Summer 1976

A Day At The Races - "rehearsals" (01.09.1976 - 18.09.1976)

This short tour included some important additions in the band's equipment. They were in the middle of the 'A Day At The Races' recordings (the two new songs, Tie Your Mother Down and You Take My Breath Away, hadn't been laid down in the studio yet). For the first time ever the band played an acoustic number in which Roger played tambourine as well.

Percussion
Tambourines were New Era (Freddie) and Ludwig (Roger). Roger played New Era and Ludwig cowbells and a Paiste gong. John hit a Ludwig triangle in Killer Queen. The drumkit Roger used here was the biggest he ever had. He had added two really small toms/gongs (6" and 8") with a 8" Paiste splash cymbal attached to them. Then a mounted tom line of 10", 14" and 16" (the top toms) and the floor toms (18" and 20"). Then two more mounted toms (approx. 12" and 13") or some form of percussion were attached above the floor toms as well! The china (22") cymbals were new to the set. The bass drum logo was still the white crest on a black background.

String instruments

Electric strings: Red Special for Brian (spare was the John Birch replica), Fender Precision '68 model for John. Something strange must have happened for the Hyde Park gig, since John was supposed to play a fretless one in '39 but he used the regular one. Maybe the truck got delayed or something? Acoustic strings: George Formby ukelele-banjo for Leroy Brown. For the same unexplainable reason, Brian didn't play a 12-string Ovation in '39 at Hyde Park, but a Martin D18 6-string instead.

Piano
Freddie used the white 9 ft. Bechstein again. It was rented for a five month period and used for all the album recordings and also the video of You're My Best Friend. For the Somebody To Love video they had already returned it so Freddie mimed the studio house piano for this purpose.

Vocals
Brian, Roger and Freddie had two vocal mics each: Brian used one for the ukelele, Roger used one for '39 and one for the rest of the concert, Freddie had one for piano songs and another one for the front-man moments. John had one too, for occasional backing vocals and the triangle. During The Prophet's Song in Hyde Park the delay didn't fail, its signal was missed from the soundboard console and that's why the video doesn't include it.