QUEEN STEREOS

Early Freddie/Queen stereos by Brian May

These stereo photographs were taken with a beam-splitter attached to my old Pentax ES II. They have never been publicly available to be viewed in stereo until now ... unless you were able to free-view the prints in the Freddie Photo Exhibition in the Dominion theatre, London. The images overlap slightly, because of the nature of the splitter, at large apertures.

I will be scanning and adding some more of these early stereos when the tour is over. Watch this space !! And ... Guys of the Press, etc, these pictures are my copyright. Reproduce them by all means, but give us a decent credit, please ! OK ?



Cheers



Bri

In this picture of Freddie in the Cadillac Limo (in New York, I think) you can just see a ghost of John Deacon's face, captured in the 'no man's land between the frames. It's amazing how real Freddie's face looks - the magic of Stereo is almost frightening in the case of portraits. And Freddie's glass and my own give a spectacular depth effect in 3-D.

This is Freddie playing about with an (even then!) ancient hair-dryer. This was not the kind we would normally use, but it was left lying around in a changing room we were using ... so Freddie managed to make it suck instead of blow ! As you can see, it really does suck ! (Party on, Wayne)

This one shows Freddie playing about in a different way, again back-stage, demonstrating his athletic skills on a coat rail ... try turning it upside down !

Finally, this shows Freddie as many of us like to remember him best ... in full flight on stage. I don't know who I had lent my camera to - possibly our friend Neil Preston ... but it might also have been our record company Promo guy at the time, Ric Aliberte. Freddie is wearing the now legendary first Zandra Rhodes "winged" outfit, in white satin, with trousers to match. These were very early days, but Freddie's trade-mark 'sawn off' microphone stand was already in place. Of course it's well before the days of radio mikes, so the lead is there, attached to what I think is Freddie's then-favourite Shure Unisphere mike. Note also Roger's bass drum skin ... with the original Queen crest, silk-screened on to its front skin.

Our 'Queen Historic' page seems to be gathering momentum. The next two stereo photos are by Dany Keutgen and were taken in Cologne on the last Queen tour in 1986. They are re-photographed from ancient commercial prints, but the quality is still quite nice. Nice enough to enjoy this glimpse into our youth ! Thank you Dany. Cheers - Brian.

and from stereo guru David Burder ...

Our great friend David recently rediscovered these great 'classic Queen' stereos from 1984. We had to share !

Mr John Deacon in blue mood ...



A young Bri, with a young Red Special ... wish I could remember how I got those trousers on ....

Before the days of good radio links, that curly lead was my life-line.



Freddie with touring piano equipped with Helpinstill pickup - it's box of adjusting controls is seen at left, secured with gaffer-tape.



Giving them The Works !



A fabulous shot of Freddie in full flight - a picture surely worth two thousand words.



And here, just to throw a spanner in the works, is the same stereo, but in a cross-eyed version. To most of us, this is a bit of shock ... it looks jumbled.

BUT ... I expect there are some of you folks who have been looking at these stereo pictures, free-viewing them, and finding them interesting, but not quite as fabulous as we have been building them up to be. And suddenly THIS one, above, just jumped into life, and is the best stereo you ever saw ... Yes ? !!!

Well, the reason is that you are using the technique of crossing the eyes in your free-viewing , rather than relaxing the convergence, and viewing in a parallel way. If this is the case, we hope to be catering more for your needs when we can get around to it ... but in the meantime, please visit our friend Maki's site where you will find many of the stereos we feature, in a cross-eyed format. I personally find it enjoyable to free-view either way ... you might also like to waste your time practising free-viewing BOTH these pictures in a way which gives you true 3-D effect in both cases. It's good eye exercise ... No, Really !

Cheers !

Dr. Bri