What is the greatest classic rock lyric or quote of all time? Let’s hear some good ones and not the cliche lyrics weve all heard.
Lay lady lay, lay upon my big brass bed.
I nominate nearly everything by Frank Zappa. “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow” in its entirety is a given.
Or you could take the classic rock lyrics:
“Bay-buh, bay-buh
Woh Bay-buh, bay-buh
(scat singing) Bay-buh
Woh, bay-buh.
Thank ya, folks.”
- Ray Stevens, Gitarzan
“Met a cheerleader/was a real young bleeder…” “…you don’t know nuthin’/till you’re down on a muffin…”
If Howard Stern said those things, there would be hell to play, but Steven Tyler sings them fifty times a day on your local FM station 
I second FZ, although, if we’re talking non-mainstream, The Cramps’ Lux Interior’s lyrics are as good as Franks, if not even better…my favorite Lux Line at the moment…
“There ain’t no freckles on that fish/you’re like Dr. Jekyl with a death wish”
or How 'bout:
"louie, louie, louie, lou-i/the bird’s the word and do you know why?
You gotta beat it with a stick. you gotta beat it 'til it’s thick/you gotta live until you’re dead. you gotta rock 'til you see red. Now do you understand? I’m a garbageman.
Now THATS poetry, baby!
Jon
I don’t know if The Beatles are considered classic rock, but if they aren’t they better be now. Anyway, this song rocks.
Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, they slither wildly as they make their way across the universe pools of sorrow waves are difting through myopen mind possing and coressing me…
Inmages of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes they call me across the universe…
Thats all i remember from the song. Very very good song.
“Cause the record company, Rosie … just gave me a big advance.”
Leather boots are still the style for manly footwear.
Lovely. Stupid, but lovely.
Moving this to Cafe Society.
I know a mouse and he hasn’t got a house,
I dunno why I call him Gerald.
He’s getting rather old, but he’s a good mouse.
(Syd Barrett) Pink Floyd, “Bike”
Gee, I never knew Merle Haggard was considered “classic rock”.
But be that as it may (and I doubt if it ever was), rock’n’roll always had a ‘don’t give a damn’, ‘do what I want’ ‘screw you’ kind of attitude.
With that sentiment in mind how about:
“Hope I die before I get old” - My Generation
“Just turned 18 and I don’t mind dying” - Who Do You Love
“My pulse is beatin’ faster And I’m headin’ for disaster” - You Gotta Get Me To The World On Time (Electric Prunes)
“When I was young, people spoke for their morality, all the things they said were wrong are what I want to be” - Over Under Sideways Down (Yardbirds)
“And if California Slides into the Ocean,
Like the mystics and statistics say it will,
I predict this motel will be standing,
Until I pay my bill…”
- “Desperadoes Under the Eaves”, Warren Zevon
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.
Pink Floyd
Maybe not the greatest but I love it anyways:
Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar. You’re gonna go far, fly high,
You’re never gonna die, you’re gonna make it if you try; they’re gonna love you.
Well I’ve always had a deep respect, and I mean that most sincerely.
The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think. Oh by the way, which one’s Pink?
I remember as a kid asking my older brother to play “that gravy train song”. Just loved the sound.
Which is even better with the lead-in lines:
Tell your daddy this is his last chance
To get his daughter in a fine romance
I went back to my mother
I said, “I’m crazy, ma help me”
She said, “I know how it feels, son,
cause it runs in the family”
The Who 5:15
That’s from The Real Me, but both that and 5:15 have some great lyrics.
Deep lyrics here, folks…:
“I know a lot of things, and I don’t know a lot of other things, yeah, yeah, yeah”
You’ve Got to Stand For Something by John Cougar Mellencamp
- Jinx
Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce!
“You ain’t a beauty, but, hey, you’re all right
And that’s all right with me”
The wise and wonderful AC/DC, quoted from Back in Black, I believe:
“My balls are always bouncing to the left and to the right,
It’s my believe that my big balls should be held every night.”
Does anyone else think it’s cool that Monkeypants and Another Primate are sharing a thread with flamingbananas?
(You surrealists can throw that sentence into the bathtub along with fishbicycle and trip on the lightbulb joke you heard last week.)