Thirty years ago, the surviving members of Queen bid farewell to frontman Freddie Mercury with an all-star tribute concert at Wembley Stadium. That should have been the band’s final encore, but they later pulled off one of the most sensational comebacks in pop history, enlisting new singer Adam Lambert and extending the spirit of that memorial into a never-ending greatest hits spectacular mounted on an increasingly grandiose scale.
On June 5, a day after opening the platinum jubilations at Buckingham Palace, these reconfigured rock veterans played the first in a phenomenal 10-night run of sold-out shows at the O2, a feat reminiscent of their stadium-filling 1980s peak.
