Queen’s YouTube series ‘The Greatest’ continued on Friday with an episode dedicated to their 1974 earlier tours, featuring ‘Queen in Finland.’
Launching the archival series to celebrate the bands 50th anniversary, Queen will be releasing a short episode every Friday for 50 weeks. The latest episode, ‘Queen in Finland,’ showcases the band’s 1974 performance in Helsinki, which would turn out to be their only performance there with Freddie Mercury.
Writing on Instagram about the air of the fourth episode in their YouTube series, Queen said: “Queen The Greatest: 1974 Early Tours – Queen In Finland. As Queen’s fan base started to grow outside the UK, so did the number of foreign cities featuring on the tour schedule. Each presented an exciting new experience for the band, and opportunity to connect with new fans from different countries, which is exactly what happened in November 1974 for one such 12 year old fan who had an extraordinary encounter with Freddie, Roger, Brian and John.”
Queen had released three albums and also been extremely successful in the singles charts by 1973. This episode details their success in 1973 which led them to push for international stardom, ultimately spurring their European ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ tour in 1974.
Featured in the video is an audio clip of a twelve-year-old boy, Juha Kakkuri, who jostled with eager journalists at Queen’s Helsinki press conference to get an autograph. Kakkuri, now 59, then appears on screen to speak about his experience with the acclaimed band and what it meant to him. He said: “The interesting thing is that the first band member I interviewed was Freddie. I mean I didn’t know he was the lead singer, he could have been the bass player or the drummer. But I happened to interview Freddie first and during my career in Radio I’ve met a lot of big stars. Robbie Williams. Rolling Stones. People like that. But still I think that nothing can top the experience that the first person you have interviewed, at the age of 12, is Freddie Mercury.”
The series starts with an episode revisiting their early hit song ‘Keep Yourself Alive,’ it then goes on to showcase their Landmark Gig at the Rainbow in Episode two. The third episode details the single that bought Queen their first significant chart success, ‘Killer Queen.’ The track became one of the band’s most notable compositions, ultimately spanning the decades, with the pop band 5SOS releasing their own rendition back in 2018.
Earlier this week, Queen announced that they would be releasing a five-track EP with Adam Lambert on Black 12 inch vinyl as part of Record Store Day 2021. The Vinyl is set to be released on 1 July 2021.
You can watch ‘Queen in Finland,’ and the rest of ‘The Greatest’ series now on YouTube.
