These Are the Days of Our Lives

Top of the box office is Addams Family.

Top of the charts is Bohemian Rhapsody/Days of Our Lives by Queen.

[upbeat music]

Sometimes I get to feelin' I was back in the old days, long ago.

Mm-hmm.

And then also what happened afterwards and the Freddie Mercury tribute concert.

But at this point, I mean, I really like These Are The Days of Our Lives as a song.

I like to go-

All we hear is Radio Kaka Magic, magic, magic, magic, magic Those were the days

Radio Gaga, A Kind of Magic and These Are the Days of Our Lives, three of the hits written for Queen by their drummer, Roger Taylor.

As well as being a pivotal member of that band, Taylor has released solo albums since 1981 and he's just released his latest, his seventh in fact, Violence Insane in a Beautiful World.

It came into the front row studio earlier and given how eclectic the new album is, I asked him first how he would describe it himself.

And so he's famously known as the powerhouse drummer ever.

in queen um and he sung lead and backing vocals on queen records um singing lead on songs like i'm in love with my car modern times rock and roll and drows um he wrote hits for queen as well including radio gaga a kind of magic and these are the days of our lives hence the title of today's show is it's a kind of magic

that's a great color great track

beautiful track yeah absolutely um so he was the actually actually the first member of the band to release a solo single um album as well yes yeah everyone probably thinks it was freddie no he's actually roger

He does a few Queen songs on there as well.

Ten Minute Thunster from one of my favourite Queen albums, Sheer Heart Attack.

And he does These Are The Days Of Our Lives and Under Pressure.

um i'm in love with my car but of course um you know many of his solo hits in there as well um like strange frontier nation of haircuts man on fire being one of his well-known ones um so yeah that is a great album and finally finally to finish up because i'm probably self-indulging a little bit too much that's great is this collection here from 2013 this is called roger taylor the lot um which has got every single album that he's made in there also including He had a solo band between, I think, 88 and 92, 93, called The Cross.

The impact was immediate.

The song entered the UK singles chart and reached number 10, their first hit.

In October, they released the single Killer Queen, which peaked at number two in the UK and became the band's first global hit.

I remember how much that first wave of success meant to Freddie.

"Yes," I said.

"I will." I was 22, he 27.

I'm fairly sure he wrote the song Lily of the Valley shortly after that.

Where have you been hiding? And I recall him telling someone, possibly a studio engineer, that he had written it about me.

the best singers in the world, and the best song.

I sang These Are The Days Of Our Lives-

Yeah

... which I still do on tour now.

All right, so let's move on to side two where we picked Bijou.

These are the days of our lives and the show must go on with the big singles off this album.

We're very happy with that, yes? Oh, yes.

We're happy with all the singles being in there.

All right.

And what were our favourite songs on the album then?

So for the whole album, you went for These Are The Days Of Our Lives.

Yeah, I do love that track.