Fabulously Flamboyant Friday: Ivory Cutlery’s Day Off Pt. 5

Greetings pop pickers and please be welcome to tonight’s Fabulously Flamboyant Friday and another of our fortnightly mastications upon the marshmallowy pillows of musical magnificence.

Tonight, dear reader, as we respectfully mark Toddle Waddle month, Ivory Cutlery (currently numb of buttock, sore of foot and tired of limb) will once again be taking the night off.

I’m currently labouring in “that there Lunnon” and I’m afraid the onerous real-world pressure of being a full-time useless pillock has somewhat limited my opportunities for detailed, rigorous, fact-checked research.*

*a transparent tissue of lies – all the hard work is done by Grok

Because of this, tonight’s missive will be a shoddy and shambolic affair; a puerile stream of consciousness, written rapidly in a succession of shabby hotels and deeply insalubrious crew catering areas.

And so, without further ado, laydees and gentlebodies, Fabulously Flamboyant Fridays proudly presents… um… some of my favourite… um… *shuffles frantically through notebook*… guitar intros! Not Arf!

And – as if that thrilling news wasn’t exciting enough – tonight’s missive is also an ‘istoric occasion, guv’nor, as Going Postal proudly presents Going Postal’s very first, inaugural, maiden, pioneering crowd-sourced Friday article*

*probably.

Many moons ago I asked the GP Nightshift to name their favourite guitar intros, then noted how many up-ticks each nomination achieved. I then filed the results away for future reference and completely forgot about them. Until, that is, last Sunday, when the wonderful Wooshy posted this <a href=”https://youtu.be/U7msFVhqpfU?feature=shared”>absolute banger</a> of a guitar performance and my memory was finally jogged.

So here we go with the top ten guitar intros as voted for by you – the glittering, gimp-suited Puffinati.

At No. 10 – Move over Spinal Tap. Here come AC/DC

This one is actually a cheat on my part. AC/DC did not actually make it into the Puffin top ten, but there is a very good reason for this: quite simply, they have too many great intros! Highway To Hell, Whole Lotta Rosie, Back In Black, Hells Bells, Thunderstruck and gawd knows how many more.

AC/DC are the guitar intro maestros, and although they received loads and loads of votes, they were spread over a great many songs, thus depriving them of the top ten placing they so richly deserved. So who was the real No.10 that got bumped by my shameless, South Thanet, vote-rigging shenanigans? <a href=”https://youtu.be/-KG2O5PSCSs?feature=shared”>Layla by Derek & The Dominos</a>.

Bring on the Mars bars! In at No. 9, it’s the Rolling Stones and Honky Tonk Women – A 1969 single, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and released shortly after the death of Brian Jones and the arrival of Mick Taylor. It became a No. 1 hit in both the UK and the US, and marked a change in musical direction for the Stones.

The original recorded version of the song was called Country Honk and appeared on the Let It Bleed album. The revised, raw, blusey version that appeared as Honky Tonk Women emerged after the Stones spent some time with the influential American guitarist, Ry Cooder. Over the years, many have suggested the iconic guitar intro is very suggestive of Cooder’s style. Richards however has stated the riff was his own. Regardless, it’s a cracking intro and well worth it’s inclusion in this puffin top ten.

The Rolling Stones – Honky Tonk Women

Fire up the Mudshark! At No.8 it’s Led Zeppelin with Whole Lotta Love, written by the band with a little help from Willie Dixon. Released on Led Zeppelin II (1969), it very quickly became one of their most iconic songs and remained one of the band’s live encores for many years. It was released as a single in the US (and reached No. 4 on the Billboard chart) but was never released as a single in the UK (well, not by Led Zeppelin). It was however covered and released as a UK single by CCS and famously became the theme tune of the BBC’s long running Top Of The Pops television series, which used an instrumental version of the song, re-recorded by various members of CCS and the Top Of The Pops Orchestra.

Led Zeppelin – Whole Lotta Love

Fetch the extra large bag of plaster for Cynthia: at No. 7 we have the legendary Jimi Hendrix with some genuinely iconic plank spankery – and my absolute favourite intro on this list.

Voodoo Child (Slight Return) was recorded for Jimi’s Electric Ladyland album. The track was recorded in May ’68 at the Record Plant in New York City and became one of Hendrix’s most celebrated tracks, a staple of his live performances and, quite frankly, a defining moment in rock history. It wasn’t released as a single during his lifetime, but reached No. 1, posthumously, in 1970.

