Classic Rock Mega-Knockout: Finals!

Vote for your favorite song

  • Total voters
    21
  • Poll closed .
Classic Rock Mega-Knockout: 256 to 128, Round 20 of 32

These songs battle for the #13 position...

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"Gimme Shelter" (The Rolling Stones) [13] vs. "Karma Police" (Radiohead) [244]
"Gimme Shelter", live in 1969:

"Karma Police", live in 1997:

"Eleanor Rigby" (The Beatles) [116] vs. "Any Way You Want It" (Journey) [141]
"Eleanor Rigby", Paul live in 2010:

"Any Way You Want It", live in 1980:
 
"You Can't Always Get What You Want" (The Rolling Stones) [52] vs. "Who Do You Love" (George Thorogood) [308]
"You Can't Always Get What You Want", live in 1968:

"Who Do You Love", live in 1984:

"Tiny Dancer" (Elton John) [77] vs. "Sharp Dressed Man" (ZZ Top) [180]
"Tiny Dancer", live in 1971:

"Sharp Dressed Man", live in 1983:
(Song starts at 8:30. Sorry about that, but other versions of this vid have an audio/video sync problem.)

One day left for Round 17
Also open: Round 18 , Round 19
 
My votes:

Stones, easily. Gimme Shelter
Eleanor Rigby is a great song, but Journey has the better rock song. Any Way You Want It
Stones, easily. You Can't Always Get What You Want
I've played Sharp Dressed Man far too many times in bar bands. Tired of it. Tiny Dancer
 
Brigantium said:
But I mean in general, what is the Elton John appeal?
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He's written a lot of good songs. His backing band has always been top-notch, both on record and live. He may look dorky, but he puts on a hell of a show.

You may have missed this Elton vid I posted a few days back:

Before he was old, he was one of the best touring acts around.
 
Brigantium said:
But I mean in general, what is the Elton John appeal?
Click to expand...
I'm not a huge Elton fan, and I don't know that he wrote a "lot" of good songs, but his highs are pretty damn high. I recommend Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (title track, "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding," the original "Candle in the Wind," "Saturday Night's...") and Madman Across the Water (title track, "Tiny Dancer," "Levon"). "Madman" is probably my favorite Elton song. Prog fans will love "Funeral for a Friend."

It should be noted that Elton only wrote the music--Bernie Taupin wrote all the lyrics. There may be exceptions I don't know about, but that was the arrangement for the vast majority if not all of his songs.
 
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Yeah, I know, I've heard most of them, but I still can't work out why he seems to have such huge legend status. I always associate him (maybe wrongly) with light entertainment.
 
Cornfed Hick said:
It should be noted that Elton only wrote the music--Bernie Taupin wrote all the lyrics. There may be exceptions I don't know about, but that was the arrangement for the vast majority if not all of his songs.
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The biggest exception are Elton's 3 songs from The Lion King soundtrack. The lyricist for those was Tim Rice.

There are Elton songs where Elton worked with other lyricists, such as "Blue Eyes" - lyrics by Gary Osborne, single was US #12 and UK #8. But in the long run, all of Elton's big, well-remembered hits (except for Lion King) have lyrics by Taupin.

To my knowledge, Elton has never written his own lyrics.
 
They weren't dull in the 70s. Their whole Texas boogie thing works when they kick up the tempo. Fandango! is a superb example of such.

But, starting with Eliminator, they went to that moderate pace as their basic groove, and yes it gets very dull.

Also around that time their sound on record got a lot slicker, more processed. The earlier albums sounded more raw to me. Here's a good example of some good old ZZ:

 
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