Queen and Adam Lambert kicked off their three-week Las Vegas residency on Saturday (September 1) with a setlist packed with classics from throughout the band’s career, and a cover of Elvis Presley.
Fan footage of the band’s first set of their 10-date residency included their version of Presley’s 1956 classic ‘Heartbreak Hotel’.
Titled ‘Crown Jewels’, the show opened appropriately enough with an image of an imposing metal vault bearing Queen’s insignia, torn open by the giant robot from Queen’s iconic ‘News of the World’ album cover and lifted up to reveal the band who launched their way into a fast version of ‘We Will Rock You’.
For the encore, meanwhile, Queen were introduced by a projection of their original frontman Freddie Mercury’s famous vocal improvisation at Wembley Stadium in 1986, before the traditional, slower version of ‘We Will Rock You’ and an anthemic ‘We Are The Champions’.
Before the shows, May said that Freddie Mercury would “love and hate” Queen’s current singer Adam Lambert.
“Adam has a real gift from God,” May told Yahoo. “It’s a voice in a billion, nobody has that range, nobody that I’ve ever worked with, not just the range but the quality throughout the range. I’ve seen Adam develop just like I watched Freddie develop.”
Lambert became the new frontman of Queen in 2011, and May waxed lyrical about how much he enjoyed playing live with the band’s new singer.
Earlier this year, Lambert paid his own tribute to Mercury, speaking of the difficulty of discussing sexuality in ‘a different time’.
(NME)