Nowhere was this sense of loss more heartrendingly aroused than in Brian May's solo performance of "Too Much Love Will Kill You."
Sitting at keyboards, his voice seeming to weep, his eyes blinking away tears, the gentle guitar giant gave a memorable, soul-stirring performance.
Every inch of him seemed to feel both the beauty and the pain of what he was doing. Every time his eyes swept the stadium, they were moist. He was so misty-eyed by song's end, rollicking Wembley must have looked to him like a wobbly Noah's Ark.
As one Queen tune after another swelled the indigo English air, the clear day turned into a night of tangled feelings.
For fans who measure time by rock 'n' roll memories in general, and Queen music in particular, it was like looking at a tree you had planted 20 years ago, and realizing the tree house you had built in it was gone.
Yet, in the meanwhile, it was a charm to watch Paul Young do "Radio Ga Ga" and tap the audience like he was tapping a keg of beer; Lisa Stansfield, in hairnet and curlers and vacuum cleaner, camping it up in "I Want to Break Free"; Annie Lennox, looking like an eye-shadowed rabbit that had put all her Easter eggs in one basket, having a ball with David Bowie doing "Under Pressure"; George Michael and Lisa Stansfield leaning toward each other on "These Are the Days of Our Lives," as if they were Hansel and Gretel inspecting the oven; Ian Hunter, a man of self-containment, leading all the not-so-young dudes on "All the Young Dudes."
The performance highlight of the day most surely belonged to Robert Plant. A sterling talent commensurate with the tribute's cynosure, Plant was absolutely brilliant as he sang "Innuendo," broke into "Kashmir," then finished "Innuendo."
Plant evoked a velvety blue presence under the crisp London evening that was twinkling overhead. He was a shimmering sapphire in a stadium-sized white ring.
With the glinting microphone as his lamp, he played Aladdin and sent forth a rock 'n' roll genie of entrancing power. His voice prowled the upper floors of "Innuendo" and "Kashmir" like a cat burglar.
Then he sang "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and his stage persona gripped and galvanized the crowd in a manner that kindled memories of the Mercury fire.
Plant closed his set by singing the Led Zeppelin song, "Thank You." With May standing next to him during the tune, it looked like New York's Twin Towers had been hijacked across the Atlantic and snow-capped with brown ringlets.
As the two rock veterans joined in the majestic song of thanks, a fresh breeze rolled through the cavernous stadium and fingered their heartbreaker curly hair.
The crowd swayed in time to the tune and, as Plant wrapped up, sent its applause rolling toward the stage in bursts of rock 'n' rolling thunder.
For the socko three-handkerchief finale, it was all hands on deck for the last sail of the good ship Queen. The pantheon of performers melted into a single chorus line to back up Liza Minnelli—a princess of the Queen court because Freddie Mercury had often cited her as an influence.
“There’s one person Freddie would’ve been proud to have stand in his footsteps,” said Brian May as he introduced Minnelli.
Just about the entire cast joined arm-in-arm to give the fallen star their final accolade. It was to be a rendition of "We Are the Champions," a sort of "My Way" the rock 'n' roll way.
With Minnelli in Mercury's spot, she milked the song for all it was worth: Dairy Queen. The arm-linked rank of superstars rocked in cadenced unison, smiling wide to soften the hard fact of farewell, trying not to see Mercury's footsteps fading up into a sky that had turned into a giant pane of smoked glass.
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But there they went. As the song floated upward, so did the Mercury footsteps.
Not one of the 19 all-access TV cameras picked it up, nor did the guy at Mount Palomar's telescope, but there went Freddie Mercury—a sawed-off microphone in his hand, voice in high register, his eyes full of fantastical devilment, winking over his shoulder.
There he went, fading away from the splendid lantern of a stadium to join the choir of Presley and Morrison and Joplin and the rest.
Because of Queen's munificent gesture of this concert, millions of people were finally ready to let him go.
I'm beginning to think that while passion is rock 'n' roll's visible poetry, compassion is its invisible virtue.
As I looked from the sky back to the stage, I focalized on the three bone-tired, soul-tired Queen musicians, smiling through their pain—professionals to the very end.
I thought about how much easier it would have been for them to come to grips with their bandmate's death privately, quietly, simply.
But instead they chose to give a billion people the chance to share their grief. With their colleagues and fans, Queen brought a friend home, and wished him good night.
In the process, they made the trip an awareness-raising, eye-opening experience that might give many the gift of life. Even the timing of the concert bespoke thoughtfulness: the Easter Season, a period of hope after a time of hardship.
Can you imagine how much Freddie Mercury would have loved all this?
At a show in his honor, David Bowie said "The Our Father"; Axl Rose and Elton John did a duet; Liza Minnelli sang her heart out; and Elizabeth Taylor got the longest speaking part.
My guess is that what he would have loved even more was seeing his band welcomed into rock's front ranks, which was where it belonged all along.
For as much as a concert, the night was a coronation: Queen now finally seen as worldwide champions, publicly entering the realm of rock royalty.
With all the remarkable ramifications of this wondrous day in olde England, the one that struck me most profoundly was the genuine affection that Brian May and Roger Taylor and John Deacon had for Freddie Mercury.
By night's end, their hurt eyes were mute yet glorious testimony that the greatest gift they ever had in their lives was working with each other in a band called Queen.
It wasn't just a singer or a musician or an entertainer or a star or a legend that they were mourning. No, at heart, the three men of Queen were sending a special message to the world about the winged-voiced messenger named Mercury.
And the message was that—come closer—Freddie Farrokh Bulsara Mercury had something bigger and better than sold-out stadiums and incredible talent and gold records: true and lasting friends.
Au revoir, Freddie. Ciao. Aloha. Godspeed. Cheers. So long.
And, as that glimmering Led Zeppelin vocalist so exquisitely sang it, "Thank You."
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CD: Queen, A Night at the Opera. Hollywood Records, 1991.
Book: Jacky Gunn and Jim Jenkins, Queen: As It Began. Hyperion, 1994.
Websites:http://www.queenzone.com, http://www.brianmay.com, http:www.queenconcert.com
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