The Noisy Carriage: The Greatest Train-Related Songs
Trains have always had a habit of popping up in popular culture
. From books and poems, to films and songs, creative types over the past two centuries seem to have identified with the railroads and managed to pluck more than a little inspiration from them.
Indeed, countless musicians have found their muse in trains, and perhaps none more so than the legendary Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan always harboured a fascination with trains and riding the railroads' and this is evident in many of his classics, with the romanticism of jumping on a cross-country locomotive clearly appealing to him. It's also indicative of the influence the likes of Woody Guthrie and other bluesmen before him had, as they often sang about life on the tracks.
The likes of Freight Train Blues' from his eponymous debut album and It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry' from his seminal Highway 61 Revisited' are good examples of this, as is Slow Train' from his 1979 album of the same name, and in Bob Dylan's Dream' from his second album he opens with the line While riding on a train going west, I fell asleep for to take my rest'.
For those keen on a bit of karaoke, Soul Asylum's Runaway Train' will probably be familiar to you and it's certainly one of the all-time classic rail-related anthems. The band's 1992 album Grave Dancers Union' went triple platinum and Runaway Train' was released as a single to much acclaim, scooping a Grammy award in the process.
Loosely based on the Beatles, The Monkees were a pop quartet formed in Los Angeles in 1966, and whilst they are often cited as an example of one of the earliest manufactured' bands, their debut single Last Train to Clarkesville' is an undoubted classic, combining catchy choruses with an unforgettable melody that has often been compared to the Beatles' Paperback Writer'.
The Who's landmark movie Quadrophenia' from 1973 is one of those cult classics that is still played in cinemas from time to time today, and the song 5:15' on the soundtrack aptly describes the life of Mods travelling on the 5:15 train from London to Brighton to indulge in a little hedonism and maybe even the odd battle with the rockers.
There are thousands of other classic tracks about life on the, well, tracks, and today's rail-lovers are every bit as enthusiastic as the musicians of the past five decades, with millions of people travelling the country thanks to
cheap train tickets and a myriad of exciting coastal and intercity routes to choose from.
The Noisy Carriage: The Greatest Train-Related Songs
By: Janine Barclay
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