Greatest fucking classic rock radio single of all time

[rass]

Not sure if anyone short of 'loma would bother declaring a right answer with enough authority to fight over it, and I would expect one's personal choice would change from time to time/mood to mood.

My pick right now, and for a while, is this:

[A_B]

Surely nnpopular but I love it when it comes on

[Jerloma]

No, even I wouldn't declare a right answer enough to fight over it. I can be sure that it's not Dreams or Sweet Emotion though.


(Seriously...it's Over the Hills and Far Away)

[rass]

Aerosmith, 2 weeks. Don't forget. <<slap>>

[Ryan]

[Pruitt]

This one has special memories of hearing the speakers in my mothers Grand Prix start to make a crackling noise. apparently factory-installed radios back in 1980 couldn't handle Deep Purple at their appropriate volume.

[Jerloma]

Speaking of Dazed and Confused, I've always loved this song...



(Could use a little more cowbell though)

[rass]

Speaking of Dazed and Confused, I've always loved this song...

Highway Star is on there, too.

[Gunpowder]

This is tough because there are so many good ones. I'm racking my brain but can't come up with one answer I like. I'm thinking Comfortably Numb but not in love with it as current #1.

Fleetwood Mac is boss and anyone who disagrees can eat a penis.

[Pruitt]

This is tough because there are so many good ones. I'm racking my brain but can't come up with one answer I like. I'm thinking Comfortably Numb but not in love with it as current #1.

Fleetwood Mac is boss and anyone who disagrees can eat a penis.

Not going to eat a penis, but there's really no place for real human feelings and emotions when "Classic Rock" is mentioned.

This is as personal and meaningful as Classic Rock should get.

[Rex]

Real songs division: Baba O'Riley
Cheesy division: Gimme Three Steps

[Ryan]

Fleetwood Mac is boss and anyone who disagrees can eat a penis.

Silver Springs is in my Top 10 any song ever

[Jerloma]

This is tough because there are so many good ones. I'm racking my brain but can't come up with one answer I like. I'm thinking Comfortably Numb but not in love with it as current #1.

Fleetwood Mac is boss and anyone who disagrees can eat a penis.

I question Dreams even being a Classic Rock song. Although in typical Classic Rock Song fashion, it's 3 chords and was written in 10 minutes (on Sly Stone's bed).

[Ryan]

It's not even my favorite song called Dreams featuring singers from the British Isles which is not the same thing as Great Britain, the United Kingdom, or England

[Rush2112]

Real songs division: Baba O'Riley
Cheesy division: Gimme Three Steps

I'm a fan of A Quick One While He's Away.

[P.D.X.]

I don't really understand the parameters here but I'm pretty sure the correct answer is No Sugar Tonight / New Mother Nature by The Guess Who.

[Gunpowder]

There are a lot of hot jamz called Dreams, now that I think about it.

[rass]

It's not even my favorite song called Dreams featuring singers from the British Isles which is not the same thing as Great Britain, the United Kingdom, or England

Want to argue over which song containing the word Dreams by that band is better?

[BSF21]

Not a classic era, but a band that started in the classic era. Mandatory air guitar on this one.

[DC47]

[Jerloma]

Not a classic era, but a band that started in the classic era. Mandatory air guitar on this one.

I love Hold the Line. If Dreams is classic rock, don't we have to call Rosanna classic rock?

[DC47]

It's not even my favorite song called Dreams featuring singers from the British Isles which is not the same thing as Great Britain, the United Kingdom, or England

Want to argue over which song containing the word Dreams by that band is better?

[rass]

I love Hold the Line. If Dreams is classic rock, don't we have to call Rosanna classic rock?

Wait for it....

[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.

[brian]

I don't want to start a thread jack, but I always thought too much was made of the Sweet Home Alabama lyrics, especially after being a Drive-By Truckers fan. Here's a pretty interesting piece.

As for me, if I'm thinking classic rock, I'm thinking something epic, so give me Baba O' Riley or Come Sail Away.

[Shirley]

I don't want to start a thread jack, but I always thought too much was made of the Sweet Home Alabama lyrics, especially after being a Drive-By Truckers fan. Here's a pretty interesting piece.

Yeah, I knew Young and Van Zant were actually on pretty good terms. Hell, Ronnie is wearing a Neil Young t-shirt in that video above! Of course, you could read that as sarcasm, but I don't think it was.

