These Are The Days Of Our Lives
Written by Queen (Roger)
Recording information by Philipp (PraxisNothaft@t-online.de)
Released in February 1991 on the album Innuendo,as well as in December 1991 on the double A-sided single Bohemian Rhapsody/These Are The Days Of Our Lives.
Recorded in 1990 at Mountain Studios,Montreux.
General:
A wonderful, poignant ballad, which actually hit the no.1 spot twice. As a single together with Boh Rhap and a year later as a live-version on George Michael's Five Live EP. It probably wouldn't have been that successful without the Wayne's World-pushed Bohemian Rhapsody, but this doesn't say anything about its quality: it is a cleverly arranged song with haunting lyrics and brilliant music, which truly deserved its Ivor Novello Award.
First of all, many thanks to Matt for his valuable help!
Drums & Percussion:
Quite a lot of percussion-no wonder, Roger wrote it.
The first thing that Roger recorded was the basic drum-kit track:
He only used snare, bass-drum and hi-hat. The hi-hat is panned left.
For the right channel he recorded a maraca-track, which is going along with the hi-hat. The snare-drum has a small delay-effect at some points during the 2nd and 3rd chorus. Then there are several other overdubs:
A ride cymbal plays several fills and there are many crash cymbal -rolls and hits. In the solo, Roger drives his hands through a bell-tree. There's far too much to go into detail. This song is a great example for Roger's professionalism, as he is able to create atmosphere with the perfect use of a percussion arrangement (especially towards the end).
Last but not least there are two congas and two bongos. Each pair consists of a high and a low pitched item and is panned into a separate stereo-direction.
All drums and percussion-elements are reverbed.
Bass:
It could be the Giffin Bass (the one on the front cover of Rare Live).
It was recorded via D.I. and there's a good use of EQ.
Listen to John's feeling and tasteful bass-playing !
Keyboards:
Most of them were played by Roger.
From the first verse on,a keybaord with a string-sound and a plucked attack is playing chords (later the plucked sound is turned off and only the strings are left over). In the chorus a second keyboard plays some string-overdubs.
Another keybaord plays along with the melody with bell-like sounds (only chorus)
The sound-settings are quite tricky. There's reverb and a tiny bit of flanging on the strings-sounds and they have a slow attack. The bell-like tones have a little chorus-effect.
Guitars:
For me one of Brian's finest moments, as his lines are very different to his usual style (if this actually exists), which makes it unpredictable. And his licks are just beautiful!
The solo-guitar was a first take, by the way.
The first guitar recorded is probably the distorted rythm-guitar, which hasn't much to do except for the low power chords in the chorus.
Then there is a clean guitar which starts towards the end of the first verse and plays chords and arpeggios in the chorus, as well as some small fills (e.g. 3:48). The most prominent guitar, however, is the solo-guitar.
Besides the solo it plays many, extremely tasteful, little fills throughout the song and goes through several degrees of distortion (from almost clean to high gain). There is lots of panning.
SoundZ: All guitars are playd with the Red Special and VoxAC30 amps.
Effects are by Zoom. The distortion for the solo-guitar has been controlled with a pedal. There's lots of reverb and some chorus on some places.
The solo-guitar has a small delay throughout the song. In the high gain solo, however,the delay gets much bigger with a delay-time of approximately 520ms.
Vocals:
For most of the time there are only two vocal-tracks. Freddie's lead-vocals and a second one by him with harmonies. Towards the end,in the third chorus,however, a third Freddie-voice is joining to create three-part-harmonies.
By The Way:
These Are The Days Of Our Lives is known for being the last video to be filmed by the group as a four-piece with Freddie (this little GH III-booklet is great!). Brian's parts, however, were filmed separately, as he couldn't be there during filming (thanks to Matt for this information).
The song won the band an Ivor Novello Award, which isn't anything unusual for the Queen-members (they got plenty of them), but it compliments the quality of the song... oh,and as a no.1 it is to find on Greatest Hits III, which was recently released... GREAT ALBUM!!! (buy it!)