All three of the songs listed below are pretty recognizable...and the British acts who wrote and performed them are even more so...you can't get much more famous than the Beatles and Led Zeppelin when it comes to classic rock. And they are all from a condensed time period when a lot of great music came out: the late 60s and early 70s...
13 GOLDEN SLUMBERS/CARRY THAT WEIGHT/THE END...the Beatles
Although this medley appeared at the close of the Beatles' Abbey Road album and was released in 1969 I didn't hear it in its entirety until two years later...it was a favorite of mine early in 1971. Every part is special: Paul McCartney's sweet, sad lullaby at the start, the eerie Carry That Weight chorus in the middle, and then the classic drum solo/guitar jam toward the end. During the Beatles' early years I generally kept up with their music as it was being released in America, but with their last five studio albums I didn't get into the deeper tracks until after the band had broken up in 1970. Too bad they couldn't reconcile themselves to be primarily four solo acts who got together every two or three years to churn out a quick collaborative album and then afterwards go merrily off on their respective ways until the next meeting, with producer George Martin always around to piece everything together as he did with this entry on my favorites list...
12 #9 DREAM...John Lennon
It was the fall of 1974 when I kept hearing this song on album rock radio. That was a great year in music with many good songs like Jim Croce's Time in a Bottle, BTO's You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, George McCrae's Rock Your Baby, and John Denver's Sunshine on My Shoulders. But this mystical, dreamy piece by Lennon ended up surpassing them as as my "song of the year" and has always been one of my all-time favorites ever since. It sounds like Lennon's old production partner Phil Spector was back at the helm in the studio with this song, what with the wall of sound so characteristic of his work...but, no, it was the former Beatle himself who put it all together. It's from his Walls and Bridges album of the same year, which also contains Lennon's collaboration with Elton John Whatever Gets You Thru the Night...
11 MISTY MOUNTAIN HOP...Led Zeppelin
During the 70s and 80s I would hear this song from time to time on album rock radio and thought the lyrics were funny: "Crowds of people sittin' on the grass with flowers in their headsets"...only it turned out to be "flowers in their hair said": I thought my version beat Robert Plant's to hell and back for sarcasm and social commentary. Still, I moderately liked it until Led Zeppelin's box set came out in late 1990 and I listened more intently and seriously...ever since it's been one of my favorites. It has a strange beat and arrangement with a menacing lead guitar, and the cycling lyrical crescendo, one syllable at a time, is quite unique. And Plant's reference to Tolkien's Middle Earth from his Lord of the Rings/Hobbit books capped it all for me. Misty Mountain Hop is on Led Zeppelin's fourth "Untitled" album from 1971, one of the supremely great rock n' roll works of all time...and I'm not yet finished with it on my all-time favorite songs list...
Next week: my #10 all-time favorite song...
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