10 GREAT ROCK SONGS LONGER THAN 10 MINUTES

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THE RULES: No jazz or classical music included. There are WAAAY too many great songs in those genres that clock in past 10 minutes. So, I picked my favorite rock songs that were 10 minutes+ in their original studio versions (no live versions - that's cheating!). And before you begin to bitch ... I don't consider In-Gadda-Da-Vida (Iron Butterfly) a great song. That's also the reason The End (The Doors) and Dark Star (The Grateful Dead) are not on the list. Freebird is only 9:08 long.

In alphabetical order:

1. Achilles Last Stand – Led Zeppelin (10:25) Guitar chaos from a hugely underrated Led Zep LP, Presence.
2. Alice’s Restaurant Massacree – Arlo Guthrie (18:34) A song so good it was made into a great movie.
3. Desolation Row – Bob Dylan (11:25) Classic Dylan. As good as it gets.
4. Echoes – Pink Floyd (23:30) Probably my favorite Floyd song. I love the sound effects of the submarine pulse mixed in the background, and a great David Gilmore guitar solo.
5. Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys - Traffic (11:44) Veeery cool groove.
6. Maggot Brain – Funkadelic ( 10:21) Maybe the best recorded rock guitar solo done in one take – Eddie Hazel is the most unknown great rock guitarist.
7. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part 1) – Pink Floyd (13:30) This is a no brainer.
8. Supper’s Ready – Genesis (22:50) I heard this for the first time when I was 15 and I’d never heard anything this cool, this weird and this apocalyptic. And I still haven’t. It was based on an event when Peter Gabriel’s wife was put into a trance and Peter was so freaked out by the experience he wrote this song. Through the years my interpretation of the song has changed as I matured. My most recent interpretation is: a spiritual journey of two lovers who lose their way in life and wander aimlessly for the rest of their days but are ultimately reunited in the “New Jerusalem” (heaven).
9. Telegraph Road – Dire Straits (14:21) Contains the great lyric line: “run all the red lights down Memory Lane.”
10. 2112 – Rush (20:33) Rush’s first flexing of their musical muscles.