3 Really Long Rock Songs That Everybody Knows by Heart

Bigger doesn’t always mean better. But in this case, it definitely does. Here are three iconic rock songs that we all know and love, despite how long their runtimes are.

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“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen

This Queen classic is actually one of the shorter songs on this list, at just under six minutes long. According to producer Robert Thomas Baker, the process of making “Bohemian Rhapsody” was marked by a lot of laughter.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” was totally insane, but we enjoyed every minute of it. It was basically a joke, but a successful joke,” he shared in an interview. “We had to record it in three separate units. We did the whole beginning bit, then the whole middle bit and then the whole end. It was complete madness. The middle part started off being just a couple of seconds, but Freddie kept coming in with more “Galileos” and we kept on adding to the opera section, and it just got bigger and bigger.”

“Stairway To Heaven” by Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” is about eight minutes and two seconds long and consists of three main musical sections. The first part, which is the softer intro, the second middle section, and finally the guitar solo, which is followed by a heavier rock part. 

In a 1975 interview, Jimmy Page talked about how significant “Stairway To Heaven” really was to the band as a whole.

“To me, I thought ‘Stairway’ crystallized the essence of the band,” he shared. “It had everything there and showed the band at its best… as a band, as a unit. Not talking about solos or anything, it had everything there. We were careful never to release it as a single. It was a milestone for us. Every musician wants to do something of lasting quality, something which will hold up for a long time, and I guess we did it with ‘Stairway.’”

“Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd

“Free Bird” is a whopping nine minutes and eight seconds, at least in the album version. The radio version is closer to five minutes long. However, the live version makes up for this. When played onstage, “Free Bird” often runs over 14 minutes.

At first, record executives thought “Free Bird” needed to be shortened in length to be played on the radio. Thank goodness the band stood their ground on this one, because, as we know, it would become one of the most iconic rock songs of all time.

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