20 September 2012 – Queen screen their phenomenal, 1986 Budapest concert as “Hungarian Rhapsody: Queen Live In Budapest” in selected theatres worldwide, ahead of release on DVD and Blu-Ray.
On July 27, 1986, Queen performed the largest-ever, ground-breaking stadium concert at the Népstadion (translated, means, “The People’s Stadium”) in Budapest in front of 80,000 ecstatic fans. This was the first time the legendary band was able to add Hungary to a tour and what better tour than the successful, sold-out ‘Magic Tour’.
With three years to go before the fall of the Berlin Wall, this was the first Western rock concert performed in a stadium behind the then Iron Curtain. It was of such significance to the Hungarian authorities that an unprecedented collaboration of Hungary’s top film cameraman and technicians were formed to record it. The gear used (including seventeen 35mm cameras and 25 miles of film) was all the available gear in the country…for future generations to enjoy.
The band had tried to get permission to perform in the USSR and failed. “They thought we’d corrupt their youth or something,” Freddie Mercury quipped in a 1985 interview on Australian TV.
Queen were fully prepared to lose money on the venture, but that wasn’t the point. Roger Taylor told the press that they were doing it for “a tremendous feeling of job satisfaction.”
Here’s what Brian May and Roger Taylor had to say about the highly successful Hungarian Rhapsody film, “We’re delighted that Queen fans across the world will finally have the chance to relive this amazing moment for the band. We knew a stadium concert in Budapest was ground–breaking, but hadn’t quite anticipated what a historic night it would turn out to be. The concert looks fantastic on the cinema screen in all its digitally re-mastered glory and the documentary does a great job of setting the scene – it really was an extraordinary time in the band’s history and the most challenging and exhilarating gig.” Well, it was extraordinary time for the Hungarians too, I’m sure.
