One afternoon a few weeks ago my friend Sharon came into Buzzy’s Country Store and noted that she had been listening to the top songs of the 70s Decade on her car radio. I tuned the Buzzy radio into the station she had been listening to and we caught the top 10 as follows:
When Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World” came on, the folks in Buzzy’s all laughed and smiled as the opening line “Jeremiah was a bullfrog” played. They then nodded along and commented on how much they liked that song.
With the 2 February passing of the fella who sang that lyric Chuck Negron, it got me thinking about the topic of rock’s greatest opening lines.
I had my personal favorites, but I hit up the old google machine to see what others had to say about it. I was a little disappointed that “Jeremiah was a bull frog” did not get mentioned on any of the lists that I reviewed, but I still have it in my top five. As you can imagine there was a wide variety of answers found in my google search. For example here’s one list to get you started seeing what some consider to be the most iconic/greatest of rock opening lines (click here.)
That “Please allow me to introduce myself” line from Mick gets mentioned in a lot of these best-of lists, but I could never get into it. I guess all of my Catholic-based fear of the devil would never allow me to have some courtesy and give the bad boy his due nor listen to a song about him. For the longest time I simply would not listen to it whenever I heard that opening line. To this day, Beggar’s Banquet, which featured the tune as its lead song, is still the only Stones album that I do not own. Sympathy my ass! I used all of my well learned politeness to avoid anything of the kind. Please allow me to just say go back to hell!
On the other hand, I did not have any problem with another Stones’ tune “Jumping Jack Flash” and its great opening line(s) of “Watch it! I was born in a crossfire hurricane.” Even though I had no clue what a crossfire hurricane is or was, I just liked the way it sounded. (Note that years later, somebody in the FBI must have also been a Stones fan to have come up with “Crossfire Hurricane” as a code name for their investigation of you know who and his Russian connections (click here.)
As for my 3 other nominees for best opening rock song lines I will stick with “You ain’t nothing but a hound dog,” “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha wipeout” (Safaris,) and my all time Number 1 – “Turn it up.” I hear you saying “Huh?” But really, turn it up and you will hear Ronnie saying it.
As an honorable mention, I always did like hearing the Temptations’ David Ruffian begging and opening with his “I know you want to leave me.” Since it is a twofer, here is that one too: