Despite the lashing rain that day, the then teenager from Ballyfin, Co Laois was fired up with excitement by the mesmerising performance of frontman Freddie Mercury and Queen’s iconic guitarist Brian May in particular.
Fitzpatrick, now 58, would go on to become a pioneer of neuro-orthopaedic surgery for dogs and cats and achieve fame through his Channel 4 show, The Supervet.
And in recent years he’s become something of a rock star himself having learned to play guitar and launched his own band with the support of… Queen legend Brian May.
Supervet Noel Fitzpatrick with Queen guitarist Brian May and Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath
It’s a story you couldn’t make up. “It really was Freddie Mercury and Queen at Slane Castle in ‘86 that inspired me because I was just blown away that day,” Noel says.
“That was my first ever rock concert and this guy in a tracksuit and a cloak came out with a crown on his head in a big puff of smoke and with a man with big hair behind him and my world exploded.”
Going back, Fitzpatrick remembers being hugely passionate about music as a child. “I found an old Sony radio on a scrap heap in Mountmellick and I put an aerial into it using a coat hanger and at that time, I was about 10 or 11, I had never heard rock music,” he recalls.
“I tuned in by chance to Radio Luxembourg and can you believe the first rock song I ever heard was Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven.
“Can you imagine that for a little 10-year-old boy in Ballyfin, suddenly hearing that there was this world outside. Then Black Sabbath followed, and then Queen and Bowie and so on.”
He remembers at the time pretending to be a rocker on the family farm with a makeshift guitar that involved six lengths of twine as strings wrapped around a sack of 10-10-20 fertiliser.
Life would eventually take him into the veterinary world as a career and he says he climbed the ladder in his chosen profession through sheer hard graft.
“School was tough because I wasn’t the brightest spanner in the box,” Noel says. “I just had to work my a**e off and study, get into vet school and study more, went to drama school to learn how to speak and talk, did professorships… and the years go by.”
In 2018 Fitzpatrick launched a one man stage show, Welcome To My World, sharing stories about his life and his passion for animal welfare.
“There was a sketch in the spoken word show where I said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this could have turned out very differently because when I was 10 or 11 I wanted to be the fella with the big hair that played the guitar… Brian May of Queen.’
“Brian comes to see one of the shows and I didn’t tell him about the sketch. He came up to me afterwards and said, ‘Dear boy I never realised, that’s an incredible compliment.’
“I had got to know Brian because he has a wildlife centre near where I work and I mended a lot of hedgehogs for him. I love hedgehogs.
“Then in 2023 he left a voice message saying, I’m heading for a tour with my little band [Queen]. I’m only down the road, I’m going to pop in on the way home from rehearsals.
“He comes in in his shorts and he goes, ‘Right, the time is now, what song are we going to play? I said, ‘Brian, you are one of the greatest rock guitarists that ever walked planet earth and I’m just a vet.’ He said, ‘No, no, no, the time is now. It’s never too late to discover the child in you, you are allowed, you know.’
“’What song are we going to play?’ I said we are not going to play anything, Brian, because I can’t play guitar.’ He wasn’t taking no for an answer and he taught me the chords to [the Queen song] One Vision.
“So I’m the only person you know who then went on tour not being able to play guitar and learned in front of people. I practised in the back of the van on the way to the gig because I was going to the gig three days after he popped in.
“Brian rings me on show number five and he goes, ‘how is it going, dear boy?’ I said, ‘It’s going terrible Brian, last night a guy who is in music, who I know very well, told me if I ever picked up a guitar again he would never speak to me again.’
“Brian said, ‘Oh, dear boy I forgot to tell you something about playing guitar.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s time now Brian because I’m just about to go on stage.’
“He said, ‘There is no such thing as a bad chord, dear boy, there’s only a chord with attitude or without attitude.’ So that night I went out on stage and I gave it attitude and the crowd went mental despite the fact that I was still no good.
“So I realised that what you bring to the table is your energy… and then my life changed.
“When Brian came back from tour he came to the last show and I was absolutely peeing myself because my hero was in the audience while I was playing his song… in my head really badly.
“He came up to me after the show and he gave me a big hug and said, ‘I’m proud of you.’ That meant the world to me, he was so sweet and so encouraging.”
Brian May then gifted Fitzpatrick one of his guitars. “Then I got a guitar in the post from Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath – bear in mind that they were the second band that I ever heard of as a kid. His message was, ‘I know where you live, don’t mess it up.’ Peter Gabriel and Mike Rutherford [Genesis, Mike + The Mechanics] were also very encouraging.”
Fitzpatrick says he forged friendships with the music legends through his work as a vet. “I’m so blessed to have all these people around me who love animals and know that all I want to do with the music is spread love, hope and joy,” he says.
The Noel Fitzpatrick Band, which features world class musicians who perform with everyone from Take That to ELO and Iron Maiden, will play The Greenfields Festival in Ballykilcavan Estate, Co Laois, on May 2 and 3.
“I am so blessed that the universe has gifted me this band of brothers,” Noel adds. “For me to get to delve into this world has been a balm for my soul in life because every time I get stressed or things go wrong I go to music as the default.
“And to be lucky enough to have boys around me who feel the same is just an incredible joy.”