Queen + Adam Lambert: Most Popular Act in Rock in Rio 2015

On Friday, Rock in Rio 2015 will kick off its 30th edition of the festival with performances by Onerepublic, The Script, and none other than the legendary band Queen, with Adam Lambert. Queen appears to be garnering most of the attention for their upcoming performance, as according to international ticketing company Ticketbis, 19.4 percent of tickets sold for the event have been for Queen’s stage performance, the most out of any of the seven main acts. And this is no coincidence, as Queen has a very unique and special relationship with this famous festival.

In 1985, the band opened for the first edition of Rock in Rio, and moved Brazil with an outstanding performance that ended in the audience passionately singing along to “Love Of My Life,” marking one of the most iconic moments in the history of the festival. “The audience just took over the song and sang it beautifully to the end,” remembers drummer Roger Taylor in an interview with Globo. Now 30 years later, the band is back, this time with Adam Lambert elegantly filling the boots of Freddie Mercury, who passed away in 1991.

The festival, which will take place over seven days, will also see performances by Katy Perry, Rihanna, Rod Stewart, Elton John, Metallica, System of a Down, and Slipknot. The second most popular act, as registered by Ticketbis, is Rod Stewart with 18.8 percent of total sales for Rock in Rio 2015. Stewart will be sharing the main act slot with Elton John and the two will be supported by Seal and Os Paralamas do Sucesso. This also comes as no surprise, considering both acts have a huge following all over the country, especially Elton John, who has toured Brazil numerous times in the last decade. These iconic acts will hit the Palco Mundo (World Stage) on Sunday, Sept 20.

The third most sought-after acts would be Metallica, supported by Motley Crue, Royal Blood and Gojira with 16.2 percent of sales. These heavy-rock themed performances will take place on Saturday, Sept 19.

In addition to everything announced, the show will be celebrating Rio’s 450th anniversary and will have a stage dedicated only to honoring the history and culture of the city with performances by local stars such as Buchecha, Maria Rita, Roberta Sá, Gabriel O Pensador, Fernanda Abreu and several others. The artists will encompass various musical genres into their performances from samba and chorinho to hip hop, pop, funk, and of course… rock!

1985 & 2015 Brian May at Copacabana Palace Hotel, Rio de Janeiro Brasil

Queen & Adam Lambert Rock in Rio 2015 Reherseal Video Clips

11.09.1982 - Concert: Queen live at the Irvine Meadows, Irvine, California, USA

11.09.1982 - Concert: Queen live at the Irvine Meadows, Irvine, California, USA

Artist	Queen
Date	11.09.1982
Venue	Irvine Meadows
City	Irvine, California
Country	USA
Support band	Billy Squier
Attendance	12000
Video recording	doesn't exist - if you have any footage, please contact me
Line-up	Freddie Mercury (lead vocals, piano, tambourine, acoustic guitar), Brian May (electric guitar, backing vocals, acoustic guitar, piano), Roger Taylor (drums, backing vocals), John Deacon (bass guitar, electric guitar), Fred Mandel (keyboards, piano)
Program
Tour T-shirt
Ticket stub	(the ticket is resized and might look strange - but if you save it to your harddisk, it will look fine :-)

Adam Lambert Keeps Busy In Rio, With Queen And Greeting All Of His Adoring Fans

Adam Lambert was all smiles and happiness as he spotted the cameras outside their hotel. Queen Rock in Rio 2015:

Queen & Adam Lambert Adam Lambert Brazil Press Conference Video Clip

Queen & Adam Lambert ready for Rock in Rio!!! (Photos)

Foo Fighters joined by Queen and Led Zeppelin members to form 'supergroup' for UK return 2015

The Foo Fighters have begun the relaunch of their UK stage tour accompanied by members of Queen and Led Zeppelin.

After a stage injury at a show in Sweden in June in which led singer David Grohl severely injured his leg, the Foo Fighters were forced to cancel four international and UK concerts.

The cancellations included stepping down as headliners for Glastonbury festival on medical advice.

The band told fans at the time that it was "just not physically possible" for them to keep the dates.

A show at the Milton Keynes Bowl on Saturday was the first gig back for the band after surgery to repair Grohl's leg.

Grohl performed a two-and-a-half-hour extended set with his leg in a cast and sitting on a motorised throne, which he said he designed while in hospital as "high as a kite" on painkillers.

The throne, made of guitar necks shoots lights and smoke out of it "like a UFO", Grohl said.

Queen's Roger Taylor and Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones joined the Foo Fighters to play Under Pressure.

"I don't know if ya'll have ever seen a super group? Well, This is a super-duper group," Grohl told the audience, according to the BBC.

"Let me just tell you that the Foo Fighters, right now, are living out our rock'n'roll fantasy."

