Freddie Mercury on stage at Wembley Stadium, London, on July 12, 1986 for the Magic Tour. This tour was the last time Queen played with Freddie, who decided to cancel the tour at the height of the band’s success. By the way, a year earlier, Live Aid, the charity for Africa, was held at the same location. Queen was by far the highlight of all the artists and bands playing that day. Shortly after the release of the album “A Kind of Magic” the “Magic Tour” followed.
Years later and after Freddie’s death, the band released a sort of tribute to him in 1992 with “Live at Wembley”, which was released as an album/CD (The album cover used the same image but was in color. Since the original recording was in black and white, an artist colored it by hand.)
All in all, Freddie at Wembley Stadium is one of the ten most famous iconic R’n’R shots of all time.
“I started working with Queen towards the end of 1976 and had more fun with those guys than any band I’d ever been with before. I also loved photographing them. This photo is one of the first pictures I took on a trip with Queen in 1977. It was somewhere on the East Coast and you can’t go wrong photographing Freddie Mercury.
He was so great to photograph and so talented. I was allowed to go wherever I wanted and do anything. It was heaven on earth and some of the best photos I have ever taken in my life. The whole thing at the beginning of a concert, probably within the first 10 seconds of the show” NEAL
“I was sitting next to Jimmy talking to someone else; I turned around to say something to Jimmy and he was in mid-swig. I happened to have a Nikon with a 24 mm lens in my hand and shot this one frame. Sometimes you just get lucky” NEAL
Two of the most extraordinary vocalists of the 20th Century, Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury, stand together at a gathering in Los Angeles in 1980. The pair recorded several duets in the following years which were released later due to difficulties they and their respective management teams had working together.
Top row, left to right : Aeroflot plane on Billy Joel USSR tour 1987 Freddie Mercury and Paul Prenter, USA , date unknowm Bruce Springsteen, Born in the USA tour, UK leg, 1985 John Entwhistle. The Who USA tour 1982 Led Zeppelin’s Caesars Chariot tour plane, USA 1977
Second row down, left to right: Paul Rodgers, Bad Company tour plane USA 1979 Cameron Crowe and Richard Cole, on the Starship, Led Zeppelin USA tour 1975 Billy Joel in Moscow Airport, 1987 Jimmy Page on Helicopter, Knebworth, UK, 1979 Pearl Jam on tour, Seattle , 1993 Ringo Starr and wife Barbara Bach, USA date unknown
Third row down, left to right: John Deacon and child, Date unknown, David Crosby with private plane, near Los Angeles, date unknown Pete Townshend, USA 1982 Roger Taylor, USA date unknown Tommy Lee, Motley Crue USA tour, date unknown Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, aboard the Starship, USA 1975
Fourth Row down, left to right: Roger Daltrey, USA, 1982, Ann Wilson, Heart USA tour, date unknown Jon Bon Jovi, Moab, Utah video shoot, date unknown Queen, in Burbank , date unknown John Bonham, aboard the Starship, USA 1975
Bottom row, left to right: Nikki Sixx and wife Brandi Brandt, USA date unknown Julio Iglesias, Miami, date unknown Rick Wakeman, USA, date unknown Pete Townshend, USA 1982 Neil Schon, Journey USA tour, date unknown Foreigner’s tour plane, USA date unknown
“About once a year, I photographed the Jackson Five on their famous family compound in Encino, California, which is located in the San Fernando Valley, a kind of suburb of Los Angeles. I used to photograph the Jackson Five for a youth magazine, and it was always an experience like no other because these kids were like robots. You smile when there’s a camera in front of you. They would do pretty much anything that was asked of them, as long as there was a camera in front of them. And first you take individual shots of Tito, Jermaine or Michael, and after you’re done with everyone and then everyone comes together, you take the big group shots, and that’s it. It was like a strange photo conveyor belt. Anyway, I was in the process of taking some solo shots of Michael, and I changed the film and put a new role in the camera. And I happen to experience a moment where he just stood aside before I approached him to make more solo recordings and he was lost in his own little world.
And for me, this photo says I’m the loneliest kid in the world, and I especially love the John Lennon-like hat and boots he wears. He, Michael Jackson, was always a bit of a strange boy and he always seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. I remember that day” – NEAL
“Madonna undertook a major world tour in 1990 and these recordings were filmed at one of the first shows in Japan. I remember her manager coming up to me and saying that you’re going to have a lot of fun filming this show. And she was right. You couldn’t go wrong with photographing Madonna. And it was so theatrical, the lighting was so great, and the staging was so great that it was like a dream job. These photos were actually both taken from the platform where their tower cameras were positioned, the cameraman was not happy that he had to share the platform with me.” – NEAL
“In 1973 Zeppelin played an outdoor gig – in daylight, no less – in San Francisco. There were a dozen white doves in two cages sitting behind the amps that were going to be released into the sky to fly away at the end of “Stairway to Heaven”.
