Queen have released the sixth episode of their 50-week YouTube series Queen: The Greatest Live which celebrates their live performances of ‘Now I’m Here’.
The song, taken from Queen’s 1974 album ‘Sheer Heart Attack’, is their most-played song live and has become their traditional set opener.
Episode 6 of the YouTube series showcases four live performances of ‘Now I’m Here’ – two classic clips with Freddie Mercury from the London Rainbow ’74 and London Hammersmith ’75 plus Queen and Adam Lambert performances from Summer Sonic, Tokyo in 2014 and most recently, from the band’s Rhapsody Over London show 2022.
“We released it after ‘Killer Queen’. And it’s just a total contrast. It was just to show people we can still do rock ‘n’ roll, we haven’t forgotten our rock ‘n’ roll roots. I enjoyed doing that on stage,” Mercury told Record Mirror at the time [per a press release].
Check out the episode below:
Announced last month, Queen: The Greatest Live is the sequel to their previous YouTube series Queen: The Greatest, which was announced in March 2021 and told the band’s story from their earliest shows to their return with Adam Lambert. The new series promises “rare archive live footage, contemporary performances and behind-the-scenes interviews from across Queen’s five decades.”
The series was put together by longtime band associate Simon Lupton, who produced Queen: The Greatest and also worked on the documentaries Queen: Rock the World, Queen: Behind the Rhapsody, Queen: Days of Our Lives, Queen on Fire: Live at the Bowl and Queen Live at Wembley ’86.
So far, episodes of the series have focused on the band’s rehearsal process and how they open their shows.
Elsewhere, Brian May recently revealed that the band used to get “irritated” by crowds singing every line to their songs during their earliest days as a band.
Speaking to Total Guitar magazine, May said initially, they just wanted fans to listen to the lyrics they’d spent hours coming up with.“Because we thought: ‘People, just listen. We’re working really hard, so bloody well listen!’ But they were unstoppable.”