Elton John – Bennie and the Jets
Crowd noise, then piano chord on Beat 1, bass guitar glissando on Beat 2, kick drum on Beat 3, Beats 4 and 5 are silent, song starts.
(Yeah, it’s a bit of a stretch.)
Elton John – Bennie and the Jets
Crowd noise, then piano chord on Beat 1, bass guitar glissando on Beat 2, kick drum on Beat 3, Beats 4 and 5 are silent, song starts.
(Yeah, it’s a bit of a stretch.)
On N.W.A.'s EP, MC Ren goes, “It goes one for the treble, two for the bass / She’s got nut all over her face” 
Beat you to it. Post 13 or 14.
Ed King counts to only 3 and a pause for Sweet Home Alabama
I’m just listening to X-Ray Spex’ wonderful album “Germ Free Adolescents”, and in “Genetic Engineering”, Poly Styrene also counts in in German. It was seemingly a thing for punk bands.
That’s what I get for surfing at 2 a.m. I miss things.
Lemmy, Slim Jim, and Danny B performing Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away”
“2,3,4…(musical miscue, laugh…) 2,4,5…”
OutKast’s “Hey Ya!” starts off “1, 2, 3, huh!” (u as in put) – but the actual beats counted off are 2, 3, 4, and 1. (Or, if you believe Andre 3000 when he says the song’s written in 11/2, the beats are 10.5, 11, 11.5, and 1.)
Aimee Mann’s “Long Shot” starts with “5… 6… 7 . . . . 50,” which is unrelated in tempo and start time to the song.
None of the cute girls at Tom and Donovan’s Reggae Aestheticians’ Ball Annual Potfest believed me when I claimed that I wrote those immortal rock ‘n’ roll lyrics “one, two, a-one two three four!”
That’s okay. Though if they had, I would’ve told them about getting 1/10th cent each time a band used that (and bought a keg with some of my royalties)…
I remember seeing the Professor live in concert, when he entered the Hall climbing down off the balcony, but never did see him playing the Hardart.
I saw him a few times, including climbing down from the balcony. I even came in late once so I’d get called out by his assistant. But alas, no Hardart.
And to add to this thread, there’s Do It Yourself by Bill Sutton, in which he describes the process of building his own mainframe computer. Fast forward to 3:30 to hear the count-off, but it will make even less sense out of context.
“Love for Sale” by Talking Heads begins with David Byrne hoarsely counting “One! Two!” then laughing and counting “One, two, three!” before the band comes in.
Speaking of “A Day in the Life,” when the Beatles recorded the basic track, they left some room in the arrangement for the orchestral buildups that would come later. To keep time through these sections, their roadie Mal Evans counted off the bar numbers as they passed, which you can hear on the finished master.
The best mid-song count-in is, of course, “Cold Sweat” by James Brown (count starts around 5:12).
“Take Me Out to the Ballgame” where it’s “One, two, three strikes you’re out!”
I’d really like to try the count in to some unsuspecting dance crew, off hours, getting them up and dancing. “Wait – what?!?”
Mal Evans counting out the 24-bar bridge in “A Day in the Life”. More of bookmarking than a start-off. The EMI engineer getting stuck at “Number 9”.
Somebody did all the Beatles count-ins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrSG1mgAYNo
A good wretched screamy 1-2-3-4 from old Vancouver punk band Kreviss (seven girls, one guy)
On 8-track!
Brown also did a good count in on Sex Machine, which was covered in a very non-Brownian fashion by The Flying Lizards.