Hehehe, nope, not me. His output has always been in the “Ok, it’s very well done, but I don’t want to seek out more of it. I get far too much from the radio, and I spin the dial 90% of the time.” realm for myself.
So yeah, if you want to make money, IGNORE ME!
Same thing for me, but a lot of other people disagree and that’s why the Foo Fighters have been a mega-seller and Dave Grohl has worked with so many other musicians.
This was the Foo Fighters’ first hit, and I knew the first time I heard this song, and saw the video, that they were NOT Nirvana v. 2.0.
The first song I heard from them was This Is A Call, and I bought the album before I knew it was the drummer from Nirvana. But I didn’t think they’d be huge, and more importantly, the stuff I liked from the album was the stuff that was more like Nirvana like This Is A Call and For All The Cows, which wasn’t the stuff that they did that made them huge.
I also mispegged Blink 182, but I came closest in my life to instantly recognizing that a band would become huge. When I first heard Dammit I thought “these guys should become huge, because this is just a really fun song, but unfortunately they’ll be a flash in the pan.”
My friend-of-a-friend was a club operator. His DJ’s had to put on non-dancing tracks – because the owner wanted people to spend money at the bar.
FWIW, I did not hear Stairway at all in 1971-72. It just wasn’t played on the pop stations here. I think it eventually turned up on the easy listening stations, and spread from there.
I did hear Elton John’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and immediately recognized it as easily the best thing Elton John had ever done. I’d been off the grid for a while. Learning that it was a cover version was my first intimation that perhaps the Beatles were more than just a manufactured pop group.
I’m not old enough to remember it from 1971. But I’m old enough to remember it from a few years later from when it was big but not legendary. It’s a long time ago to remember but I’m pretty sure I thought it was going to be legendary from the first time I heard it.
I’m no expert in Elton John or the Beatles, but I’m 99.9% Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was NOT Elton John and WAS Beatles.
Elton released a cover of LitSwD which hit #1. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
On easy listening stations? That’s interesting. Around here, I can’t imagine Stairway being on those stations. Part of the song, sure, but it gets way too rockin by the end.
This appears to clear up some confusion I’ve had reading this thread, regarding whether Stairway was ever released as a single.
I had thought it was, because around 1975, a radio station in my hometown held a contest in which listeners mailed in votes for their all-time favorite single, and all-time favorite album cut. Stairway won both categories. I remember this vividly: I was just getting a band together, and after this contest, every rock band pretty much had to learn Stairway, or at least attempt it.
So, what may have happened: someone at the radio station, having received the promotional copy, assumed that it had at some point been released as a single. So the station included it in the ‘singles’ category of the poll.
Wow. I started listening to Elton John with his eponymous album in 1970. “Your Song” struck me as an instant classic. Yeah, even more so than “Stairway.” Unlike the latter I’ve never gotten tired of listening to it in 50 years.
By the time “Lucy” was released as a non-album single, he had done an additional half-dozen major albums. “Lucy” wouldn’t be in the top ten of tracks, IMO.
His excesses and overproduction since have retrospectively diminished him. That run of seven albums is among the best in rock history. They’re littered with cuts that weren’t released as singles but are just as great, if not better, than the ones everybody remembers instantly. He seldom gets the credit he deserves.
Besides, his Who pastiche, “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” is a better cover than “Lucy.” Even if the Who covered it rather than the other way round.
I was five when it came out, so obviously not aware of such a concept. Back then, in SoCal anyway, the popular AM station played a mix of genres. The only time I listened to the radio at that age was riding in the car with my family. STH could have been sandwiched between Cher and The Osmonds. I remember finding it strange, and, more than that, boring. I liked poppy, fun songs you could dance and sing along with.
Sorry, I know the OP asked about rock radio.
Yeah. Madman Across the Water, Tumbleweed Connection, and Honky Chateau are still extremely listenable. Goodbye Yellowbrick Road was when I stopped listening to Elton John completely and haven’t found a reason to start again.
That shows what I know about it. It WAS the Beatles first though, yes? Ignorance fought on sir Elton though.
Eh. It’s okay, but it can’t hold a candle to Green Grass and High Tides. Although In a Gadda Da Vida is still the undisputed champ.
…wait, this isn’t the “songs you used to put on repeat in a futile attempt to drown out an incredibly aggravating office environment during that one really crappy job” thread? Sorry, still a bit disoriented from this Moderna vaccine. 
Seriously, though, it got regular play on my old classic rock station, and I never thought it was anything special. This actually sounded like one of those deals where it sounded kinda deep and meaningful, and somewhere along the way, for whatever reason, fans decided that it should be deep and meaningful, and, well, fandoms, am I right?
It’s nice and mellow, though, and that’s plenty good in my book. Hell, I’d take it over a lot of other songs from the era that I’ve been forced to listen to.
Feel pretty much the same about Freebird, BTW. 
I hated it from the moment I heard it and still do. I was familiar with Spirit’s “Taurus” and thought “what a ripoff.”
Lol
…ol
My “this is gonna be a big hit” moments were spaced years apart: U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love,” in the mid-80s (on Scott Muni’s show on WNEW New York), and “Get Lucky” in the early 2010s, on some station in Kansas.
The only time I saw Led Zeppelin in concert was in 1972 at a covered rodeo stadium in Woodinville, Washington. Stairway and Immigrant Song were mashed together into a 30 minute encore to end the show. I was 15 at the time. The next day I bought 3 of their first 4 albums and all were played over and over. The volume was always nudged up a bit for STH.