From Queenpedia.com

The experience of filming Keep Yourself Alive and Liar had been less than pleasant, and Queen were smack in the middle of a UK tour anyway, so there was little time (or desire) to create promotional videos for any of the singles from both Queen II and Sheer Heart Attack. As a result, they resorted to performing their next three major singles – Seven Seas Of Rhye, Killer Queen, and Now I'm Here – on the major television outlets... whenever they had the time!

Their big break came shortly before the release of their second UK single, Seven Seas Of Rhye. David Bowie was slated to appear on Top Of The Pops, to perform his latest single, 'Rebel Rebel', but mysterious circumstances prevented him from making an appearance. Scrambling to find a suitable replacement, the BBC phoned Queen's managers, the Sheffield brothers, and asked that the band appear on the programme on February 24th, 1974. Jumping at the chance, the brothers quickly ushered the band into Eel Pie Studios to record an alternate backing track (graciously supplied by The Who's Pete Townshend, who was hard at work on rerecording the Tommy soundtrack for Ken Russell's film adaptation); the next day, the band appeared at the film studios and duly went mimed along to the single. Its appearance on the TV show helped catapult the single to #10 in the UK, and Queen became regional stars virtually overnight.

However, the BBC, not realizing the historical significance this would have, deleted the appearance many years later (indeed, Queen were not the only ones to suffer the same fate; hours and hours of old Dr. Who episodes were also lost in the purge). As a result, this performance was sadly unavailable for inclusion on any of the many VHS and DVD compilations that collected all of Queen's promotional videos (though, as of 2004, a recording has been located). Instead, the Torpedo Twins (Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher) were commissioned to assemble a montage-style video for the 1992 US VHS release of Greatest Hits. The liner notes to that video indicate that footage from Queen's 1976 and 1985 Australian tours were used for the concert scenes, though, in actuality, the video contains footage from their 1985 Rock In Rio appearance. (As far as can be told, nothing from Queen's tours to Australia was ever professionally filmed.) Interspersed with this footage are candid shots of the band arriving and walking around Japan, from their first tour there in 1975. This is fascinating, for it shows a genuinely relaxed, happy, and surprisingly young band enjoying all the attention they were suddenly receiving from a nation that very few artists had paid much mind in the past.

Credits

Version	Name	Artist	Recorded	Format	Length	Director	Filming Location
Version #1	Seven Seas Of Rhye	Queen	February 24th, 1974	Video	2:50	unknown	Top Of The Pops studio
Version #2	Seven Seas Of Rhye	Queen	n/a	Video	2:50	The Torpedo Twins	n/a

Availability

• Version #1 - unreleased
• Version #2 - Greatest Hits (1992 US), Queen Rocks