Customer Reviews

Live Magic

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This disc was the 2nd live offering from Queen after QUEEN LIVE KILLERS was made in the late seventies.

I like it a lot and prefer this to Live at Wembley and even the recent On Fire, all of which are double sets.

Here's why - although it's edited - the performances are sterling. Versions of One Vision, Tie Your Mother Down and Radio Gaga are great.

No disagreements that Bohemian sounds butchered but the album moves along at a nice pace. It feels tighter. Worth getting for the songs unless you must have a complete double set of Queen in concert.

I will say that the definitive live Queen set is probably still in the vaults waiting to be released...

I admit that »Queen Live Killers« is an even better live album than »Live Magic«. But I don't understand why everybody dislikes »Live Magic« 'cause it is another great live album. Like only Queen made'em!

Especially the close-to-medley in the second half of the recording. 6 or 7 great songs linked together in one Queen epic. Euphoric! The best performance of'em all is shown on »Hammer To Fall«.

This is pure Queen live power from the first tune to the last. Cheers!

While this album isn't a miserable failure, it certainly begs one to wonder, "How is this still in print?" You have to remember that had Freddie Mercury not died of AIDS, LIVE MAGIC would probably be the only live material released from the Kind of Magic tour of 1985/86'. But after Mercury's death, the band released LIVE AT WEMBLEY STADIUM - a greatly improved live presentation of the KIND OF MAGIC tour. Upon it's release , LIVE AT WEMBLEY was seen as a fitting tribute to Mercury's brilliant songwriting, equally brilliant voice, heroic charisma and unbelievable crowd control. Since WEMBLEY was considered the perfect swan song to Mercury's career, the "Tour highlights" CD package known as LIVE MAGIC quickly became unimportant.

..... here are a few reasons why LIVE AT WEMBLEY is the wise purchase over LIVE MAGIC :::::

1 Every song on Live Magic is chopped into shorter versions (except for 3 songs).
2 The sound quality is not as good as LIVE AT WEMBLEY
3 LIVE AT WEMBLEY features several extra tracks, such as a fun little acoustic/50's section in the show. Also, the newest version of WEMBLEY contains Tavaski Szel Vizet Araszt - another emotional live moment in Queen's history. Where are the emotional moments on LIVE MAGIC? There are none.
4 The running times of these shortened versions are ridiculous.... "Friends will be Friends" is barely over a minute long. Same thing with "Is This The World We Created?".
5 Another query: Where in the blue hell is "Who Wants To Live Forever"?!??!...... as Freddie would say, "Darling, please!"
6 And most importantly.... there is NOTHING MAGIC about the live performances. Most shows take place on different nights - so the ebb and flow of a real rock show is lacking. So many issues....but it's Queen - so I'll give it 2 stars instead of 1 1/2 stars like I normally would

ONLY FOR HARDCORE QUEEN FANS ! If you really want to hear Queen live iin addition to this release and LIVE AT WEMBLEY, I'd suggest ON FIRE: LIVE AT THE BOWL or QUEEN ROCK MONTREAL ..... both have better set lists and superior sound quality (and Mercury is dead on, unlike the 85' tour when he was struggling with health issues).....

Looking back at the 1970s and 1980s, sometimes many forget how big the band Queen was. If it weren't for Freddie Mercury's death in 1992, we might still be talking about Queen being as big a band as the Beatles. Even as Queen moved into the 1980s, while their popularity did slightly decline in the United States, it continued to be very high in Europe. As good a band as Queen was, it was their live performances that really were something special. Their performance at Live Aid is widely considered one of the greatest of all-time and their subsequent "Magic" tour is considered one of the all-time greatest concert tours. At the height of that magic tour were legendary concerts at Wembley Stadium and Knebworth Park that would wrap up the "Magic" tour. Queen would release CD and DVDs version of one of the Wembley Stadium shows. The CD would be called "Live at Wembley '86" and the DVD would be simply called "Live at Wembley" Both the CD and DVD versions would capture the true "magic" of a Queen live performance. Queen would also release another CD from the "Magic" Tour simply entitled "Live Magic". This would feature not only performances from the Wembley show, but also from Knebworth and Budapest. While this CD would have its moments, it would prove to pale in comparison with the "Live at Wembley" collections.

Queen is an example of the sum of the parts actually being greater than the whole. However, if you take each of the four members of Queen, they easily stand on their own as a top musician in their profession. Freddie Mercury is easily known to be the emotional and flamboyant lead vocalist of Queen who indeed has a legendary voice. Brian May is the legendary lead guitarist and probably the second most popular member of the band. Roger Taylor and John Deacon go extremely underrated. Listen to Taylor's thundering drumming in the studio or live and one can easily understand why he was asked to participate in an All Star Drum Jam (The S.O.S. All-Stars) at the Live Earth concert. As for John Deacon, he might be one of music's all-time underrated bass players. Many of his bass lines have proven to be the foundation for Queen's musical sound. In addition to being top musicians, all four members play integral roles in the songwriting. Queen's live performances cement how good these performers are. Even though "Live Magic" is a shell of what "Live at Wembley" is, it does demonstrate how good the four members of Queen are.

