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Tuesday, September 6, 2011

YouTube and Google help honor Queen's Freddie Mercury

Besides Buddy Holly, people are also celebrating another famous and fondly remembered singer's birthday this week.

Yesterday, the late Freddie Mercury of Queen would have been 65. To honor him, Queen is streaming their historic 1986 concert Queen Live At Wembley Stadium on YouTube until 9 p.m. PST. 

This is the first time in Queen has allowed an online stream of this watershed moment in the band’s career.

The concert captures the group’s historic July 1986 two night performance at London’s Wembley Stadium, where they gave an electrifying performance to 150,000 fans.

The footage features stunning live renditions of many of Queen’s classic songs, including “We Will Rock You,” “We Are The Champions” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.” One year after their triumphant appearance at Live Aid, Queen (vocalist Mercury, guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and bassist John Deacon) returned to Wembley for two consecutive sold-out concerts. Queen Live At Wembley Stadium documents the second night, July 12, 1986.

In related news, Google posted a rare tribute to Freddie Mercury with a very special Google doodle on its homepage today. The video clip captures the dynamism and diversity of Mercury’s career through an animation that’s as colorful and playful as his stage performances. 

Created by Google’s in-house team of illustrators, animators, and engineers, the doodle is available for users  on Google.com in the U.S. as a belated “Happy Birthday” to Freddie since his actual birthday fell on Labor Day.
Google runs special doodles on its homepage as a celebration of holidays, anniversaries and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists. The worldwide tribute from Google is something that doesn’t happen very often. Google has previously run video doodles for other legendary entertainers including John Lennon and Charlie Chaplin.

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