Notice the title says Greatest Songs, plural. Not Greatest Song, singular. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that, for example, "Maggie Mae" is a better song than "One Way Out", or vice versa. It's not possible. They are both simply great songs. Whether one is better, or greater, than the other is a question that can't be answered.
But we can make distinctions between the good and the bad, the great and the good. As you know from my greatest albums posts you'll find no Doors or Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix here. These artists/bands were, by my lights, all overrated, some by a little, some by a lot. So we all make different distinctions. If you look at just the top ten songs on Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list, one can immediately start to take exception. Is "Hey Jude" really the best Beatles' song ever? Not by a long shot. Is an unquestionably great song like "Satisfaction" nonetheless a better Rolling Stones' song than "Gimme Shelter" or "Tumblin' Dice" or even "Sympathy for the Devil"? Some would argue. Is "Good Vibrations" really a better Beach Boy song than "I Get Around" or "Don't Worry Baby"? I can name a dozen Aretha Franklin songs that I prefer to "Respect".
I know where Rolling Stone was coming from with their list. They took into consideration not only the song's pure musical value but also the cultural and musical importance the song had at the time of release. By these standards, yes, "Satisfaction" probably deserves the top spot among Stones songs. It was "Satisfaction" that put them on the map as the second greatest band of the time, the song that started the Beatles vs. Stones argument. It's still their best known song. You can also see the RS method in the selection of "Imagine" in the number three spot on their list. Though I love John Lennon, I despise "Imagine", which achieves its spot on RS's list clearly due to its socialist, atheist, world-government, utopian point-of-view. There is no way that it could land at number three based on musical values alone. John Lennon simply produced too much superior music with The Beatles. I mean, who wants to listen to "Imagine" when "Twist and Shout" is available?
Anyhow, to my own list. What are the rules? No rules, really. Just my own view of greatness. The song has to be big to begin with, big in the sense that the artist was clearly going after something more than they'd achieved before, big also in the musical sense of having a huge, enormous sound. Songs that were clearly landmarks at the time of release and still seem so. Songs that have lost nothing over the years, that when listened to today conjure up their period but still have something to say to us now. Or it could be none of those things but simply a song that blows you away, good and hard, because as I've suggested in this space before, that's the raison d'etre of rock and roll, to take you outside yourself, to take you further than other music can.
So with that said, here's my top ten:
10. "Twist and Shout" - The Beatles
9. "In The Still of The Night" - The Five Satins
8. "Maggie Mae" - Rod Stewart
7. "One Way Out" - The Allman Brothers
6. "Thunder Road" - Bruce Springsteen
5. "Let's Stay Together" - Al Green
4. "Be My Baby" - The Ronettes
I'll pause here before announcing my top three. Like my greatest albums post, these seven songs are in no particular order. They can be rearranged at will, depending on the day. In fact, depending on the day, all of these songs (except "Be My Baby") might actually fall out of my top ten and be replaced by something else. If I wrote this post tomorrow some of these songs might be replaced by Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get it On", or Smokey Robinson and The Miracles' "The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage", or CCR's "Green River", or "Since I Don't Have You", by the Skyliners, or "Only The Lonely" by Roy Orbison, or any one of a couple dozen other great songs. These lists vary from person to person and from day to day.
As I noted parenthetically above, "Be My Baby" will never drop out of my top ten. It is a solid number four on my list and I nearly included it in my final four. I adore that song. It's "our song", my wife's and mine, and it has been since we began dating over twenty-five years ago. Actually, our first 'our song' was "Goodnite Sweetheart Goodnite", by the Spaniels, in the very early days of our love affair but it was soon replaced by "Be My Baby". The sound Phil Spector gets on this record is enormous, the epitome of his "wall of sound": the layered, buried, instrumentation pure assault; the vocals, all up front, pure seduction.
