Greatest fucking classic rock radio single of all time

[Jerloma]

Hipster.

[DC47]

Linda Ronstadt was a radio God(dess) in the mid 70s. And that was in the era when most people got their visuals only from album covers. If she had been on TV as she would be today, and the internet existed, she would have been bigger than the Beatles. Or at least Jesus. Infinitely better looking than the women who have succeeded her in the music business. Though Emmylou Harris and Bonnie Bramlett (seen singing harmony vocals in the Rambling Man video) were not far behind in this young man's heart.

[howard]

If you want a Mac song, the correct answer is Rhiannon.

Fleetwood Mac post Peter Green always induced vomiting in me. But it may have been a function of who it was in my social world that tended to adore them. So too with Frampton Comes Alive, and I was a big fan of Humble Pie.

Ditto. Although I always had a soft spot for well-crafted pop music, and by the time Buckingham/Nicks took over, I was secure enough of my hipster credentials to admit outloud I liked some of those Bob Welch/Christie McVie tunes. Hell, I even bought a copy of Bare Trees (a boy's gotta get laid, and the white girls liked that stuff.) The path of that band is amazing and fascinating. And I saw Frampton at one of those stadium shows, and kept hoping he would play Thirty Days in the Hole, but, nope.

These kids don't know Muzak. The embodiment of evil wrt rock and roll music, and a significant step in efforts of mass mind control (to make people work productively, and to buy more stuff). I remember Devo did a tape of Muzak-style versions of their tunes. Mothersbaugh said they wanted to do it before it was done to them. I also remember hearing a Muzak version of an Elvis Costello tune in a mall or drug store in the 80s (and it wasn't Allison;) one of those moments I recognized it was all coming to a bad end. Later, seeing Costello as a guest on Johnny Carson, and hearing a Muzaked Graham Parker tune in a pharmacy officially signaled the end of my rocker childhood.

[howard]

When Will I Be Loved? was a #2, but hit #1 on the Country chart. And would've been my guess. Sorry Rass.

So well produced. Voice of an angel. I beg his forgiveness on bended knee.
AB wins; glad The Voice is serving some public good.

[DC47]

Before she was big.


This is the classic studio version with killer LA session men laying it down. I think it was Don Randi with the incredible harpsichord part.

[Jerloma]

Old people...amirite?

[sancarlos]

Maybe it's because Howard and DC and I are all roughly the same age, I'll just post a generalized "ditto" to their comments.

[A_B]

They just call it "rock"

[howard]

Different Drum penned by Michael Nesmith. The people controlling The Monkees told him it sucked and rejected it; he gave it to Linda and the Stone Poneys, who two weeks later made it a hit.

In 1971, my sophomore high school year, Linda was playing at the college, 2000 seat hall; ticket sales were low, so some college kids showed up at my high school at noon, giving away tickets to pack the house. Opening act was a band that had only recently formed, guys who had previously played backing her. Called themselves The Eagles. Mom wouldn't let me out on a school night. 'Pologize for the re-telling.

Old people...amirite?

We deserve a pass on this topic, since 'classic rock' is basically the stuff that was new during our teen years. Stuff from before, from Chuck Berry to the Stones, Hendrix and Beatles aren't quite 'classic rock', I think.

But, fuck it, we old.

[DC47]

Ditto. Although I always had a soft spot for well-crafted pop music, and by the time Buckingham/Nicks took over, I was secure enough of my hipster credentials to admit outloud I liked some of those Bob Welch/Christie McVie tunes. Hell, I even bought a copy of Bare Trees (a boy's gotta get laid, and the white girls liked that stuff.)

Very reasonable. The girls that dug this stuff were not in my romantic (or any other) niche. I waited until I met one who couldn't recognize Fleetwood Mac if you spotted her a reference to coke spoons and silk scarves. Married her. And of course, it was not just this that I found immediately attractive. A few years ago I called Daughter #1 in to my office to see a picture on my computer. Her response: "Was Mom in college when that photo was shot?" It was actually from early Emmylou Harris album cover.