Today in Music History: 1991, 'These Are The Days Of Our Lives' is released in the USA

'The Show Must Go On': Remembering The King, Freddie Mercury

Over the years, Daltrey inspired respect with his singing. Jim Morrison inspired mystery. Paul McCartney inspired affection. Janis Joplin inspired quest. Mick Jagger inspired lust. Bob Dylan inspired thought. Grace Slick inspired cool. Bruce Springsteen inspired faith.

But Freddie Mercury inspired awe. To see him in full throat—the bazooka-length microphone held with a lover's grip; the deep dark eyes giving him a boy-next-door demeanor (if you lived next door to a coffin in a cellar in Transylvania); the tendon cords popping out the sides of his neck like red springs; the voice hitting notes so high, they came out with ice caps on them—was to witness not just excellent ability, but epic.

Freddie Mercury didn't perform, he feasted. He used a microphone as if he were tasting wine out of it. He didn't sing rock 'n' roll, he decanted it.

His charisma was enormous. Charisma is the difference between a singer you wouldn't cross the street to see and a singer you'd cross an ocean to see.

When Mercury took a stage, it was Gable beating down the door to Scarlett O'Hara's bedroom. When he got off the stage hours later, he left you with a dramatic yet subtle sense of cliffhanger, like the latest installment of a Dickens' novel heading into a foreign 19th Century port.

Mercury was the precursor of stadium rock because it took stadiums to hold him. It got to the point where seeing him sing in anything smaller than stadiums would be like seeing Rembrandt paint fingernails.

As much as anyone who ever grabbed a microphone, Freddie Mercury was a trail blazer, a standard-bearer. He sang every form in the business—rock, pop, blues, country, soul, disco, opera—without disgracing any of them.

Music loves to dance in the voice of a great singer and Mercury had a superlative voice—a voice so classical, you figured it was on touring loan from the Bettman Archive, the Smithsonian, or the Louvre. The guy had to stifle his sneezes because of the stained glass in his throat.

It was as if he didn't really "hit" notes: he would more or less sweep them. His voice could go from teddy bear to bear in a millisecond. For your average singer, the only way a throat could drop that suddenly would be if it fell through a trap door.

Leave it that, as rock 'n' roll landmarks go, the Mercury voice had the range of the Matterhorn and the complexity of the Eiffel Tower.

Singing seemed natural to him. You got the feeling that if he hadn't been singing Wembley for a living, he would have been a singing waiter. Born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar, raised in India, metamorphosed in England, beloved by millions, headed for immortality, he taught himself the arcane principles of singing. He was as obviously as right for music as Pele was for soccer, Monroe for movies, Churchill for politics.

During his twoscore and five years on Earth, Mercury was often called "flamboyant." But his lifestyle would have had to have simmered down quite a bit before he could merely be called "flamboyant." Calling Freddie Mercury "flamboyant" is like calling The Wizard of Oz "nonfictional," or like saying the Johnstown Flood was "wet."

He was, by report, a man with a ripping laughter—a guy who said and did outrageous, eccentric, ostentatious, unpredictable, havocsome things. Mercury came on strong—had a character of many facets, and none of them dripped.

He was one-of-a-kind, but not selfish. As Queen's field general, he didn't use his rock music skill as a self-glorifying pas seul that would lead to better things. Rather, like Jim Morrison before him, he was proud to be part of a rock 'n' roll team.

Not for nothing (and not just for rock 'n' roll senior citizens, either), think back to some rock masterworks and consider what they reveal about their creators.

The Stones sent a red-hot sympathy card. Springsteen hit on running as a birthright. Dylan rolled back a stone and wanted you never to forget how it does feel. John Lennon just imagined. Zep climbed a stairway beyond the stars. Clapton pictured a guy on his knees and pleading.

No surprise, then, that Freddie Mercury rhapsodized bohemianly. 'Tis said he was magnificent to watch but impossible to figure out. No one could get a thermometer on Mercury.

His bearing could go from Machiavelli to Mary Poppins in a finger snap; from Lord of the Flies to Lilies of the Field. He was reputedly as vain as Napoleon, yet as generous as Santa Claus.

In his life's work, he sang songs and performed shows and wrote music and lyrics just how he wanted to. He never sold out. There was more chance of seeing a "For Sale" sign on the Mona Lisa than there was of seeing one on Freddie Mercury.

His lyrics—like his voice and stage show—unveiled stunning vision. The man's written words are about as different from most rock lyrics as broken English is from Queen's English.

To listen carefully to "March of the Black Queen," for example, is to meet someone who knows more secrets than Merlin the Magician. The late singer's writing furnishes one more key facet of his blue-chip talent...

"My God, when I'm dead, are they going to remember me? I don't really think about it... When I'm dead who cares? I don't!" - Freddie Mercury

Happy Birthday Freddie Mercury!!! ♔♔♔