Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Legends never fade away, they are just forever always in our sight, never releasing or letting go of the magnetic hold they have over our hearts or our souls.
Even when the studio albums finally cease being recorded, when the time comes for them to call it a day, when even the upsetting reality of Time’s passing shadows breaks the band apart due to a member leaves for the next adventure, there is always the opportunity for the fan to delve into the new release thanks to old gigs having been recorded from the radio or surreptitiously by the lone wolf at gigs who took advantage of weak security and then became the hero of the hour when those tapes became legitimate and sacred.
Such is with a band such as Queen. Freddie Mercury has long since passed, but his aura will always, as the song goes, be one that the show must go on, and with two rereleases due out in the next few months, Live At Wembley, and Budapest, the chance to sit and relive the moment over the course of three specially recorded shows for radio, one from Britain, another from a venue which caused much controversy at the time, and finally an FM broadcast from Mannheim which turned out to be part of the last ever tour with the foursome together, is not only intense, physically and emotionally, but unmistakably Queen at their scintillating best.
The three-disc set captures the zeitgeist, for better of worse, of three distinctive periods of the band’s career. The flourishing and bombastic beginning when the world was at their command, where the four musicians could be heard to pushing artistic boundaries, the much debated and heated politically contentious set for a live audience at Sun City in ’84 which broke many an embargo at the time, but which was also rich in texture and leant heavily into The Works album that had been released that same year, and a live finale of sorts, a recognition now that what we heard was the band giving their all to give their music a send off in a live setting that would forever be etched into the memory of those who understood the turn around in affection since their dominance at Live Aid the year before.
From which ever period, what ever the song, the three sets, all over 75 minutes in length each is an abundance of riches, of a band proving their inescapable worth across time. Threefold Identity is one that is beauty personified in the music on offer, and whilst it must be maintained that the Sun City gigs were inadvisable, reckless, almost career ending, the music framed is exactly that, remembering that the zeitgeist can be problematic and yet profound in equal measure.
A treasure trove of rarities and live obscurities tied up in the fabric of the country and their worldwide fan base; Threefold Identity is a beast of a presentation pack.
Ian D. Hall