Queen first headlined the venue on March 31 while on the road behind “Queen II.”
“We’d done our support tour and then promoter Mel Bush came to us – he was a pretty top promoter at the time – and he said ‘I think you guys can headline the next tour’, and we were surprised,” recalls Brian May. “I remember thinking ‘Wow, that’s very quick’, because normally you would support a few acts and build a following, and then you would go on your headline tour.
“But he said ‘No, I feel you can do it, you can sell out all these places’ and he gave us a big list – Newcastle City Hall, Manchester’s Free Trade Hall or whatever, you know all the sort of classic gigs that rock bands do, and he said ‘you can fill all these, and at the end, we’re going to do the Rainbow’”.
The group’s month-long UK trek was followed by a brief spring series of shows in North America, which were shut down when May contracted hepatitis.
When the band embarked on their next UK tour to promote the “Sheer Heart Attack” album, Queen played two sold-out nights at the venue in November; the shows were filmed and an abbreviated version was screened in cinemas to promote the group before its eventual release in 2014 as “Live At The Rainbow ’74.”
Queen recently launched their new series – which highlights 50 moments in their legendary history – with a look back at their debut 1973 single, “Keep Yourself Alive.”
See also:
Queen classic Bohemian Rhapsody reaches new US sales milestone
Queen launch new YouTube series with debut 1973 single Keep Yourself Alive
Queen preview new YouTube series The Greatest
Queen and Adam Lambert reschedule UK and European tours
Search Queen at hennemusic
