Tuesday Tunes 205: Intros – 7 Up

Somehow I managed to give you last week’s set of tunes without numbering them. How remiss of me! But this week’s is definitely #205 in the series, allowing for that oversight. I had been planning on continuing my sets based on beverages, but things haven’t been coming together how I would like, so instead I’m returning to a popular theme which I have used several times before: six times, in fact, hence today’s title. That theme is intros: it seems that there is a never-ending supply of songs with great intros, so this is always a good one. The little tweak for this set is that all of today’s bands have been featured before in the previous intros posts, so they are proving that they are quite good at this. Five tracks with a total running time of just shy of 30 minutes: you’re getting your money’s worth this week!

Having played a set of tunes that were mostly unfamiliar last week I am shamelessly going for some big names this time. Getting us off to my usual rousing start with one of the biggest names in rock music:

They don’t come much bigger than The Rolling Stones with Gimme Shelter, do they? I’m not sure when that show actually took place but the video was shared to YouTube in November 2012 so I’m guessing that it could have been around then, but the amazing Lisa Fischer, who shares the vocals with Mick, has been touring with the Stones since 1989 so it could be any time since then! My best guess is the Licks Tour of 2002-2003, but that could be way off. Gimme Shelter was originally released as the opening track to the Let It Bleed album in November 1969, which topped the UK Albums chart and made #3 in the US. It went Platinum in the UK, for 300k sales, and Double Platinum in the US for 2m. This track wasn’t released as a single at the time, but a digital version was released in 2007, peaking at #76 in the UK and #18 in the US Digital Rock chart.

As intros go, they don’t come much more recognisable than this next one. It is one of those that has been banned in many guitar shops as the owners have tired of hearing poor attempts at it by budding players, but it is still for me one of the best intros and songs of all time:

Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven really doesn’t need an introduction, does it – I’d be very surprised if anyone reading this hadn’t heard it before. There are numerous versions of the song on YouTube, including the remarkable tribute played by Heart and a cast of thousands, but I wanted to play you the original song as it was first released on record, and this video does that perfectly, giving you something to watch while you listen – as if you needed it! The video was published in July 2018 and is approaching 122m views, so I think I’m safe in saying that people enjoy this one. The song first appeared on the band’s fourth album, the one with no title which has, unsurprisingly, been known since then as Led Zeppelin IV. I’ve told before how I saw the band perform this live, when it was almost thrown away by Robert Plant as ‘here’s a song off our next album.’ That was on March 10 1971, at the University of Kent, in Canterbury. It was the fourth date on a spring tour of smaller venues in the UK and Ireland which was promoted as a tour to thank fans for helping to make Led Zep so successful. Or maybe I’m being cynical in suggesting it was a set of warm up gigs for their big tour of Europe and North America later that year? Either way, I got to see the biggest and best band in the world for the princely sum of 60 pence. That may not sound much now but it was about half of what this schoolkid earned each week from his Saturday job, so it was no small investment! It was well worth it, though! The album was released in November 1971, reaching #1 in the UK and #2 in the US. It has become their best selling album at over 37m copies, 24m of those in the US and 1.8m in the UK.

For its release as a single this next one came out in a shortened form, which included cutting out some of the intro. This is is the full album version:

Steely Dan released Do It Again as the opening track on their debut album, Can’t Buy A Thrill, in November 1972, just after I went to uni and obligingly making it a major part of the soundtrack to my time there. The album peaked at #17 in the US and #38 in the UK, and that shortened single, released at the same time, got to #6 in the US and #39 in the UK, although that didn’t happen here until 1975. It has still picked up a Silver Disc here for 200k sales, though, even if we were a little slow off the mark. I loved the album then and still do, and rank it as one of the best debut albums I know – ten tracks and not a dud among them. The odd thing about this for me is that David Palmer takes lead vocal in the video, yet Donald Fagen is credited with that on the album. What?

The intro to my next song is much shorter, but is instantly recognisable. You only have to hear those first chords to know what is coming – in my view, that is the mark of an all time classic:

As you may well know, Nights In White Satin was a track on the Moody Blues’ concept album Days Of Future Passed, which was released in November 1967. The album performed respectably here in the UK, reaching #27, but was a huge hit in the US, where it got to #3. This was released as a single at the same time, and reached #19 in the UK and #103 in the US, though it did top the charts in both Belgium and Switzerland. It was re-released in August 1972 and did much better, getting to #2 in the US and #9 in the UK. It has sold more than 1m in the US and 200k in the UK, and is still for me one of the most beautiful songs ever.

So far today I’ve played two songs each from the late Sixties and the early Seventies, but I’m going less far back for my final choice – only as far as 1984. Again, this is another that we know from the moment it starts:

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that Bruce Springsteen had huge success with Born in the USA, both the album and its title track as a single. The album was released in June 1984 and has to date sold more than 30m copies worldwide, with 17m of those in the US and a million each in the UK, Australia, Canada, Italy and Germany. This was the third of seven singles taken from it, in October 1984, reaching #9 in the US and #5 in the UK, selling more than 3m in the US and 600k in the UK. It has been cited as one of the most misunderstood songs in history, having been treated as a flag-waving ode to America by right wing politicians like Ronald Reagan and, more recently, Donald Trump, who appear to have listened just to the chorus without seeming to have heard the biting critique of American policy and society in the lyrics as a whole. Bruce’s view of Trump? He has gone on record as calling Trump ‘a flagrant, toxic narcissist,’ a ‘moron,’ and a ‘threat to our democracy.’ Not much room for doubt there, and I tend to agree. 

That’s it for today, and hopefully I’ve given you five songs that you know and love as much as I do. A great intro doesn’t always lead to a great song, but with all of these it did exactly that. And trust me, they are a much better set than anything I’ve so far found for another set of beverage tunes, though I’ll keep looking for more of them!

Have a great week 😊