Of course, my approach took a bit longer than walking around bars with a copy of Rumors under my arm and my shirt unbuttoned to my navel. And in truth, the girls who grooved to that wouldn't have looked at me twice.

The path of that band is amazing and fascinating.

So too the Hindenberg and Titanic. But they presumably had better tunes on board.

And I saw Frampton at one of those stadium shows, and kept hoping he would play Thirty Days in the Hole, but, nope.

Frampton was and is a fine musician. Even when he was Coming Alive with the tube in his mouth. That leaves me curious as to how he could move so quickly from the great rock music he was doing with Stevie Marriot et al. to the pablum that followed. I suppose it may have been a move to play his own stuff, and a move to be commercially viable. But didn't he hear what was happening to him?

These kids don't know Muzak. The embodiment of evil wrt rock and roll music, and a significant step in efforts of mass mind control (to make people work productively, and to buy more stuff). I remember Devo did a tape of Muzak-style versions of their tunes. Mothersbaugh said they wanted to do it before it was done to them. I also remember hearing a Muzak version of an Elvis Costello tune in a mall or drug store in the 80s (and it wasn't Allison;) one of those moments I recognized it was all coming to a bad end. Later, seeing Costello as a guest on Johnny Carson, and hearing a Muzaked Graham Parker tune in a pharmacy officially signaled the end of my rocker childhood.

That is a great story about Devo! I wasn't a fan, but maybe I should have been.

The Graham Parker incident makes me wonder if some closeted freaks down at Muzak Central were trying to slip one past the Corporate Man now and then. That doesn't sound like the kind of pop hit that they so commonly (e.g., anything by Simon and Garfunkel) reduced to sonic mush. Also, they were throwing some royalties his way.

[DC47]

Different Drum penned by Michael Nesmith. The people controlling The Monkees told him it sucked and rejected it; he gave it to Linda and the Stone Poneys, who two weeks later made it a hit.

Perhaps they were right, in the sense that Mickey and Davey didn't remotely have Linda's pipes. And at that time they hadn't heard the awesome lead harpsichord that Randi would soon unleash.

I believe a bluegrass band recorded the song years before Linda. I heard it long ago, and it sounded good. But I love bluegrass covers of pop songs. And obviously, no bluegrass band was going to put this tune on the pop charts back then without some seriously divine intervention.

In 1971, my sophomore high school year, Linda was playing at the college, 2000 seat hall; ticket sales were low, so some college kids showed up at my high school at noon, giving away tickets to pack the house. Opening act was a band that had only recently formed, guys who had previously played backing her. Called themselves The Eagles. Mom wouldn't let me out on a school night. 'Pologize for the re-telling.

Hard to forgive. I suppose since she was involved in your birth, you could call it a wash.

[DC47]

Old people...amirite?

Wrong. We put the Class in Classic. There are worse things.

And succeeding generations are damn lucky that we liked Eric Clapton, Linda Ronstadt, Hendrix, and Zeppelin rather than the infinite number of losers that looked a lot like them at the time.

[sancarlos]

I liked Humble Pie a lot. Steve Marriott was great - I still like 30 Days in the Hole a lot, too. His Small Faces stuff is underrated, although I understand they were a lot bigger in the U.K. than here. Good story about Linda, Nesmith and your mum, Howard. And, can I give a shout out for the middle-period Fleetwood Mac that everybody always forgets about? After Peter Green, before Buckingham and Nicks. Remember Bob Welch and Hypnotized? That was a semi-big deal back in the day.

Funny thing about classic rock - some bands that were big in the 70s don't get airplay on classic rock now, and others get more play now than they did when it was current. I guess some of that has to do with regional differences and the fact that I'm not now where I was then (in a lot of ways.)

ETA: For you kids who might be interested, here is Steve Marriott and the Small Faces (his pre-Humble Pie band, who later evolved into being Rod Stewart and The Faces) (the black woman singing backup is Cilla Black, who was Marriott's girlfriend for a time, and a semi-successful recording artist in the 60s).

[P.D.X.]