I was shooting from Jonesy’s side of the stage when I noticed that one particular dove apparently didn’t get the memo. The bird flew low and slow over the crowd and right back to the stage. Robert saw him, stuck his hand out, and the bird landed right on it.
Robert may have looked like this sort of thing happened every day, but I wouldn’t want to try to calculate the odds on that one” Neal
“Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac stands in the ocean breeze with her trademark flowy dress sleeves rippling dramatically over her head.
This photo was taken on the roof of Stevie’s condo in Venice Beach, CA during a shoot for People Magazine.
“She was right at the edge of the roof, and it got so windy and dangerous I became very concerned she would fly right over the side of the building”
About this shoot Neal has said, “This was the first real one-on-one shoot that we did together.
The day was absolutely intoxicating, and the next afternoon a bouquet of flowers arrived at my house with a note thanking me for a “magical shoot.”
She’s a friend for life and one of the most creative people I’ve ever met.” NEAL
“This photo of Freddie was taken while he was doing his own makeup backstage. Part of my job when I’m shooting a tour and spending time with bands like this is to capture all kinds of moments.
The obvious moments on stage when someone looks heroic, or some amazing performance shots. And then the quieter recordings and the backstage shots and the atmosphere, what happens before the band goes on stage or what happens after they come off stage.
This is the perfect example of one of those moments where Freddie does his own makeup in his dressing room. I don’t think he even realized I was there. But that didn’t matter, because I was able to be kind of invisible, and there’s a certain amount of trust involved when you’re out with someone like him” NEAL
“In 1977, at the beginning of the American leg of the Led Zeppelin tour, the band had some ground lights that resembled the landing lights of airplanes that you have on the wings of a 747 during landing. They were only turned on at the very end of the show for half a minute or so.
The image of Jimmy with his half-lit face is a rare photo with these lights, because after about two shows they were abolished. Someone in the band thought it was too bright. They give his face a really sinister effect. It’s between songs, he’s looking into the crowd and the spotlights give the image a quality that other photos of him don’t have” NEAL
“I worked for Led Zeppelin in 1977 and it was pretty much the best job a music photographer could ever have. Especially because I worked for the band, because they were notorious for being very reserved and withdrawn, didn’t want anyone around them they didn’t know or trust, and I was lucky enough to be invited.
One evening on the plane, one of the employees of the record label came by and mentioned that Jimmy had to take a photo for his passport because he and Robert were flying to Egypt after the last American date. So I took it to the back of the plane, put it against the wall and took three pictures, the flash reflecting off the ceiling. And this is the passport photo that he ended up using, not only for his passport, but also for the cover of his book published a few years ago, a photo-autobiography of his life” NEAL
“I was at Oakland Stadium, a baseball stadium where Bill Graham used to put on rock shows in the ’70s. Peter Frampton played with Fleetwood Mac.
Behind the amps, I happened to notice Carlos Santana, who was sitting there, tuning his guitar, so to speak. All alone. I took a few pictures of him. He just sat there, and I really loved the light there that day, I had a very wide lens and literally just stopped for a shot of three pictures and moved on.
It was one of those happy coincidences that Carlos and I happened to be sitting there. . Back then, they didn’t have to lock these people in the backstage area until it was time for them to get going….” NEAL
“The photo of Elton John was taken at the Forum in Los Angeles, so to speak, at the height of the crazy outfit period that he went through with every tour and every show, with the costumes, the hats, the glasses, etc. getting more and more outlandish. And it was so much fun to take pictures because… You never knew what would come of it.
On this particular evening, I was standing in front of his dressing room when he walked out. Down the hall, I was getting ready to go on stage, and I had my camera on my shoulder near my hip, literally taking a picture without looking through the viewfinder. I just didn’t know if it was going to be in focus or something. I just did it very secretly. And it turned out really great because I think it shows a lot of the loneliness that he talked about in later years. He talked about how he compensated for the things that were going on in his life. And he tried to hide everything by drawing attention to costumes and everything else. At least in contrast to what he was going through emotionally.
I love this photo. It just says a lot about what was going on inside him. For me, this photo really writes volumes on many levels about the life he was leading at the time.” – NEAL
NEAL PRESTON:
“Shooting live music is something few
photographers do really well. I just
discovered one day I was good at this
because it felt natural to me. You can’t
teach it, you can’t learn it, you just do
it. The recipe is as follows: one part
photography, one part love of music,
one part a love of theatre and theatrical
lighting, one part hero worship, one
part timing and 95 parts instinct.”
