If You Know These 5 Under-The-Radar Songs, You're A True Classic Rock Fan

The classic rock era is still hugely popular despite much of its best music being made more than half a century ago. When music magazines rank the greatest songs and albums of all time, the tunes created back then still dominate the lists. They've maintained a loyal listenership among boomers and other generations who were lucky enough to have experienced rock history firsthand, while continuing to resonate with younger listeners who want to get to know the foundational tracks that shaped the rock music they know today.

But while many classic rock bands continue to enjoy legendary status, even the biggest artists of the period have great tracks in their discographies that are unfairly overlooked by casual listeners today. With that in mind, here are five tracks by enormous classic rock artists that deserve some more love. Each has been chosen from one of the artist's more obscure albums, and they've generally been overshadowed by other tracks on that record, such as title tracks and songs chosen as singles. If you already know them, it means that, whatever your age, you're a true classic rock fan.

Led Zeppelin's discography is held up as one of the crowning achievements of classic rock, but even the legendary British band has some stellar material that many fans overlook. "Royal Orleans," for example, receives little of the acclaim afforded to the band's more famous work despite exhibiting many of the features that made the group great. Named after a hotel in New Orleans where Zeppelin would stay while on tour, "Royal Orleans" is a short, sharp track that recalls the band at its most danceable thanks to Jimmy Page's funky lead guitar parts and the track's driving rhythm section. With plenty of stop time in the instrumental, the song feels light and breezy but nevertheless fits plenty into its three-minute run time. For those Zeppelin fans who take pleasure in the band's more lighthearted tracks like "D'yer Mak'er" and "The Crunge," this is one to add to the playlist.

The track features on Zeppelin's 1976 album "Presence," which explains much of why it has been overlooked. The most famous records in the Zeppelin discography are its four self-titled albums. "Presence" was Zeppelin's seventh full-length studio album, after acclaimed releases "Houses of the Holy" and "Physical Graffiti," and it was the record where the band's rock dominance was starting to waver. Vocalist Robert Plant was recovering from a car crash for much of the album cycle, which limited the band's ability to tour and promote it, and it failed to take its place among the Zeppelin's classics. Retrospective reviews have been kinder, though "Royal Orleans" remains overlooked in favor of the album's epic opener, "Achilles Last Stand."

Today, most of the best-known Rolling Stones tracks show the group at its most swaggering and subversive: Think of the bratty blues of "Satisfaction" or the gleefully satanic "Sympathy for the Devil." But Mick, Keith, and co. are also adept at penning songs that deliver moments of surprising tenderness that belie their rebellious reputation, such as the much-slept-on "Coming Down Again."

The track is a beautifully melancholic piano-led ballad that apparently reflects the angst that guitarist and co-songwriter Keith Richards felt during its creation in 1973. Richards has attempted to make clear that the characters in the song are not autobiographical. Yet many fans believe that "Coming Down Again" is about his troubled, initially drug-fueled liaison with Anita Pallenberg, the girlfriend of bandmate Brian Jones. He denied this in his autobiography, "Life," claiming it is "just a mournful song." Whatever the truth, Richards is in expressive form here, delivering a rare lead vocal performance and emotive lead guitar part that adds a velvety luster to the gospel-infused track. 

However, "Coming Down Again" has largely been overshadowed by the band's bigger hits. Not only that, but its position as a deep cut on the comparatively inessential "Goats Head Soup" album means it receives far less attention from modern listeners than it deserves. Pitched tonally somewhere between "Wild Horses" and "Angie" — which is the album's more famous highlight — it's one of The Rolling Stones' most soulful and revealing songs.

"Red Money" is a track hidden away at the end of the second side of "Lodger," the third piece of David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy. He produced the trio while living in Berlin, and for a short time, he was roommates alongside musical collaborator Iggy Pop in the German capital. But in truth, much of the material on the albums remains relatively neglected in comparison to the Ziggy Stardust and Thin White Duke eras that preceded them and the phenomenal chart success of "Let's Dance" that was to come after (though the first chapter of the Berlin Trilogy, 1977's "Low," is now considered one of his finest records).

Released in 1979, "Lodger" is arguably the least acclaimed of the Berlin Trilogy and of his whole '70s output, while "Red Money" is one of the album's most divisive compositions. The track is a reworking of the backing track of Iggy Pop's "Sister Midnight," which Bowie produced for Iggy's album "The Idiot" at the start of their Berlin stay, with new guitar parts, vocals, and lyrics.

The song is typically dismissed by fans who feel that it's too much of a blatant replica of "Sister Midnight," but if anything, it could be argued that the song is a demonstration of how close the two artists' work was at that point. The two songs serve as suitable bookends for their fertile creative spell in Berlin. Taken in isolation, it remains entertaining on its own terms, though Bowie himself claimed the lyrics refer to his growing interest in visual art during that period: "This song, I think, is about responsibility. Red boxes keep cropping up in my paintings, and they represent responsibility there," he told Melody Maker in 1979 (via "The Complete David Bowie").

"Danger Bird" is the second track of Neil Young's 1975 album "Zuma," a record credited to him and Crazy Horse, which had reformed after a period of a few years. The song enjoys some prominence on the album thanks to its sequencing and gained some attention thanks to the relative commercial success of "Zuma" — which peaked at No. 25 on the Billboard 200, a reasonable placing within Young's discography — and its repeated appearances in Young's live concert set lists. But the truth is "Danger Bird" has typically been overshadowed by "Cortez the Killer," the lyrical epic from the second half of the album that many consider Young's best-ever composition.

In the song, Young uses the image of a fossilized bird to describe a broken, adulterous relationship, which critics suggest may have been inspired by his relationship with the actress Carrie Snodgress. The lyric "Cause you've been with another man / There you are and here I am," is especially striking, though despite the turmoil that underpins the song, Young avoids dense lyricism. Instead, the song is replete with emotive, distorted guitar solos, which are undoubtedly some of the best of his career.

Despite being relatively unknown to many classic rock fans, "Danger Bird" has had some notable admirers over the years. The Velvet Underground's Lou Reed, for example — the man who described playing guitar as the most important part of his religion — has claimed that Young's playing on "Danger Bird" is the best he'd heard. This plaudit alone means that any guitar fan should feel obliged to check it out.

Not many Beatles songs descend into the Fab Four exchanging a volley of excitable dog barks and howls, which possibly explains why "Hey Bulldog" wasn't selected as a single when it was recorded back in 1968. But this relatively little-known track is a gem that shows the band at its most freewheeling and playful, and it will put a smile on the face of any Beatles fan. The song is built around a groovy piano part that sounds like the title score to a '60s spy comedy. John Lennon delivers some typically surreal lyrics featuring sheepdogs and bulldogs, as well as a sourly sung "you can talk to me" in the chorus. There is something pleasingly manic about the song, but just to prove the height of The Beatles' songwriting at this point in the group's career, it's also catchy and accessible.

The song was written primarily by John Lennon and recorded in 10 takes over 10 hours as a last-minute addition to the band's 1969 "Yellow Submarine" movie. It was included on the soundtrack album, which is far from being considered one of the band's essential records. Hence, "Hey Bulldog" isn't generally found on many Beatles greatest hits playlists, but it's as fun and endearing as anything they put out in the last years of the band's existence.