That said, I think it's a stretch to say the song is some sort of sarcastic anti-Alabama or anti-racism screed. I always interpreted it as not as endorsing racism or even Governor Wallace, but instead just saying folks from outside of the south should just stay out of their business. Don't paint them all with one brush.

As a life-long southerner, I can tell you that a very common position is resentment of criticism from "yankees," "Hollywood," foreigners, etc. It doesn't matter how valid the criticism may be, southerners are both proud and defensive about their past.

In the song, LS - a Florida band - is defending Alabama as a matter of course. They're sticking up for their brother, even if they do think he's a dipshit. Skynyrd, of course, also wrote a popular anti-gun song (Saturday Night Special) and as far as I've ever heard, were generally pretty liberal (and not racist).

[howard]

Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water is one of my knee-jerk responses. But damn if I can top Highway Star.

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

If you want an Allman Bros. tune, it kinda should be from Fillmore East. But, hell; Whipping Post is too damn long for a classic rock station. (Which also DQs Skynard's Free Bird.) So the answer is Rambling Man.

Yeah, I'm leaning toward Shirley's criteria that the song should sorta suck, and be a cliché, while at the same time rocking.

(I really dig all the choices so far in the thread.)
ETA: (particularly because we have come this far w/o a mention of a hotel or a stairway. Not that there's anything wrong with those.)

[A_B]

I don't want to start a thread jack, but I always thought too much was made of the Sweet Home Alabama lyrics, especially after being a Drive-By Truckers fan. Here's a pretty interesting piece.

Yeah, I knew Young and Van Zant were actually on pretty good terms. Hell, Ronnie is wearing a Neil Young t-shirt in that video above! Of course, you could read that as sarcasm, but I don't think it was.

That said, I think it's a stretch to say the song is some sort of sarcastic anti-Alabama or anti-racism screed. I always interpreted it as not as endorsing racism or even Governor Wallace, but instead just saying folks from outside of the south should just stay out of their business. Don't paint them all with one brush.

As a life-long southerner, I can tell you that a very common position is resentment of criticism from "yankees," "Hollywood," foreigners, etc. It doesn't matter how valid the criticism may be, southerners are both proud and defensive about their past.

In the song, LS - a Florida band - is defending Alabama as a matter of course. They're sticking up for their brother, even if they do think he's a dipshit. Skynyrd, of course, also wrote a popular anti-gun song (Saturday Night Special) and as far as I've ever heard, were generally pretty liberal (and not racist).

To quote Todd Snider:

"I might share some of my opinions with you over the course of the evening. I’m not gonna share them with you ’cause I think they’re smart, or ’cause I think you need to know ’em; I’m gonna share ’em with you because they rhyme."

[BSF21]

But, hell; Whipping Post is too damn long for a classic rock station.

Way up on my list. Pretty much any Allman Bros song. One of my pop's favs so I heard a lot of them growing up.

[howard]

The way it became de rigueur to shout out "Free Bird" at encore time, we always shouted "Play Whipping Post!"

[rass]

The way it became de rigueur to shout out "Free Bird" at encore time, we always shouted "Play Whipping Post!"

Someone shouted "play Free Bird" at the Allman's concert I went to last month, and they did play Whipping Post late in the set.

[DC47]

My buddies and I once did this. At an Allman Brothers concert, in the mid-70s. Might have right been after they just played the song. Irony! We laughed until we couldn't stand upright.

But my memory may be faulty on this. Especially since earlier I had identified the guy leading the opening act as Charlie Daniels, when it was actually Muddy Waters. Charlie and Muddy were both husky guys, so that's an easy mistake to make. Could have been that I was early to the post-racial thing. Didn't see skin color, just what kind of guitar they played.

Could also have been that my mind was doing lazy, hallucinogenic circles around Pluto at the time.

[Rush2112]

The way it became de rigueur to shout out "Free Bird" at encore time, we always shouted "Play Whipping Post!"

C'mon Howard, no love for Mountain Jam? I know it sortof a cover, but it's so awesome and would give you an extra half an hour to mack on all the ladies.

[DC47]

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. Probably unfair on my part. And they certainly are the epitome of Classic Rock.