Funny thing about classic rock - some bands that were big in the 70s don't get airplay on classic rock now, and others get more play now than they did when it was current. I guess some of that has to do with regional differences and the fact that I'm not now where I was then (in a lot of ways.)

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why ... sed-to-be/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[DC47]

Great article. I know there is some strong regional differentiation in terms of where bands draw better, apart from where they are from. For example, Detroit was a J. Geils town. The Allman Brothers have always toured Boston heavily. But I didn't know the classic rock stations picked up on this. I thought they were more of a cookie-cutter operation.

Some of the combos of musicians and cities defy explanation (at least by me). Steppenwolf and Portland? Neil Young and Pittsburgh? REO Speedwagon and Tampa (or anywhere, really?)

[DC47]

ETA: For you kids who might be interested, here is Steve Marriott and the Small Faces (his pre-Humble Pie band, who later evolved into being Rod Stewart and The Faces) (the black woman singing backup is Cilla Black, who was Marriott's girlfriend for a time, and a semi-successful recording artist in the 60s).

I don't recall ever hearing that song. Mariott certainly had a one-in-a-million voice.

[Johnny Carwash]

I'm pretty sure it's legally mandated for at least one New England terrestrial radio station to be playing More Than a Feeling at any given time.

[DC47]

I mentioned Ramblin' Man as a favorite Classic Rock song. While fixing the dryer I was wondering what other songs from that genre I actually would be glad to hear if I was driving down the freeway, tuned in to a classic rock station.

[Shirley]

And if you want a Skynyrd song, the answer is Simple Man.

I'm a big fan of that one as well. Curtis Lowe too.

That said, cliche as it might be - and this one totally fits my earlier criteria - when Free Bird really gets cranked up with all of the driving guitars. Man... You HAVE to turn that shit up, no matter how man times you've heard that song. I swear, you feel like they've hit the crescendo, playing as fast as any man (men) possibly could, and yet ... they turn it up another notch. And then, again.

It's really too bad that song became a cliche.

(I like Hotel and Stairway as well. Sorry.)

[Rush2112]

What about classic bands/songs that you hate?

I love Rush, but NEVER need to hear Tom Sawyer again
Hate the Eagles, Fuck Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood.

Also, not a big fan of Aerosmith or Kiss.

(and for Steely the choice is The Fez, or Peg.)

While these tunes were on the radio when I was a kid, my parents were more of the Cat Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel, John Denver crowd. The rockers weren't really on my radar until I was in HS in the late 80s. I really didn't care for the hair bands or the other 80s output aside from the art of the Talking Heads/Blondie/Devo or the Clash/Sex Pistols ilk.

Sometime in 1984 bought St Peppers on cassette. To use a line from an Allman's tune, that's where it all began.

[DC47]

Good Lord man! Sgt. Pepper. 1984. Rock music must have been like one of those time travel movies, where you experience things weirdly out of sequence.

I'm certainly tuned in to the era where classic rock came from. But there's a lot of it, as defined today per the article posted earlier, that left me cold at best.

Jethro Tull, Genesis, Styx, REO. Aerosmith, Queen, Kansas, Tom Petty, AC/DC, Foreigner, Fleetwood Mac, U2, Stones post 1975, Van Halen, Rush, Yes, DefOzzieMetalliMaiden.

If I could preserve 10 or 20 songs from the total output of these groups, and banish the balance of the thousand hours of so of their recorded legacy forever to another galaxy, this sonic world would be a far better place for me.

But there are those 10 or 20 songs. I don't like them much. If this was the best of rock music, I'd be a snooty classical music fan. But they're tolerable songs, and they're the tunes from this lot that are most often played on Classic Rock stations.

[Weatherfrog]

Pretty sure the greatest rock radio song of all time is Back in Black.

[teeteebee]

Deep on the 2nd page and finally an AC/DC reference.

This topic needs a bracket. Swamp bracket style. Not sure what swamp bracket style is but let's make it up. Take a little NCAA tourney bracket. Mix in some regional Classic rock themes, pick the seeds and let the good motherdicking times roll.

Suggestions for regions please.

[Weatherfrog]

Deep on the 2nd page and finally an AC/DC reference.

