Paul Fitzpatrick: June 2026

Mount Rushmore, a monument to the first 150 years of American History may have been around for a while, but Mt Rushmore as pop culture jargon (to describe the top four of any category) is fairly recent…. and got me thinking about my personal ‘Mt Rushmore’s’ in a musical sense.

I think there’s enough ‘Best Band’, ‘Best Song’ listings out there, so my second Mt Rushmore is ‘70s; Opening Album Tracks’.

Life was simpler before streaming, you’d place the needle on the first track of any new album, kick back, listen to side one, and then rinse and repeat for side two.

Back in the day, investing in a new album was a financial commitment, considering it took five weeks worth of pocket money to afford one. No surprise then, that there was always a hint of nervous energy and adventure as you placed the needle on track one.

The exception of course was albums where the opening track had already been released as a single, a common record label strategy.
“Brown Sugar” from Sticky Fingers, “Hurricane” from Dylan’s Desire, Hotel California by the Eagles, Funkadelic’s “One Nation Under a Groove” and Wings “Band on the Run” were all great album intros, but, on the basis that we already knew how good they were, they can all be considered ‘safe landings’, in opening track terms.

Perhaps jeopardy played a part, but there was a thrill in being blown away by an opening track you’d never heard before… euphoria and relief in one.

So that’s the criteria for my four Mt Rushmore selections… opening tracks that took my breath away on first listen.

1) Led Zeppelin – Immigrant Song

I had my first romantic relationship when I was fifteen, unsurprisingly it was a girl from school. Not only was she smart, pretty and funny, she also sported a tartan scarf and an airforce blue Gloverall duffle coat which in 1973, officially made her cool… I was smitten!

I remember she invited me to her house after school for tea one day which was a bit daunting, meeting the parents and all that.
We were due to have a bit of us-time before her parents came home from work. However, just as we were making ourselves comfortable on the family sofa, I spotted the cover of Led Zeppelin 3, which threw me. My beau wasn’t a rock chick and as it turned out she had no idea where the album had appeared from. To her knowledge there was no one living in the house who had any interest in Zep.

Totally sidetracked, I asked if we could play the album and she happily obliged, placing the needle on track one, then… WOW, the “Immigrant Song” blasted out the speakers and I was instantly transported to Valhalla.

Bonham’s thunderous drums, the staccato guitar riff by Jimmy Page and Plant’s wails – the hammer of the gods indeed!

I suddenly got why the band were so lauded and why all the older kids at school waxed lyrical about them.
Whenever I hear it, I still think about that first listen, I think about the lovely tea we had (beef olives and peach melba) and I remember looking round the dinner table trying to work out who the secret Zep fan was… it’s still a mystery.

Elton John – Love Lies Bleeding

My friend Jay and I bonded over a few things when we were teenagers but the one passion we shared above all else was music. We were all into music but Jay and I just happened to be a bit more forensic and anal about it.

Jay, being a bit older, left school and started working before me. Flushed with disposable income, the majority of it was spent building an impressive music collection. He would often turn up at my house on a Friday straight from work, with newly purchased albums so we could experience listening to them together for the first time.

One time he turned up concealing a freshly purchased album, plonked it on my stereo and asked me to guess who it was by listening to the first track. Unbeknown to me the track was “Funeral For A Friend“, the opener on Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

There are no vocals on the first six minutes of “Funeral for a Friend” and there were no initial clues to these ears that it was by the Rocket Man.
I think I spent the first five minutes trotting out every obscure prog rock band I could think of until Elton’s vocals kicked in and the penny dropped. To say I was stunned that this 11 minute prog epic was being performed by the same guy who sang “Crocodile Rock” was an understatement.

It’s still one of my top 3 Elton tracks, and showcases just how good that Elton John band were.

David Bowie – “Five Years”

I’ve written before about the summer of 72′ and how seismic it was for an impressionable 14-year-old to happen upon Bowie, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople and Alice Cooper in the space of a few Top of the Pops episodes.

