Best Opening Line Of A Song

[Diamond Dave]

Originally Posted by architype

Since the best Springsteen first line has been used, I'll submit the second best:

"I got a '69 Chevy with a 396, Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor.
She's waitin' tonight out in the parking lot outside the 7-11 store."

"Fat man sitting on a little stool
Take the money from my hand while his eyes take a walk all over you."

Springsteen, "Tunnel of Love."

[architype]

"Its such a clever innocence with which you do your sorcery,
as if somehow the years just bow and let that young girl go free."

I thought I was a Child

Jackson Browne

[kydave]

1) "Just like the sun over the mountain top, you know I'll always come again."
Rodney Crowell "Until I Gain Control Again"

2) "Jimmy Brown was poor white trash, on that they all agreed."
David Trabue "Empathy"

3) "From the corners of the country, from the cities and the farms, with years and years of living tucked up underneath their arms, they walked away from everything to see a dream come true, so god bless the boys who make the noise on 16th Avenue."
Lacy J. Dalton "16th Avenue"

[Oldguy64]

"My grandpa he's 95...
He keeps on dancin' he's still alive.
My grandma she's 92...
She loves to dance and sing some too"

Dance, dance, dance --- Steve Miller Band

It's another back door, sneakin in, where you been midnite.
Quiet as a Mack truck, lotsa luck thinkin up an alibi.

Goodbye Says it All -- Blackhawk

[Charmed Life Picks]

Architype, yes, that is one of my favorite Jackson Browne songs. I'm pretty sure he wrote that song about his first wife, who took her own life. I think it's still really painful for him. I've never heard of him doing that song in concert. Has anyone ever seen Jackson Browne perform "I Thought I Was a Child" live in concert? It's off his second album.

I'm the OP here. These are all great responses. Thanks so much! I will read through them all when I have more time, but here's another I dearly love. It's from Michael Peter Smith, from his song "The Dutchman":

The Dutchman's not kind of man
To keep his thumb jammed in the dam
that holds his dreams in
But that's a secret only Margaret knows

And actually, another one from that same writer, about a Catholic nun who was his teacher as a youngster, called "Sister Clarissa":

Sister Clarissa could have been on the stage
But Jesus came over and told her he'd rather
She taught the fifth grade

Keep 'me comin' folks. Great stufff.

[Greg Rappleye]

Strap them kids in give 'em a little bit of vodka*
In a Cherry Coke, we're going to Oklahoma
To the family reunion for the first time in years
It's up at Uncle Slayton's 'cause he's getting on in years

-James McMurtry, Choctaw Bingo

*This may be "Vicodin" in the original.



Greg Rappleye

[Charmed Life Picks]

Another beauty from "Morning Song for Sally" by Jerry Jeff Walker:

As the morning light stretched in across my bed
I thought of you, mm mm hmm
Remembering your laughing eyes and all we have said
I love you too, mm mm hmm

wow

[aknow]

"Living on the road my friend
Was gonna keep you free and clean
Now you wear your skin like iron
Your breath's as hard as kerosene"

Townes Van Zandt
Poncho and Lefty

[TRW1]

"Nibbling on sponge cake,
watching the sun bake
All of those tourists covered with oil.
Strumming my six string on my front porch swing.
Smell of those shrimp
They're beginning to boil."

You just know you wish you had written that!

[Devilscreek]

Aw.... It's gotta be...

You wrote "Your Cheatin' Heart" about
A gal like my first ex-wife

Moe Bandy - "Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life

[Buck62]

"Carry on my wayward son, there'll be peace when you are done..."
(Kansas)

"Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and mars..."
(Nazareth)

"If you could read my mind, love... what a tale my thoughts could tell..."
(Gordon Lightfoot)


.

[psychojohn]

"I'm fifty, fat and frumpy, my pad's a little dumpy; my wife she split, my life's the pits 'cause I don't get no company !" From: "Fifty, fat and frumpy" by John S. Baranchok for the band: The Orgasmic Piss.

[billgennaro]

"Crimson flames tied through my ears. Rollin' high and mighty traps. Pounced with fire on flaming roads. Using ideas as my maps."

- Bob Dylan, My Back Pages

[Steve DeRosa]

"I'm on my second cup of coffee and I still can't face the day;
I'm thinkin' about a lady who got lost along the way,
And if I don't stop this tremblin' hand from reachin' for the phone,
I'll be reachin' for the bottle long before the day is done..."

- Gordon Lightfoot

[architype]

"We made Oklahoma a little after three,
Randy, his brother Bob and my old GMC.
We had some moonshine whiskey
and some of Bob's homegrown.
We were so messed up we didn't know
if we were drunk or stoned."

Shades of Gray

Robert Earle Keen