Okay, so what are my top three songs? The three songs competing for the title of greatest song of all time? Again, I won't choose among them because that's impossible. I can say that they seem to me the obvious high-points of recorded rock and roll music, undeniable in their greatness and grandeur. Here they are, in no particular order:
3. "Gimme Shelter" - The Rolling Stones
2. "Layla" - Derek and the Dominoes
1. "Like a Rolling Stone" - Bob Dylan
"Gimme Shelter" was given the 38th spot on RS's list, behind such songs as "Light My Fire", "Stairway to Heaven", "River Deep - Mountain High", and "Dock of the Bay", among other unworthies. Now, you already know my views on The Doors and Led Zeppelin so I won't elaborate here. But "River Deep - Mountain High" has always had an unduly high reputation among rock critics. Phil Spector was trying for the ultimate "wall of sound" and while he does achieve a deep, rich resonant sound here, the song itself is not that good. Years later it's clear that "Be My Baby", "Da Doo Ron Ron", "Baby I Love You", "He's a Rebel", and a dozen other Spector songs are much more satisfying records. And while I love Otis Redding, "Dock of the Bay" is way down on his list of great songs. It's only included on RS's list for its crossover value, the great soul artist making it big on the pop charts. In the liberal mentality of RS this fact elevates the song far above where it actually belongs on the list. Stripped of its cultural importance, "Dock of the Bay", judged purely as music, is overrated. Can anyone today listen to "Dock of the Bay" followed by "Gimme Shelter" and then truly maintain that the former is a better song than the latter? "Dock of the Bay", as lovely as it is, is a trifle, while "Gimme Shelter" is probably the toughest, most menacing song in rock and roll history - there's simply no getting out of its way. The long, slowly unfolding intro which culminates in Charlie Watts' rifle-shot drum beat, which in turn signals Keith Richard's rhythm guitar - the best rhythm guitar piece in rock and roll history - will never be topped.
"Layla" fares a bit better on RS's list, coming in at number 27. But it's a monumental song, rock and roll channeling Beethoven, and it makes most of the other songs ahead of it on the RS list seem somewhat slight. I mentioned Lester Bangs' marvelous description of Van Morrison's "Cyprus Avenue" in my Van post - "rapture, and despair." "Layla", turns this around in its two distinct sections - it's all despair in the first section, pure rapture in the second, a man wounded and then healed. The song would be deserving of the 27 spot if it consisted merely of the blazing, Eric Clapton and Duane Allman guitar-fueled first section. But it is in the sublime second section where it achieves a grandeur unlike any other rock and roll song. The stately piano is truly Beethovenesque and the transcendent guitar work is like heaven itself. Listen closely to the guitars behind that piano as the section culminates. It's like the angels singing. If I make it to heaven, I expect those guitars to be playing when St. Peter opens the gates.
Finally there is "Like a Rolling Stone" and here the RS list gets it right - it's number one on their list too. I talked about the song in my greatest album post and I suppose if you took a count, this song would be the one I've listened to most often in my life. I loved it when it was on the radio when I was a little boy and I rediscovered it when I was a young teen and began rediscovering rock and roll. It is clearly Dylan's best song, the moment when everything came together for him. He knew it, the band knew it, and they produced a song that will live for as long as music lives. It never fails, it never fades, it always delivers. I won't say it's a better song than "Gimme Shelter" or "Layla" or even "Be My Baby" but it is their equal and better than the rest.
So what have I left out? Where's Elvis, you may ask? Wasn't he the greatest rock and roller of them all? How can he not have a song in the top ten? Sorry, but no. "Hound Dog", his greatest single, doesn't make the cut. If Elvis ever made recorded music that deserved a spot on the list it was the bootlegs of his 1968 Christmas special, when he decided, the Beatles be damned, to prove to the world that he was still the greatest rocker of all time. The bootlegs of those sessions are some of the greatest music ever recorded - "Baby What You Want Me To Do", "Lawdy Miss Clawdy", "One Night With You", and "Trying To Get To You", can stand right alongside "Gimme Shelter" as some of the toughest, take-no-prisoners rock and roll ever. But few people have ever heard this music. You can get some of it here but not all the takes, and it's missing some of the best stuff. It's still great though. You want Elvis at his best, here it is.
What about The Beatles? They were the greatest band ever, so why aren't they represented right up top with Dylan and Clapton and the Stones? Well, they could be, very justifiably. It may be that their sheer voluminous output - so many great songs over so short a period - works against them in picking a single song for while they produced hundreds of great songs they produced no song that seems so much greater than all the rest. I've chosen "Twist and Shout" for my top ten list but I could just as easily have chosen "Money", or "What You're Doing", or "There's a Place" or "If I Fell" or "In My Life" or a dozen other songs. The Beatles' true value is in their prolific presence in our lives, the presence of their exuberant and joyful voices always there, never far away. During the 1960's you could not get away from them - they dominated the radio waves at the time - and they remain a presence to this day, no matter what song is playing. The Beatles were then, and remain, the greatest band in rock and roll history.
So there you have it ladies and gents, my guide to the greatest rock and roll. Discuss among yourselves.
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