No. 1 Rock Hits That Were Almost Too Long For Radio

A few of the biggest No. 1 hits of all time almost never got the chance to storm the charts because they were considered too long for a proper radio release. In the first couple of decades of rock 'n' roll, the standard length for a hit song was somewhere between two and four minutes. Born out of how the shortest No. 1 hits of the '70s are proof that less is more, radio programmers maintained the notion that three-minute-or-so songs would best hold listener interest.

But as rock grew more imaginative in the late '60s, the songs got longer. Record companies bristled about issuing singles of five minutes or more, concerned radio wouldn't give them airtime. But that didn't really matter to fans. In came the age of the longest songs in classic rock history, and some of those super-lengthy tracks made it all the way to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Here are some classic rock songs by big acts like Elton John, the Beatles, and the Eagles, that all topped the charts despite being almost too long for radio airplay.

In the spring of 1974, Elton John's "Bennie and the Jets" went to No. 1 for a single week, a small miracle considering how the song was a tough-to-market rock music oddity — it's about a fictional rock group from the distant future. "I saw Bennie and the Jets as a sort of proto-sci-fi punk band, fronted by an androgynous woman," John's longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin explained to Rolling Stone. Meanwhile, all the cheering and clapping in the song suggest "Bennie and the Jets" was recorded live — but it wasn't; those are just studio additions. All that and more contributed to "Bennie and the Jets" clocking in with a 5:10 running time. MCA Records didn't plan on releasing it as a single, and John himself agreed with the decision.

But then DJs from Detroit radio stations started playing "Bennie and the Jets" and made it one of the most popular songs in that large city. MCA decided that it ought to officially issue the song. Filling up the A-side of a 45 rpm record, and backed with "Harmony," "Bennie and the Jets" became a physical single with absolutely no cuts to the material, as it had already been a proven radio hit even with its extended length.

The Beatles preferred to work with producer and arranger George Martin whenever possible, and he oversaw the fine-tuning of "Hey Jude" in 1968. After hearing the first run-through, he thought that "Hey Jude" was entirely too long, playing for more than seven minutes, roughly twice as long as the average pop hit of the day. One bit of Martin's advice the band took: They agreed to the use of 36 orchestral musicians to play over the song's repetitive and thin-seeming "na-na"-heavy end section. "I realized that by putting an orchestra on you could add lots of weight to the riff," Martin explained in "Sound Pictures: The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin — The Later Years, 1966 — 2016" (via Variety).

Nevertheless, the better-recorded song was still a hefty one. "After I timed it, I actually said 'You can't make a single that long,'" Martin recalled, theorizing that rock radio DJs would refuse to play the song. "They will if it's us," John Lennon argued, reminding his producer of the band's enormous clout and popularity. Indeed, the 7:11 "Hey Jude" became the Beatles' biggest hit ever, occupying the No. 1 position for nine weeks in the fall of 1968.

While the actual hidden meaning of the Eagles' "Hotel California" varies greatly depending on which member of the '70s country rock band is talking, it's objectively true that the lead-off track from the 1976 album of the same name was a smash. It checked into the No. 1 slot on the Hot 100 in May 1977 and has endured as a classic rock staple ever since, helping the LP shift 26 million copies, making it one of the best-selling rock studio LPs of all time. And that's all from a song once considered commercially unviable due to its length. On the album, "Hotel California" goes on for six minutes and 30 seconds; the single edit trimmed away only 22 seconds.

Even Eagles member and "Hotel California" co-writer Don Felder had his doubts. "To be honest, I thought the song was too long," Felder told Classic Rock. "'Hotel California' has one minute of music before Don [Henley] even starts singing, and a two minute guitar solo at the end. It was just the wrong format." It's Henley who advocated for the song, strongly petitioning the band's label to issue "Hotel California" as a 45 and to shop it to radio. "I've never been so delighted to have been proved so wrong," Felder said.