Time for some good ol’ boys: at No. 6 it’s Lynyrd Skynyrd with Sweet Home Alabama. A whopping hit for the band and probably their most iconic track (I’m sure fans of Free Bird will dispute that claim). Released in 1974, it isn’t simply a classic southern rock anthem – it’s the classic southern rock anthem. Lynyrd Skynyrd didn’t just influence the genre, they defined the genre, and Sweet Home Alabama – a robust response to Neil Young’s Southern Man – quickly became the genre’s unofficial anthem and has remained so ever since.

Lynyrd Skynyrd – Sweet Home Alabama

At No. 5 we find Free with All Right Now, written by bassist Andy Fraser and singer Paul Rodgers and released in 1973 on the band’s third album, Fire & Water. It’s a stone cold classic rock staple and features some seriously iconic plank spankery from the ill-fated guitarist, Paul Kossoff. It reached No. 2 in the UK, No. 4 in the US and propelled both Free and their album, Fire & Water, to massive international success. Sadly, the boys in the band failed utterly to capitalise on their success, as Free disintegrated just a few months later.

Time for some liver and onions – as Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing (1985) snaffles our No. 4 position. Written by Mark Knopfler and Sting, the track pokes fun at the rock star lifestyle, critiques consumerism and caused controversy with its use of the term “faggots” in a somewhat derogatory manner.

Never understood the fuss myself – they are nutritious and delicious (not the vegetarian ones, obviously) and I’m very pleased to say my local butcher bakes them fresh every day. Nevertheless, despite the indignation, fuss and bother, the song became an MTV staple, hit No. 1 in the U.S., landed a Grammy for Dire Straits (Best Rock Performance, 1985), contains some sensational guitar work from Mark Knopfler (although, technically, not in the intro) and remains one of the band’s most successful and recognized tracks.

Dire Straits – Money For Nothing

At No. 3 the rock legends that are Deep Purple and – inevitably – Smoke on the Water (1972). Banned in countless guitar stores, the track is from their magnificent 1972 album, Machine Head. It is, without the slightest scintilla of doubt, one of rock’s most instantly recognizable tracks and its guitar driven intro, played by the magnificently talented Ritchie Blackmore, has been described as the “most famous guitar riff in rock history”.

The lyrics of the song recount a genuine incident at the Montreux Casino in Switzerland, where Deep Purple had planned to record some new material for their next album. However, during a live performance at the venue (by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention), “some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground”: A member of the audience fired a marine flare into the air, straight at the venerable venue’s wooden roof. Unsurprisingly, the roof caught fire, the building was destroyed, and a rock legend was born.

Sliding smoothly into our No. 2 slot (fnarr, fnarr) we find Sweet Child O’ Mine – the 1987 rock classic by the magnificently hedonistic Guns N’ Roses. Taken from their debut album, Appetite for Destruction, it’s a kick-arse rock ballad, driven by Slash’s iconic opening guitar riff. Apparently the song’s creation was almost accidental. It’s famous opening riff was simply a warm-up exercise that Slash played frequently. However, the boys in the band kept pushing him to develop it and, eventually, it evolved into the rollocking rock classic we know and love today.

And so we reach our No. 1 with the Eagles and their 1976 mega-hit, Hotel California. I was quite surprised to find this was our Puffin numero uno, at least as far as guitar intros go. It is of course a splendid intro, but it isn’t particularly bombastic or in-yer-face. But then I remembered these tracks were voted for by the GP Nightshift, so drink, inevitably, will have been consumed and attention to detail would have understandably been low (if not altogether absent). As a result, I suspect more than a few will have up-ticked this track, not because they thought the intro was magnificent or because of the late-night intro chat we were having, but simply because it’s a thoroughly cracking song.

Nevertheless, I still think it’s a very worthy winner. It does have a decent guitar intro and it also has one of the finest guitar outros in rock history (the finest being Free Bird, obviously).

The song was a huge international success for the Eagles and its lyrics comment (somewhat bitterly, I feel) upon the temptations, excesses, entrapment, addiction and disillusionment associated with the staggeringly hedonistic Californian rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle of the 1970s and, of course, the dark and seedy underbelly of the American Dream that came right along with it: “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave” – now that’s a killer line.

So, well done the Eagles and a big thank you to all the Nightshift Puffins who provided the meat for this article. I think that’s probably quite enough of my rambling for this week’s Fabulously Flamboyant Friday, so we’ll wrap things up for this evening with our No. 1 Puffin choice, recorded live when the Eagles were at the absolute peak of their very considerable musical powers.