There are three reasons why "Live Magic" is a poor collection.

1."Live Magic" is a compilation of performances from the "Magic" tour as opposed to a single performance. I prefer to have a live album be a single night's performance. The reason is because you are able to capture the essence and magic of the performance. In the case of the "Live at Wembley" performances, once you watch or listen to that performance, you can understand better. Typically when compilation live performances from a tour are assembled, it usually misses the mark. Although "Live Magic" attempts to mold the songs into feeling like a single performance, it really does not do a very good job at doing so.

2."Live Magic" does not represent the complete Queen performance from the "Magic" tour. There are many songs that are missing from this CD that were performed on this tour. Most notably missing is the performance of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" (featuring a great guitar solo by May), Queen's medley tribute to the music of the 1950s and 1960s, and the acoustic set done by the band.

3.Perhaps the biggest problem is the editing. Many of the songs that are included are not complete versions that were performed live. The only three songs included in their entirety are "A Kind of Magic", "Another One Bites the Dust", and "Hammer to Fall". The rest of the songs are all edited. In fact, "We are the Champions" is missing a whole verse. Perhaps the worst of all is the editing of a Queen masterpiece - "Bohemian Rhapsody". The "Opera" section of "Bohemian Rhapsody" is simply eliminated. It is important to know that on this tour, Queen used a pre-recorded version of the "Opera" section wrapped around the piano/ballad intro and the hard-rock finale to the song. Despite the fact that Queen prerecorded that portion, it worked extremely well. However, eliminating this song just borders on sac-religious! The only possible reason for editing the songs was probably for no other purpose than to fit the songs on a single CD/album.

On the positive side, this collection does provide other performances from the "Magic" tour that are not included on the "Live at Wembley" performance. However, I would have easily have preferred either a CD with an entire performance from one of the other venues, or a compilation with complete performances from the venues that are on this CD. I consider Queen fans to be some of the most knowledgeable music fans out there and I know they would appreciate full performances.

The liner notes are also poor. Yes there are musician credits, but I would have likes dome sort of write-up on the tour - or at least to know what songs came from what performances ont he tour. Overall, there just isn't much more I can say positive on this collection other than the fact that you do get to hear at least some good Queen music. However, I still recommend purchasing "Live at Wembley" (either the CD and/or the DVD). I would only get this album if you can get it at good price - or if you want to complete your Queen collection.

The songs on Live Magic have been heavilly edited. Much better versions can be found on Live At Wembley the album to get instead of this one.

this is the worst live album Queen ever released, believe me

I love Queen but this album was a total disappointment... cuts, bad performances (Bohemian rhapsody is a disaster), bad recording quality...

buy Live at Wembley, THAT is a GREAT live album, this is just crap

Queen's 1986 Magic Tour was a great show, but after listening to this disc, one wonders whether the visuals were the reason the show was worthwhile. I've listened to this album about three times, the second and third listens were because I felt I didn't give the disc enough of a chance. I'm a huge Queen fan, but listening to this album in its entirety is a challenge. Freddie's vocals are second-rate, and most of the songs are edited (which may actually be a good thing).

Queen were a great live band, as proved by the 1979 Live Killers, but Live Magic is a pretty poor album.

Live Magic is really Good because it is Queen after all, but compared to Live at Wembley and Live Killers, it is really unphenomenal. There's nothing amazing about this cd that you can't find on the others, and the others are 2 cd sets. They're more expenisve but well worth it. I'd buy those other two becuase they are absolutely and ridiculously AMAZING. Especially Live at Wembley. Also, somehting that was very dissapointing - this cd has cut out the middle part of Bohemian Rhapsody. *INTERESTING:* When Queen did Rhapsody on tour, they couldn't really replicate the operatic middle part of Rhapsody on stage, so they would turn off the lights throughout the stadium, and leave the stage, and play the middle part of the song on the speakers as recorded in the studio. Then, the would come back on and play the last part live and it would be AWSOME AND PoweR PACKED. But this cd has cut out the middle part so the song is only 2/3 as great as it is on Killers or Wembely. Forget this one and get WEmbely!

Queen Magic tour was amazing!
If you want a good live CD you should by the Wembley Live.
This cd was recorded in Budapest and the sound is not always good...
Good for collection only.

I enjoyed this a lot. They seemed to have a lot of fun at their concerts and that's great!