From Queenpedia.com

In the late spring of 1991, Freddie and all those close to him knew his life was almost at an end. Ever the consummate showman, when Hollywood Records in America asked for a video to accompany the strangely prophetic ballad These Are The Days Of Our Lives, Freddie entered Limestone Studios on 30th May 1991 along with Roger Taylor and John Deacon (Brian was on a promotional tour of America at the time) to film a video for the single. It would prove to be the last time Freddie appeared in front of a camera.

By this point, Freddie was physically a shadow of his former self. He was gaunt, his clothes seemed to just hang off him, and a lesion on the ball of his foot made it almost impossible for him to walk. The shoot was undoubtedly the most painful in his entire career, and he had to rest between every short take, but Freddie was determined to complete the video and say goodbye to the millions of fans he had around the world.

Brian was filmed separately when he arrived home from America, and carefully edited into the existing footage of the rest of the band. The piece was edited together by the Torpedo Twins, and then sent off to the Walt Disney animation studios in Hollywood, where a somewhat basic animation (by Disney's standards), reminiscent of the rotoscope sequences in the Save Me video, was made to correspond with what was then the preferred reading of the song's lyrics: two teenagers meet, fall in love and are parted as time goes by. The male sits back on his chair and is whisked off on a rollercoaster ride through his memories. This was then intercut with tinted shots of the band from the original Torpedo Twins cut.

The Hollywood Records release of the song failed to chart, and as a result the video was rarely seen. To this day it remains officially unavailable on video and DVD, and was not broadcast in the UK until November 2001, when Top Of The Pops 2 chose it to honour the tenth anniversary of Freddie's passing. However, an alternate edit of the Hollywood Records cut was included on the Classic Queen VHS released in America in late 1991. The standard Torpedo Twins cut, lacking the Disney animation, was premiered on UK television during the BBC's hastily compiled tribute to Freddie the night after his death.

When it was decided that Bohemian Rhapsody would be reissued as a charity single to celebrate Freddie's life and work and to raise money for the Terrence Higgins Trust to help fight the spread of AIDS, These Are The Days Of Our Lives seemed to be the perfect track to accompany it: Freddie's magnum opus together with his last goodbye. Unsurprisingly, the single topped the charts for five weeks over the holiday season in 1991. The original cut of the video was elected to promote the single together with the original Bohemian Rhapsody promo, and it made its VHS debut on the Greatest Flix III video in 1999, albeit with a slight modification: in the more well-known version of the video, the final shot is of Freddie, as he looks down at the ground, then back at the camera before uttering the words "I still love you" and walking off-screen. In the Flix III version, the final shot features Roger playing congas during the fade-out.

Credits

Version	Name	Artist	Recorded	Format	Length	Director	Filming Location
Standard Version	These Are The Days Of Our Lives	Queen	May 30th 1991, June 1991	Video	4.08	The Torpedo Twins	Limestone Studios, London
Alternate Ending Version	These Are The Days Of Our Lives	Queen	May 30th 1991, June 1991	Video	4.08	The Torpedo Twins	Limestone Studios, London
Disney Version	These Are The Days Of Our Lives	Queen	May 30th 1991, June 1991	Video	4.08	The Torpedo Twins	Limestone Studios, London
Alternate Disney Version	These Are The Days Of Our Lives	Queen	May 30th 1991, June 1991	Video	4.08	The Torpedo Twins	Limestone Studios, London

Availability

• Standard Version - unreleased
• Alternate Ending Version - Greatest Flix III VHS
• Disney Version - unreleased
• Alternate Disney Version - Classic Queen VHS