Queen + Adam Lambert bring rock rhapsody to Little Caesars Arena in sold-out tour stop
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The Queen classics got a reverent and rousing workout Tuesday night in a nearly 2½-hour nostalgic adventure at a sold-out Little Caesars Arena.
Detroit was the third stop on the latest North American leg of the Rhapsody Tour, the long-running outing from the ensemble billed as Queen + Adam Lambert since 2012, when the “American Idol” alum was enlisted for the front man role made iconic by the late Freddie Mercury.
With Queen veterans Brian May (guitar) and Roger Taylor (drums) as the night’s sentimental bedrock, the well-drilled show served up a mix of emotional weight and rock sizzle.
May’s tunneling leads and flashy breaks were highlights of songs such as “I Want It All,” “Fat Bottomed Girls” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” punctuated by a cosmic solo delivered late in the concert from a platform high overhead. Earlier, a hush fell over the arena and the cell phone lights came out as he performed a poignant acoustic rendition of “Love of My Life” alone.
May, 76, noted that this latest tour leg will keep him away from family back in England for six weeks.
“I don’t need money. I don’t need fame. Why do I do this?” he said onstage, gesturing to the packed arena. “To see faces like this.”
It was a thematically cohesive show, arranged in a series of acts, each featuring at least one of Queen’s monster hits: “Another One Bites the Dust,” “Somebody to Love,” “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” “Under Pressure,” “We Will Rock You,” “We Are the Champions” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which took its rightful climactic place ahead of the encore. 1984’s “Radio Ga Ga” was a bookend piece, helping to start the evening and close it.
Queen’s latest career chapter got a big boost from the 2018 smash biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and that evidence seemed clear Tuesday across LCA, where a multigenerational crowd — including plenty of teens gustily singing along all night — filled the seats.
The sonic grandeur was accompanied by production frills: ever-shifting video panels, splendorous lighting displays, bits of pyro and even the occasional glimpse of Mercury onscreen.
Onstage, Lambert doesn't so much try to channel Mercury's spirit as tap it for inspiration, interpreting the vintage songs without going for outright mimicry. That’s a wisely chosen strategy, given the late Queen co-founder's prodigious and distinctive talents.
Lambert possesses his own set of wide-ranging vocal chops and theatrical instincts, a combination that served him well Tuesday on emotive numbers such as “A Kind of Magic,” “Don’t Stop Me Now” and “Who Wants to Live Forever.” He was the master of ceremonies for the musical drama of “The Show Must Go On” and a peacocking presence on “Killer Queen,” a set piece begun with prima donna melodramatics at a dressing-room mirror.
At 41, the Indianapolis-born singer is long removed from his introduction to the world in 2009, when he landed as runner-up on the eighth season of “Idol.” From the moment he hit the LCA stage in a silver spaceman outfit, wraparound sunglasses and cape — the first of several extravagant outfits Tuesday night — he looked all the part of a seasoned vet.
“You want to know something crazy? I’ve been doing this 10 years with them,” Lambert told the crowd, adding that every time the band takes the stage, “we have Freddie in our hearts.”
Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Queen + Adam Lambert bring rock rhapsody to sold-out LCA
