During I Want To Break Free, Freddie's mic dies and he isn't heard for a moment (it's present on two audience recordings). There's a recording of radio broadcast, but his voice is present there. How could this be? The radio broadcast is raw, which means it must be the same thing we hear on the audience recordings.
I guess they must have fixed it for the official release. Perhaps they took the voice from the original multitracks of the concert, didn't they? The March Of The Black Queen from Hammy '75 (BBC 2009 re-broadcast) is an example.
But still I don't comprehend how the voice is absent on the audience recordings but present on the radio broadcast.
Any guesses?
"There's a recording of radio broadcast, but his voice is present there. How could this be?"
Rough guess - there was two different sends for the radio broadcast and the front of house mix. I couldn't say so for sure but if the audience recordings were live, and the radio broadcast was live, then any differences would be down to that.
That's quite a simple thing.
Probably something happened in the Front of House Desk. Maybe Queen's Sound Engineer Trip Khalaf forgot to put the channel bac on after muting it during vocal break?...
But as it is customary the recording feed and front of house mix feed are separate feeds. So what was heard in the PA system didn't happen in the radio broadcast...
The gig was broadcast on the radio & simulcast on tv in October 1986, so I'm sure there was a lot of cleaning and overdubbing on this mix. And more so when it was released as a double album later still.
"Probably something happened in the Front of House Desk"
Yeah, the first time I heard an audience recording I noticed a lot of stuff being muted and unmuted rather abruptly. Actually sounded a little unsubtle to be honest, but it was a pretty high pressure event I guess.