July 1986 – Queen spend five days in Budapest, Hungary 🇭🇺 They travel around the country while the cameras and fans follow them
The band will perform one of the largest concerts ever staged at the Népstadion (“People’s Stadium”) and the first Western Rock Concert behind the then Iron Curtain. It was of such significance to the Hungarian authorities and film industry that a group of the country’s top film cameramen and technicians were brought together to film it for posterity.
“Queen arrived with hydrofoil from Vienna in a very good mood. Because of the film everybody needed to be appeared, it never was hard in the case of three members.
The drummer, Roger Taylor adores auto races, they took him to Hungaroring for go karting. Brian May did hot air ballooning. Freddie Mercury went shopping to buy antiques at Szentendre. He visited Vásárcsarnok as well, but he wisely wore a baseball cap and sunglasses, so no-one recognized him.
John Deacon the bassplayer was a though nut. They could got him hardly to take a walk in front of the hotel in the Danube promenade at least. At the end, it turned out to be the cutest scene, because a british girl recognized him and they talked a bit.
John is a father of six, he keeps himself away of public by now, but then he also had a great time in the Hungarian capital.
There’s also an eyewitness, Szilvási Tamás who worked in the Intercontinental then, and he was chosen to serve the hot and cold buffet to the band who celebrated Roger’s birthday.
While Roger was eating the porterhouse steak with green pepper sauce one after another, Freddie was busy with the tape recorder, John invited Tamás out to the balcony of the presidential suite, and asked him to show where do we Hungarians keep the moon, because he can’t see it. Or there isn’t even moon in this big communist scandal? He laughed a lot, and he kindly gave autographs with the rest of the band with pleasure, onto everything the staff put in front of them.
The overall opinion was that they were kind, happy and grateful for everything. And absolute professionals. Freddie spent hours in Népstadion the day before the show to set the lights, to be perfect. He did the same with the audio of the final film material.”
Credit: Hulej Emese via Nők lapja Periodical
(Translated)
