Greatest Song Lines
- Thread starter Fudbutter
- Start date
"I wonder if she wonders if I wonder if she wonders". "Alice", Ian Hunter, Mott the Hoople
The song's complete lyrics belong here. But this will suffice: "Roll Over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news". Chuck Berry, "Roll Over Beethoven".
"Attention all planets of the Solar Federation. We have assumed control...". Neil Peart, Rush, 2112.
Have you seen Taylor Hackford's film on Chuck Berry, "Hail! Hail! Rock 'N' Roll"? It's incredible. In it, the great Roy Orbison echos your opinion of Chuck as a poet:
"He's the first singer-songwriter I know of. There were others, but, not with that much rhythm and that much - the way the lyrics rolled off the tongue. The way they stabbed. The way they cut. And the the way sort of seemed to lay there with the drums, all the lyric. It's just a free form expression. And he did the same thing with the guitar that he did with his voice and his writing."
A lyric/song so good a certain band named themselves after it:
"Well, my mother told my father just before hmmm, I was born
I got a boy child's comin', gonna be, he's going to be a rolling stone". Muddy Waters, "Rollin' Stone".
"Well, my mother told my father just before hmmm, I was born
I got a boy child's comin', gonna be, he's going to be a rolling stone". Muddy Waters, "Rollin' Stone".
My first memory of Chuck Berry, ? I was possibly in junior high. Johnny B. Goode.
Great memory. A big accomplishment for me was when I learned to play "Johnny B..." on my guitar as a teen. My first attempts at those cool sounding double stops and slurs. The song which launched rock & roll into the mainstream.
For @butterscotch: "And the lamb lies down on Broadway. On Broadway". Peter Gabriel, Genesis, "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway".
... or the entirety of Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Selling England, and Lamb, impossible to choose
also anything ever done by Peter Sinfield (earlier Crimson) and Keith Reid in his darker moods
there was also some guy named Zimmerman, you know the one who did Ballad of a Thin Man
That Zimmerman dude wrote this a while back. Hope he made something of himself.
"And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burning coal
Pouring off of every page
Like it was written in my soul, from me to you
Tangled up in blue"
Bob Dylan, "Tangled Up in Blue".
I agree 100%
Guess the censors at the time were not familiar with black slang.
"Good Golly Miss Molly, sure like to ball
Oooh, Good Golly Miss Molly, sure like to ball
When you're rockin' and a-rollin'
Can't hear your mama call"
Little Richard. "Good Golly Miss Molly".
"Good Golly Miss Molly, sure like to ball
Oooh, Good Golly Miss Molly, sure like to ball
When you're rockin' and a-rollin'
Can't hear your mama call"
Little Richard. "Good Golly Miss Molly".
Wow another YES for sure
For many years, especially I when working and had to go somewhere or do something that was unpleasant, I would invariably and almost subconciously hum to myself, "you gotta get in to get out (ou ou ou out)" and it would help so maybe a few points for THAT one
Mrs Fud says that if you are using Gabriel that you have to consider "You just can't jump, your shirt's all dirty, there's a man here from the BBC"
Growing up, I never thought it would happen but no one seems to mention J. Winston Lennon anymore as a great lyricist. Walrus and Across the Universe were astounding for his era
Atco Records.....Coasters, Bobby Darin, Olympics, and more. Division of Atlantic Records.