Pingu wrote:I'm sure there's several reasons. For a part of the tour at least, that was the single on release at the time- and any touring band will play their new (on release) material to promote it and bolster sales (cold economics here- remember in the 'olden days' touring was never profitable, but the consequent record sales were).
Another possible reason is that, as Queen began to do bigger venues, especially the South American tour, Freddie became more of a 'stadium frontman' and as time went on was more reluctant to sit at the piano when he could be out front. So by Montreal, say, he's only at the piano for new songs (Save Me and Play the Game, both singles) and the older standbys (Killer Queen, Somebody to Love, Bo Rhap). The piano based songs dwindled dramatically from 81-86.
Finally, they always played new songs when they had a new album out, and ditched loads of them on the next tour. All the Hot Space material (6 songs!) was ditched during or shortly after that tour.. as was "Hard Life" after The Works tour. Like "Don't Stop Me Now", the songs "Dreamers Ball", "Bicycle Race", "If You Can't Beat Them" barely if at all made it out of the "Jazz" era.
I doubt Brian May's opinion was any more influential than anyone else's..
Yeah, I think basically the above sounds likely enough, but I also saw a recent interview with Brian May in which he said that none of the band regarded the song as anything special, and they were quite surprised when it became one of their best known/best loved songs many, many years later (in fact, wasn't it the 'Shaun of the Dead' movie that started that ball rolling?).
I do think that the version of 'Don't Stop Me Now' on Live Killers knocks spots off the studio version. I always find the studio version flat by comparison.
