Welp, there goes the rest of MY night. I’m off to make an instrumental playlist, largely consisting of the songs here.
I have yet to read the entire thread, but DAMN, you guys racked up a shitload of my classic picks. Here’s one I don’t THINK will be in the thread above. If so, forgive me.
The Red Elvises - El Niño
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBFLATloe0I
Ronnie Montrose hasn’t been mentioned yet. Here’s one from his first solo album:Mandolina
Alan Parsons - I Robot, Sirius, The Gold Bug, Mammagamma
Billy Preston - Outta-Space
Booter T & The MG’s - Time is Tight, Green Onions (probably mentioned)
If we are still entertaining a few (spoken) words in a song, then this is a little known gem by Roy Buchanan:
Saw Roy perform this once. ALMOST put that in my post, but it has several sentences as a spoken intro. I think it should count though.
I linked to the version I meant, the one by Paul Mauriat, excessively popular in 1967-68. I was a kid and I loved it back then. 
That’s over the line dude. Love the song but the words are really important to me.
I don’t recall the names, but I know that both The Doobie Brothers and Heart had instrumental acoustic guitar tunes on their albums.
Don’t I know. We used to sing it in 5th grade, along with Sloop John B, Jean, and raindrops are fallin on my head.
Also, I’m not sure that the earlier mention of"Rise" by Herb Alpert is completely appropriate on a classic rock list (purists would call it disco or pop). if you include that song, however, you also have to add “Feels So Good” by Chuck Mangione (which has a downright amazing guitar solo in it).
Similarly good but short-lived were the themes from “Summer of 42” and “Midnight Cowboy.”
In fact, the single version (a cut-down version of the 15 minute album version) was #1 on the U.S. pop chart for 2 weeks in the fall of 1977. Meco captured the two things that the country was absolutely crazy for at that moment in time – Star Wars and disco.
If the Wikipedia entry on the song is correct, it’s the biggest-selling instrumental single ever, and the only one to have gone platinum.
A couple surf-rock instrumentals:
“The Lonely Surfer” - Jack Nitzsche
“Out of Limits” - The Marketts
and an R&B/New Orleans selection:
-“Cissy Strut” - The Meters
Jack Nitzsche?? Cool!! Legendary right-hand-man to Phil Spector and producer for Neil Young and so many others. No idea he did this surf track.
The Meters - that’s master-class New Orleans funk right there.
True, but with some of the other examples given in this thread, I too wasn’t sure if the OP was just interested in songs from that era, or specifically only classic rock songs from that era.
“Always With You, Always With Me” by Joe Satriani. It was nominated for a Grammy.
Also, Steve Vai’s “For The Love Of God”
Just to give Roy Buchanan his due for performing proper instrumentals
The Blues standard “After Hours” originally written for piano.
“The Heat of Battle”And then there is “Godzilla Sneaking Through the Alley”, voted #19 on http://www.guitarworld.com/100-worst-guitar-solos
I’m not sure I have ever listened to the whole thing - certainly not more than once - and I will not be linking to it lest I taint this otherwise mighty fine thread.
Yeah, where the dividing lines are is always a weird question, where does the work stop being rock? Mancini has been brought up as being on the line already. Similarly, I love the 1st movement of Branca’s symphony no 1*. It’s instruments are rock instruments, mostly guitars and inventive percussion with some horns, but he presents it as a classical symphony.
The Tighten Up** would certainly qualify as having vocals if you used the same amount of words to tell a story. But since the vocals in that song are mostly instructions to the band, about the music, I’d give them a pass.
Oddly, if the vocals are intentionally completely indecipherable, such as in The Butthole Surfer’s The O-Men, they don’t get a pass from me - that song has vocals. But, once you’ve gotten to things like Mark Says Alright, I’m not so sure. We know those noises are made by Gibby’s mouth, but I wouldn’t call 'em vocals.
*Drum fill fans: check out the fill that starts around 11:01
** And since the advent of YouTube, I gotta watch this version of that song. Those backup singers have moves!
I went to see the Surfers, in @ 1986, and was waiting in line when someone came up and said that they had gotten busted. Show was cancelled. I saw them later on at a different, much larger venue.
I meant to say before that I saw Roy Buchanan too, opening for Carl Perkins in the 80s. He was mumbling some stuff about 666. Weird billing. But I hear “the messiah” as of a piece with it’s words. He was a little messianic.
I don’t worry too much about what’s not rock, even though this thread I saw as rock. I listen to WFMU freeform. But this I vow: Feels So Good is not on the list however it may be compiled.
Was Tull the first artist to think of doing this piece in the pop era?