QUEEN
L.A. photographer Neal Preston accompanied Queen for a "gruelling" tour of South America this year, joining Freddie Mercury and company for massive stadium tours of Brazil and Argentina, among other places. "They're great guys," Preston says of the band, "I've been working with them for a long time, and they're good to me.
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QUEEN
IN SOUTH AMERICA On The Road Or In The Jungle?
L.A. photographer Neal Preston accompanied Queen for a "gruelling" tour of South America this year, joining Freddie Mercury and company for massive stadium tours of Brazil and Argentina, among other places. "They're great guys," Preston says of the band, "I've been working with them for a long time, and they're good to me. And I enjoy the music—it's really state of the art for that kind of rock show."
Preston mentions he had a very few problems "other than the obvious language barriers," and thus traveled with a translator. Any difficulties elsewhere?
"One of the tour managers was doing advance work for the tour and got stopped by police with the backstage passes. They confiscated a lot of passes because they were considered pornographic.
"The tour was going to be of both South America and Japan, and so the passes had an illustration of a South American girl naked—with bananas on her head like Carmen Miranda—and a Japanese girl, hugging each other. Anyway, someone in Brazil or Argentina considered them pornographic, and put the guy in jail for a couple of hours."
Any other complaints?
"Yeah, " opines Preston, "the worst thing about being down there was that I missed the Dodqers' sprina training"...
