Metallica was surprised at the hard rocking ability of Jethro Tull.
All points taken.
I usually associate John Waite with his early 80’s yearner Missing You, but his previous band The Babys had a real rocker called Head First that I always liked when I was a kid. Admittedly the only other song from that region I know is Back On My Feet Again, which, despite the prominent guitar in the chorus, is waaaaay too wimpifyed by the keyboards and feel-good, almost rehabby lyrics.
But the guitar in the HF chorus, however - epitome of ultra-catchy rockingness.
Can’t really bother to go through the JW/Babys catalogue to unearth another possible gem for the OP, so if there actually is one, I’d be curious to hear.
Phillip J. Fry sees what you did there.
Huh - never heard either of those tunes before - thanks for posting.
Admittedly, for the Change video, the lip-syncing gal on the building’s ledge was maybe a little disrtracting, but the tidy Groucho resolution seemed to work.
I just checked out the link to “Head First,” and I totally remember that song as well! And, found that Babys song I couldn’t remember the name of… Isn’t it Time
Agreed.
I got three for y’all:
- Neil Young’s “Hey Hey, My My”. No mellow country/folk/rock meanderings here. No sir. Just ball-droppingly heavy distortion and intensity.
- ABBA*'s “I Know There’s Something Going On”. Phil Collins with the gated reverb crashing, and Daryl Stuermer grinding out a sinister guitar sound.
*Yeah, I know it’s only one band member from ABBA (Anni-Frid Lyngstad), but if “Dirty Laundry” can be considered an Eagles song, we can stretch a bit to cover this one as well.
3) Billy Joel’s “Close to the Borderline”. Yes, that Billy Joel. But this is the hardest tune off the only album of his where he even tried dropping his soft/schmaltz jazz leanings in favor of rocking out. No keyboards! Two guitars (playing off each other in a linked solo)! You’ll never hear another Billy Joel tune like this one (it’s the only tune of his I can actually stand listening to nowadays).
But there have always been two sides of the coin with Neil Young: mellow folk/country rock and mind-blasting loud feedback-driven hard rock. I could easily link to two hundred mellow songs and two hundred rockers from his career.
Exempli gratia:
Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World, the legendary SNL performance.
I think the reason that most people think of Neil first as a soft rocker is the fact that “Heart Of Gold” was his greatest hit and the only song many people know. But it’s far from the truth, Neil Young is a legend of noise rock too.
“Every Time I Think of You” may be remembered by those of us of a certain age. (John Waite: “But maybe I was wrong, not knowing how our love should go.” Extremely ‘70’s-sounding female backup singers: “How our love, how our love should go.”) It’s sort of all over the place in terms of styles. But the fade-out at the end is AWESOME. Fantastic, rockin’ horns.
My nomination is an otherwise unknown track by Kansas. Pretty much after most of their hits had passed, Steve Walsh came back to unreplace his former replacement as lead singer, and Steve Morse came aboard as a guitarist for one album. That album (“Power”) started off with a tune called “Silhouettes in Disguse” that was designed to show off the new guitar guy and the harder sound he brought. And boy, does it.
Fair enough. (And “Keep On Rockin’ in the Free World” is a great tune - I remember jammin’ that back when it came out in '89.) However, two stipulations:
- I will defer to your greater knowledge of Mr. Young’s body of work. However, as someone who grew up listening to classic rock radio (before there was “classic rock”), I gotta say that when the DJ’s would play some of his other rockers (not the folk/country) stuff, “Hey Hey, My My” stuck out like a sore thumb. I’m guessing that most casual fans would be a bit surprised by the contrast with his other songs that actually got radio airplay.
And for what it’s worth, I’m not the only one who has remarked on the tune’s distinctiveness. From the Wiki link on the album (Rust Never Sleeps):
“The album is considered a precursor of grunge music and many grunge artists have said they were inspired by Young’s distorted guitars on the B side to this album.”
2) The OP did specify that they were looking for examples that surprised “you”. So while you may not have been surprised by “Hey Hey, My My”, I certainly was… 
Here’s a cheaty example: Ultravox
It’s a cheat because Ultravox had a whole different (and to my mind, far better) life before Midge Ure turned up. I don’t know how well the early stuff is known now - when I first new them, this is what they were most famous for: Hiroshima Mon Amour.
(Listening to it now, after many years, it sounds strangely reminiscent of “Vienna”. How odd.)
j
Some other rockin Niel Young numbers:
When You Dance I Can Really Love
Southern Man
I’ve always told people that Are You Ready For the Country is the heaviest-ever country song.
There was a thread in the past about, “what song do you use as an alarm.” Something like that.
I’m a man - Chicago. If you’re not awake by the time the guitars hit, you’re probably dead/comatose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvmeEyVd5w8
Don McLean is basically a folk singer, but American Pie rocks!
Yes, but every song by the Donnas is hard rocking.
The original by Spencer Davis (and Steve Winwood) rocks much harder.
Well, this surprised me. I stumbled across a pretty good cover of “Jesus is Just Alright” by the Jay Sekulow band.
Jay Sekulow, if you didn't watch the impeachment trial, is Trump's attorney. I notice that Sekulow does not appear to sing, and that there is a second drummer, and the camera cuts around a lot but never quite lets you see Sekulow do anything intricate, so I'm guessing this is a vanity project where he pays good musicians and singers a lot of money to let him pretend to play.I waited for the hard rocking, it never came. 
I don’t know if this is exactly what the OP had in mind, but ‘Year of the Knife’ by Tears for Fears definitely rocks more than I expected it to. It’s in regular rotation on my favorites list.
Damn, that really is pretty good. It has a Thin Lizzy / T-Rex vibe, and I dig it totally. If I heard it without context I wouldn’t even think it was Billy Joel at all.
He didn’t even wear his heavy metal outfit.
As a huge fan of most of Mr. Young’s work (thanks to my dad), I agree with you.
The funny thing for me, though? My first exposure to Neil Young was a concert (I don’t know if it was a VHS or on HBO or something) during his Trans era. So I saw this short haired mid-30s dude with a vocoder performing “Sample and Hold.” So, I was surprised that was the same long haired guy on the cover of my dad’s '60s/'70s LPs or the “Rocking” grunge godfather of the late '80s/90s. Mix in Harvest Moon (not Harvest), and if you are familiar at all with his '80s Geffen output you know he was all over the place. In addition to Crazy Horse and CSN/Y, he’s done entire albums with Booker T and the MGs, Pearl Jam, his band with Willie Nelson’s son, and all kinds of other stuff. he’s been all over the place with styles.