Queen live at The Forum in Inglewood, CA, USA - March 3, 1977
(x)
The second night in LA wasn’t originally on the itinerary, but added due to ticket demand. Even though Mercury isn’t in his best voice on this tour as a whole, tonight he puts in a gutsy performance, and the rest of the band are rock solid throughout. Picking out individual highlights of this show is a fruitless task, as every song is performed with a surgeon’s precision. Queen are in their rhythm here, and the significance of headlining two nights at The Forum is surely not lost on them. The Jailhouse Rock medley is particularly riveting, and even a bit loose by their standards. The tempo of Sweet Lady was probably never faster than it is here, but it makes for an exciting listen. Having named their last two albums after Marx Brothers films, earlier in the day Queen were invited to Groucho Marx’s house for tea. After he sang them a “very strange comedy song” as Brian put it in a 1977 Australian radio interview. He adds how Groucho’s accompanist asked them to sing for him, saying ‘OK, now you sing a song, you’re supposed to be singers!’ “We sang '39. We make up kind of an excuse, 'oh, we can’t do it with a piano, we have to do it with a guitar’, and he says, 'oh, it’s alright, we’ve got a guitar.’ So we had to!” The band gave him a tour jacket and a gold disc in gratitude for his inspiration. Good thing they visited him on this tour, as he passed away a few months later. The set of show photos were taken by Jim R.
