re: these familiar photos: link
Are these from the show, or are they actually in a rehearsal space? Look carefully at the background.
It just looks like a show because Mercury is hamming it up for the camera. They had only played the one show all year and the album was being released, so they needed some promo material for press releases. Maybe renting a rehearsal space was the best answer they could come up with.
Anyone have thoughts or input?
Particularly - how the pictures got attributed to this date to begin with?
Impossible to tell really, isn't it?
It looks like a combination of genuine live shots and more staged promo shots, in what could easily be a genuine venue or rehearsal space, or both.
But if Queen had paid a photographer to take promo shots of this Basingstoke gig how would you ever know whether some were from, say, the soundcheck where the photogrpaher could have better access and the band could deliberately ham it up more, and the rest were from the actual gig itself?
Short of contacting Michael Putland I think it's impossible to know.