5 Songs That Prove 1971 Was The Best Year For Classic Rock By Far

Out of the entirety of classic rock's golden era, which many consider to span the '60s through the early '80s, 1971 stands out as a prime year for inventive, well-written songs. Preceded by the breakup of the Beatles the year prior, 1971's releases built on the musical movements of the '60s and paved the way for the rockier, punchier decade that followed. All in all, it was classic rock's best year.

Proving it is relatively easy; after all, that single year contained so much ecstatic, creative energy and so many colossal hits by so many legendary artists, such as the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Bowie, and so on, but how can we possibly pin it down to five songs? Our crème de la crème choices reflect the excellence and depth of musicianship in 1971, and still truly wow listeners in the present. Our choices also cover the breadth of rock's character that year, from its simpler, singer-songwriter affairs to its grander, proggier journeys. And since classic rock's entire journey from Beatlemania through new wave evolved lockstep with popular culture, our choices speak to the time from which they came. Sadly, we'll have to omit plenty of incredible music, and that's not even taking loads of underrated songs from 1971 into account.

At the top of our list sits the most obvious choice possible, the OG rock epic, "Stairway to Heaven." We've also got a gonzo and virtuosic song from Yes, plus top-tier choices from the Allman Brothers Band, The Who, and John Lennon. These are the biggest feathers in the cap of that greatest of years for classic rock, 1971.

Nowadays, guitar shop staff might zap you with stink eye if you pluck the opening acoustic section to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" in their store. But that's only because that most mythical of musical odysseys continues to be played millions of times on U.S. radio into the 2020s. This is especially bananas considering that "Stairway to Heaven," considered by some to be the greatest song ever, was never a single, but instead took off via radio because it was just too good to ignore. Now, it stands as Zeppelin's best song from their fourth and arguably best album (which includes "Black Dog," "The Battle of Evermore," and "When the Levee Breaks"), delivered at the height of their powers in 1971.

The reputation of "Stairway to Heaven" has practically come to overshadow its musical qualities. Without getting too far into the music theory weeds, guitarist Jimmy Page took inspiration from Bach's Bourrée in E minor, which was originally written for the lute. His opening acoustic passage has a descending bottom note that sounds like physically walking down a flight of stairs (called a line cliché). This might have been what inspired Robert Plant's lyrics, which came to him as he listened to Page's music. Those lyrics describe a fanciful, mystical search for meaning that builds and builds to Page's masterful solo and returns to the song's opening "Stairway to Heaven" vocal melody. 

Do listeners have to know any of this to appreciate "Stairway to Heaven"? No, as many haven't. Knowing it, however, can deepen an appreciation for the craft behind a song that, all by itself, exemplifies why 1971 was classic rock's greatest year.

What do you get when you take a cape-wearing keyboard wizard, add the most beautifully arpeggiated acoustic guitar opener, a funky bassline that's enough to make Rush's Geddy Lee grin during a 2017 performance (where he subbed, no less), and stuff every single second of a song with overflowing, explosive virtuosity? You get "Roundabout" from Yes' 1971 album, "Fragile," a song so energetic, so richly drawn, and so wildly good that it sounds even cooler today. It's a hell of a piece of music, even if much of the rest of "Fragile" doesn't quite live up to the same verve.

The key to "Roundabout" lives in its name: a circular strip of road that keeps going and going, which you can enter and exit at will, and which takes you in whatever direction you choose. Without realizing it, this is what listeners are hearing in "Roundabout," a song built on interwoven vignettes full of interlocked instruments that slow down, speed up, and feel precisely like the kind of road trip that inspired Yes' singer Jon Anderson to write the song. 

Anderson and the rest of Yes were traveling in the Scottish countryside on tour, looking at the mountains and sky, and passed through about 40 roundabouts on a trip from Aberdeen to Glasgow. The song's lyrics reflect this literal journey ("In and around the lake / Mountains come out of the sky and they stand there"), but also a more abstract, dreamy flow that swims within the song's propulsive, forward motion. "Roundabout" isn't just one of the best songs of 1971; it's arguably Yes' best song.

The ultimate jam session song, "Whipping Post" from 1971's "The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East" by the Allman Brothers Band is a trance-inducing, jaw-dropping piece of music that defines '70s Southern rock to a T. It showcases a group of musicians so tightly-knit, so in-pocket, that they took the core, bluesy nugget of a five-minute-long musical idea from their 1969 debut and let it tumble out into a nearly 23-minute-long display of instrumental magic. It sounds effortless, too, and is so vibrant and ever-changing that the listener is still left wanting more. Without a doubt, "Whipping Post" is a shining example of why 1971 was classic rock's greatest year, one that also demonstrates that rock can be just as flawlessly improvised as in the best jazz shows.

The origin of "Whipping Post" sounds like a ridiculous, apocryphal tale, but was told by the artist to whom the inspiration came. As the tale goes, "Whipping Post's" highly unusual 11/4 main riff (that's 11 quarter notes per four-beat measure) came to Gregg Allman in a flash so urgent that he quietly slipped from his bedroom one night and used burnt matches — from a box found in the kitchen, with the help of a handily timed set of car headlights — to inscribe his main melodic motif on an ironing board.

Few songs have been treated with such hymn-like reverence as "Imagine," no matter that plenty of folks also sneer at its lofty optimism. The song serves as a kind of emotional home base to return to when drowning in torrential cynicism, and was culturally impactful even back when Lennon released it in 1971 off his album of the same name. "Imagine" captured, possibly better than any other, the sorrow at witnessing the peace-and-love dream of the '60s vanish. Coming from John Lennon, it was also like the voice of the Beatles echoed on after the band's demise.

Even though "Imagine" gets attention largely for its lyrics and message, it stood the test of time because it's so musically elegant. It's a super-simple song, playable on guitar even by beginners, but with just enough melodic touches and clever complexities to make Lennon's stellar songwriting shine through. As Lennon, who was tragically assassinated in 1980, once said (via  Music Radar), "Imagine is the best song I've ever written." 

Lennon was also fully aware of drawing ideological ire with his song, describing it as "anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic." But, he continued, "because it is sugarcoated, it is accepted." The sugar-coating is the aforementioned songwriting, which relates a kind of hummable sweetness that relates the core message of "Imagine": wishing for a world devoid of conflict and aggression. And while plenty of songs express the same sentiment, "Imagine" does it legendarily well. 

Yes, "Baba O'Riley" is a weird name for a song, and isn't directly referenced in its lyrics (it's partially named after the Indian guru Meher Baba), though the famous words "teenage wasteland" are. The Who, one of the defining rock bands to emerge from the '60s, released "Baba O'Riley" on 1971's "Who's Next," adding another song to the unreal compendium of music released that year. 

"Baba O'Riley" is a grand, theatrical rock foray. Its brash, adventurous music perfectly describes its story of defiant youths setting out from the hearth and field to explore the world. And yet, there's the "teenage wasteland" bit, which describes the song's ultimate end. This was songwriter Pete Townshend's take on those youths who left home to convene at Woodstock, where he recalled (via  UDiscover), "audience members were strung out on acid and 20 people had brain damage." In the end, "Baba O'Riley" is a disillusioned retrospective on the '60s that sits perfectly in 1971. Singer Roger Daltrey has since extended the song's message to modern phone addictions as the current generation's drug of choice.

Just like "Stairway to Heaven," "Baba O'Riley" was only ever released as part of an album in the U.S., yet caught on via radio and eventually became an anthem. Such is the power of the song to speak not only to its time, but through the present.