If you want an Allman Bros. tune, it kinda should be from Fillmore East. But, hell; Whipping Post is too damn long for a classic rock station. (Which also DQs Skynard's Free Bird.) So the answer is Rambling Man.

I got distracted by actual work before I could post a video of Rambling Man when I first read this thread. That is the ultimate Classic Rock song for me. I actually like a lot of this genre; there must be a hundred of so very reasonable Ultimates. But Rambling Man is a great song and brings back the best memories.

One night, near closing time at a restaurant in New England, my pal Bill, who had been at the aforementioned Allman Brothers concert, shouted at me from the grill. I stopped whatever I was doing. There it was. The restaurant had a muzak system (literally) that played insipid music at all times. We were forbidden to turn it off. So we just turned it down on our shifts. Management ignored this, like they ignored hair touching the collar and waitresses not wearing nylons. Most of them, most of the time, if you were good at your job. Any sane person tuned the muzak out completely. Bad music, most of it unrecognizable "tunes" that vaguely resembled hits of the past thirty years (to minimize royalties I presume), with bad arrangements. Badness abounded, especially if you were failing to make it in the NYC jazz world at the time.

But, undeniably, there it was.

Rambling Man, muzak style. Despite the strings and Welk-ian arrangement, it was such a great song that it couldn't help rocking. High fives all around. And the first time that the volume of the muzak machine ever got turned up by someone other than management.

[DC47]

A great night to be Dickie Betts.

[howard]

I don't want to start a thread jack, but I always thought too much was made of the Sweet Home Alabama lyrics, especially after being a Drive-By Truckers fan. Here's a pretty interesting piece.

Yeah, I knew Young and Van Zant were actually on pretty good terms. Hell, Ronnie is wearing a Neil Young t-shirt in that video above! Of course, you could read that as sarcasm, but I don't think it was.

Good article. Interesting for me because I have barely given this topic any attention, because from the first time I heard the song on the radio it was so obviously not a racist/redneck expression in any way. And at 17yo, just out of high school, my politics were quite liberal, my racial sensitivities quite keen. Listening to the line, "In Birmingham they love the governor, whoo, whoo, whoo; Now we've all done what we could do" the meaning was crystal clear sarcasm. Listening, not just reading the words--the musical shift to the minor chords, as a counter to the words.

Of course, any art is free for any interpretation, but to me this left zero room. FFS, he sings 'they love the governor', not 'we' love him. But, people see the opposite of what I think is obvious in art and song all the time. Spingsteen's Born in the USA.

So, having given this more thought today than ever before, I had never noticed Al Cooper in the background singing the phrase 'southern man'. And I thought they were singing 'whoo whoo whoo', not 'boo, boo, boo'. And I did not know Neil had performed Sweet Home. And all those other tidbits in the linked article. Cool.

I'm listening to the Drive-By-Truckers now, I had been meaning to get to Southern Rock Opera since someone on here mentioned it a few months back.

Charlie Daniels, when it was actually Muddy Waters. Charlie and Muddy were both husky guys, so that's an easy mistake to make.

I mix those two up all the time.

I'm enjoying a lazy day, listening to old music and bloviating on the internets. While we're here, I was revisiting some early Linda Ronstadt; she deserves some mention for great fucking classic rock songs; I'll submit her only #1 single (US charts, Billboard Hot 100) (NOT Country chart!), and we'll make it a quiz. What was Linda's only #1 song? (she had three #2s and 21 top 40 hits. I cannot emphasize how heavy her rotation on radio, roughly '75-'80.) Ten swamp points.

[rass]

I'm enjoying a lazy day, listening to old music and bloviating on the internets. While we're here, I was revisiting some early Linda Ronstadt; she deserves some mention for great fucking classic rock songs; I'll submit her only #1 single (US charts, Billboard Hot 100) (NOT Country chart!), and we'll make it a quiz. What was Linda's only #1 song? (she had three #2s and 21 top 40 hits. I cannot emphasize how heavy her rotation on radio, roughly '75-'80.) Ten swamp points.

I had a crush on her at some point. Given your "roughly '75-'80" it would be a very early memory.

When Will I Be Loved?

[A_B]

You;re no good which I know because of THE VOICE.

[Jerloma]

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

[A_B]

Four Walls of Raiford is my favorite Skynyrd tune. Ballad of Curtis Lowe a close second.