an opening act. They'll be playing a few new songs, so who knows, maybe Freddie will even sing We Are The Champions in his shorts! By the way, the planned trip to the US to go see the tour has been cancelled due to lack of participants. Sorry about that. We'd love to organize another trip to see them play in the UK, their homeland, sometime.

Now, as for their schedule after the US tour, they'll be returning to the UK for Christmas to rest their battered bodies while reflecting on a busy year of touring and recording. The schedule for next year hasn't been decided yet. I'm sure they'll be discussing it thoroughly as the end of the year approaches. We hope they'll come to Japan next year.

It's been two years since their last live performance here, so I'm sure there are many people who haven't seen them in person. I'd love to see them on film, at least. They're currently working on a documentary film. Ever since I heard they filmed last year's free concert in Hyde Park, I've been wanting to see it, but I haven't heard much about it yet. Reportedly they'll be using this footage from Hyde Park along with some footage from a show they shot randomly for TV in London on October 6th, combining it into a single film. The October 6th concert will apparently be aired on British TV stations at the end of the year. Oh, how I envy them! Plus, they're doing two one-hour Queen shows on radio stations at Christmas, which makes my mouth water!

Incidentally, there is also a 33-minute film of the 1974 Rainbow concert, but the members of Queen didn't like it at all, so it was only shown once in the UK. I'd like to see that, too.

Now, on a different note, let me introduce a letter I received from the official Dutch fan club in the Netherlands:

"The Queen concert in Rotterdam this year was absolutely fantastic, and we were speechless. At one point, Freddie toasted Rotterdam and said, 'I hope we can drink champagne every morning!' In Killer Queen, he sang 'perfume from Rotterdam' and between songs he made a funny face, saying 'You're all rotters, aren't you?' (a pun on 'Rotter', meaning 'thug' in English). After the concert, Brian invited us to a party thrown by the record company. We were downstairs, and it was a blast! Then Brian came up and gave us wine! He's such a nice guy. We talked about the fan club and the concert. He said he really likes the people of the Netherlands, and they're busy preparing for next year, so we didn't get to talk that long. Brian seemed very tired—he had to leave for Switzerland early the next morning, so we left the party after about an hour."

I can picture Brian always considering his fans and worrying for them.

—Inouye

---