For this week’s tunes I am going with a final (for now) collection of great intros. There are so many I could play for this and I may well come back to the theme (possibly soon) to share some more. But for now, here are five more for your listening pleasure.

I’m starting with two of my favourite bands, and as far as can tell I haven’t played either of these songs before. I’d have bet a lot on my having done so, but apparently not. Here’s the first one:

As the video shows, that was a track on Steely Dan’s first album, Can’t Buy A Thrill, which was released in the US in November 1972, shortly after I started at uni: we eventually got it in January 1973. It reached #17 in the US and #38 in the UK, but I’ve always thought it should have gone much higher: it is, simply, the best debut album I know. All ten tracks are incredible and it would be hard to pick a favourite, even if my life depended on it. The two tracks that were taken as singles from it were both big hits in the US: Do It Again got to #6 and this one, Reelin’ In The Years, made #11. Do It Again also made the UK singles charts (#39) but sadly for me this one didn’t. I still go back to this album often, it is just so very good, and brings back happy memories of an entire bus load of students playing air guitar to this intro on the late night service back to the off campus residences!

Like I said with Steely Dan this next one comes from another favourite band, and I’m equally surprised that I have no record of having played it before. I really thought I had! With such a well known intro I think it is about time that I did:

Losing My Religion was released in February 1991 as the lead single from R.E.M’s seventh album, Out Of Time, which followed in March. As a single this made #4 in the US and #19 in the UK, but the album was a much bigger story. All of their previous albums had made the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, generally placed higher in the US than they were here, but this was the album that turned the band into megastars. It got to #1 in both the US and the UK, as well as in Austria, Canada and the Netherlands, and went on to sell more than 18m copies worldwide, 4m of those in the US, 1.8m here in the UK and 1.3m in Germany, where it peaked at #2. As with the Steely Dan album, this is one I still go back to now, as it is a fantastic record with a whole host of great tracks.

This next one wasn’t released as a single – they weren’t really a singles band – but it is well known and has been a staple of their live shows, as this performance from their reunion at the Live 8 concert demonstrates:

Pink Floyd released their ninth album, Wish You Were Here, in September 1975. It was following a hard act, as their previous record was Dark Side Of The Moon, which had been #1 in many countries – though only #2 in the UK, despite selling more than 4m of its worldwide 45m copies here. Wish You Were Here did make #1 in the UK, as well as in the US and many other countries. In comparison it was a relatively poor seller: just the 20m copies worldwide, including more than 6m in the US. Not bad for an also ran! The falling out between Roger Waters and David Gilmour has been well documented, and it took the inimitable negotiating skills of Bob Geldof to get the band to reunite for the Live 8 show in July 2005, after being estranged for twenty years. This was one of the five songs they played that night: it was a wonderful show, and I’ll admit to shedding a tear to see them together again after so many years apart, and I just had to play the video of that performance rather than any of the others I could have chosen.

This next one is another that will be familiar to many:

The Who released Baba O’Riley as the opening track on their fifth album, Who’s Next, in August 1971. The album got to #4 in the US and was #1 in the UK – still their only chart topper here, either in singles or albums. You might have expected their two rock opera albums, Tommy and Quadrophenia, to have hit the top here, but both ‘only’ got to #2. This one wasn’t released as single in either the US or the UK, but did come out in parts of Europe, making #11 in the Netherlands. This video was filmed seven years later at Shepperton Studios (on 25 May 1978) in front of an invited audience including members of The Pretenders, Generation X, the Rich Kids and the Sex Pistols and was included in a documentary made by Jeff Stein, The Kids Are Alright. I always prefer to play ‘action’ videos if I can but almost didn’t with this one, as the violin on the record, played by Dave Arbus (of the band East Of Eden), was a little lost in this performance but it is still a great song however you cut it!

Today’s closing tune is another with a great intro, and one of the best music videos ever made:

I Want To Break Free was released on Queen’s eleventh album, The Works, in February 1984. The album reached #2 in the UK but only got to #23 in the US – after earlier top ten albums over there their star had begun to wane a little, though it still sold 500k copies over there, compared with 300k here. This was the second track from the album to be released as a single, in April 1984, following Radio Gaga (another with a great and recognisable intro). It peaked at #3 in the UK and #45 in the US, but did make #1 in South Africa and in several countries across Europe: it sold more than 1.2m copies in the UK and 1m in the US, despite that relatively low chart placing, with a further 500k in Germany. The song is largely known for this video: all the band members dressed in drag, a concept proposed by drummer Roger Taylor, which parodied the long-running British soap opera Coronation Street. Whereas the parody was acclaimed in the United Kingdom, where cross-dressing is a popular theme in British comedy, it caused controversy in the United States. Rolling Stone magazine commented: “Brit fans got the joke, but fans in America viewed the cross-dressing as a coming-out for Mercury, who wore a wig and fake breasts in the video and onstage (the video was banned by MTV and rocks were hurled at Mercury during a concert in Brazil). Conversely, in most of the rest of Europe, the song was viewed as an anthem of resistance against political oppression.” Each to their own, I guess.

That’s it for this week and for the intros, for now. I have something different planned for next week, but there are so many songs with great intros that I’m sure I’ll return to this at some point. I’ll be back in a couple of days, so until then enjoy your week and stay out of the wind and rain! Take care 😊🎶