Bowie was an interesting one, he’d already had a big hit in the 60’s with “Space Oddity” but had been written off as a one hit wonder. The fact that he’d gone on to record The Man Who Sold the World and the majestical Hunky Dory hadn’t even registered with his new fan base.
As far as we were concerned The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust was his debut album.

My pal Barry Smart had bought the album after that famous “Starman” TOTP appearance and invited a couple of us over to give it a listen. As he put the needle on the first track we weren’t sure what to expect. What we didn’t anticipate from the new Prince of Glam was a stripped down song about the apocalypse.

But what a song it was.

The heartbeat drum intro by Woody Woodmansey the clever little bass fills by Trevor Bolder, the melodic piano by Ronson, and Bowie with his 12 string, wailing about “cops kissing priests” and “queers throwing up at the sight of that”.

If “The Immigrant Song” was an explosion that blew me off the sofa, “Five Years” was a musical drama that drew me into the speakers.

Earth, Wind & Fire – “In the Stone”

1979 was a strange year for music. Punk was on its way out with the Pistols imploding and the Clash edging towards ‘stadium-rock’. Meanwhile, Disco, the other genre of the day, was on its last legs, infiltrated by parodies and white boys with no soul.
To add to the anarchy, digital recording with its soulless drum machines and synthesisation of ‘real’ instruments was starting to take hold.

You had to know things were tough when Stevie Wonder was struggling.

Around the same time that Earth, Wind & Fire released I AM, Stevie Wonder released his long awaited follow up to the sensational Songs in the Key of Life.

I bought Stevie’s new album the day it came out. Rushed home in gleeful anticipation, placed the needle on track one, skipped to track two, then track three and wondered if there were in fact two Stevie Wonder’s on Motown’s roster.
The genius who wrote “Superstition”, and the other one, the “tonight I’m going to be Stevie Wonder” ‘Stars in Their Eyes‘ imposter, playing a Woolworths Bontempi organ.

To cut a long arduous album short there are twenty tracks on Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants and only three of them are worth a listen.

The following day I tried that old trick of returning the album to the record shop, but the owner who was normally quite relaxed about those things already knew he was going to be stuck with a mountain of them

Stevie’s quality control was usually in the high nineties, so this was some fall from grace and ensured that musically I never took anything for granted again.
(*Stevie would make a comeback of sorts with 1980’s Hotter Than July, but in truth he never rediscovered the genius of Innervisions, Talking Book & Songs in the Key of Life)

At the time, the only artists I held in as high a regard as Stevie, were Earth, Wind & Fire.
Like Stevie they had been on a hot streak and their previous release All ‘n All, was, and still is, one of my favourite albums.

Prior to the albums release the band had already released a couple of singles from I AM, which sounded a bit too polished to me. So, there was a hint of trepidation as I placed the needle on track one: “In the Stone”…. I couldn’t bear another Stevie trauma.

As it happens, I shouldn’t have worried, as soon as I heard those horns and Paulinho Da Costa’s percussion I knew everything was going to be alright.
EW&F’s shtick has always been a hybrid of soul, funk, afrobeat and latin rhythms and “In the Stone” absolutely nails the brief.

Honourable Mentions:

Roxy Music: Do the Strand

Everyone loved “Virginia Plane” which was bizarrely omitted from Roxy’s debut album, a release that had some notable high points and a few acquired tastes. They went and did it again with their follow up album, For Your Pleasure, by releasing a fantastic single, “Pyjamarama”, and then excluding it from the album…. Idiots!
Still, we bought the album anyway, put the needle on track one and when “Do the Strand” emanated from the speakers all was forgiven.

AWB – You Got It

I remember reading about this Scottish band who were having success in America with an instrumental “Pick up the Pieces”. I wondered why I’d never heard of them and presumed they were a novelty act, as most instrumental hits were in those days.
As it happened I liked “Pick up the Pieces”, loved the artwork of the corresponding album and as they were local lads, I thought I’d give the album a spin.
Expectations were low as I placed the needle on track one, but three and a half minutes later I was hooked. “You Got It” was the blue-eyed-soul masterpiece I never knew I needed.

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