This was a little harder to Google, so I'll ask everyone here.
Does anyone know why A Kind Of Magic featured split co-production between Mack and David Richards? My hypothetical guess would be that the sessions were taking place at different studios, with Freddie's and John's songs being recorded and produced by Mack in Munich, while Brian's and Roger's songs were recorded and produced by David Richards in Montreaux.
Does anybody else have any guesses, or actually know for certain?
I assume they did some stuff in Munich and then recorded some other stuff in Montreux. I think every track is credited to either Mack or Richards as being the producer/engineer/whatever.
Some tracks were done in London too. In fact Mack produced whatever Freddie and/or John wrote, plus One Vision (which is in 1985, before most of the album).
As far as I know, David Richards took part more directly in the movie soundtrack, which had more participation of B&R (in terms production and mixing). This might have been caused due to the fact there were some internal troubles at the time of Flash because Brian had co-produced it with Mack (as John said in anearly 1981 interview). So perhaps to avoid those problems again they decided to use a different producer for the soundtrack, but it seems they all ended up preferring David since they got him to produce Miracle, Innuendo and Made In Heaven too.
That's what I thought. Perhaps John and Freddie felt a certain loyalty to Mack, considering that he had helped co-produce Freddie's solo album, but had become so impressed with David Richards' style of production that they decided it was time to progress further? Although I don't really notice a difference in production sound on the album; it may just be me, though.
The keyboard part could have been important in that decision: Mack was clearly an expert in analog synths and early samplers (the demolition programming he did in 'Machines' was sooooo proffesional, and it was made in 1983), and in general terms that kind of mix and digital production.
Dave was more into modern technology (digital synths), computer-assisted recordings (in which, for example, the machine remembered exactly in which position did the hands move the faders and where), and new bitrate sampling; for The Miracle and Innuendo they kind of needed that more. I feel Mr. Richards was also more musically trained, but I can be wrong about that aprpeciation.