This topic needs a bracket. Swamp bracket style. Not sure what swamp bracket style is but let's make it up. Take a little NCAA tourney bracket. Mix in some regional Classic rock themes, pick the seeds and let the good motherdicking times roll.

Suggestions for regions please.

Brackets by region or era?

1.

Southern US

North Eastern US

Western US

British Empire

2.

64-71

72-77

78-85

86-92

[TheHumanComa]

[quote="Shirley"]I honestly don't think it gets more Classic Rock than this one.

You've heard it a gazillion times. You don't want to like it. You don't like the implicit (or explicit even) message of the song. You don't like that multiple generations of rednecks consider this their anthem.

But dammit, this song rocks.



I would have gone with Free Bird. I hate classic rock stations but I do love me some skynyrd! also the classic stairway to heaven and pink floyd's

[TheHumanComa]

I mentioned Ramblin' Man as a favorite Classic Rock song. While fixing the dryer I was wondering what other songs from that genre I actually would be glad to hear if I was driving down the freeway, tuned in to a classic rock station.

Yes. I discovered two bands in the last two years, The Cars and Steely Dan. I have listened to both so much recently that I'm almost sick of them. Almost, but I still can't get enough. I'm driving around like it's 1981 (yes i realize the song came out before 1981 but i'm not talking 8 track), cranking that shit. I don't understand why i never listened to them before.

[Pruitt]

How did Linda Ronstadt get into a thread about rock music?

Now THIS is rock - back when AC/DC may have been the fastest band on the planet. A touching love song...

[DaveInSeattle]

My contributions to this thread...I think of the "Classic Rock" as more of the songs you'd find on the Freedom Rock type collections from K-Tel.

Songs like this one:



or this:



or this:



The common thread? Cowbell...gotta have the cowbell...

[Rams Fanny]

Wouldn't call them the greatest, and I'm sure some of you would argue the 'Rock' designation, but this is probably the most underrated band in this genre. People know the songs and sing along every time but never seem to get mentioned in these discussions. Consider them mentioned.

[teeteebee]

Late 79. 8 track of Supertramps Breakfast in America. Every morning driving with my dad to preschool at the Naval base where he was working.

He is a Stones and Zeppelin guy. So the only thing that makes sense to me is that after he and mom divorced a couple years earlier he was in prime trim getting mode and had the soundtrack to prove it.

I still remember the words to all the songs and I bet if I think enough about it I could name a few songs in playing order. Every fucking day on an 8 track.

[howard]

Hey, ramsfanny and ttb:

You're bloody well right; you know, you got a right to say. But me, I don't care. Anyway.

[A_B]

It's an arguable stance to say that there is no bigger AC/DC fan than me in the swamp, but I dont consider them on the "classic" rock level as much as just "awesome" rock.

But I do get the same feelings as Sweet Emotions when Back in Black, Hells Bells, You shook me All Night Long, or Thunderstruck comes on.

[rass]

AC/DC is my changethestation band. Sorry.

Give me Goodbye Stranger from Supertramp.

[DC47]

How did Linda Ronstadt get into a thread about rock music?

There's all kinds of rock.

[howard]

dc, that was gonna be my first retort. My second: there are some things you can't cover up with lipstick and powder.

[DC47]

One was a better singer and had better legs.

The other wrote better songs and played in a better band until the mid-70s.

[devilfluff]

I'll admit I only skimmed this thread, but how did I not see a single Zeppelin reference?

The answer is, and always has been, Stairway to Heaven.

It is not my favorite, but it is the 42 of best rock songs.

[Jerloma]

So fluff has me on ignore, apparently.

[L-Jam3]

Doesn't everyone have you on ignore, J-Lo?

Maybe I don't understand the reasoning here, b/c if I'm thinking classic rock, it's would be played on 'MMR or 'MGK in my neck of the woods. Classic rock to me would be something that would fit like a puzzle piece in a Scorsese movie. And with that in mind...

[A_B]

It's an arguable stance to say that there is no bigger Eric Clapton fan in the swamp than me, but the original Layla isn't even one of my top 10 Clapton songs.