“Slow Ride” by Foghat

"Slow Ride" kicked off Foghat's fifth album, Fool for the City, as its lead single in 1975 on Bearsville, and it's boogie rock with the throttle jammed wide open. It came out of a jam with Nick Jameson, then brand new on bass, who taped whatever the band played on his cassette recorder; by Roger Earl's account the middle section, the bass line and the ending were Jameson's ideas, and he chopped the jam into shape before Dave Peverett piped up that he had some words.

Jameson also produced and engineered it, Earl drives the beat like a runaway freight train, and Rod Price's slide guitar snarls all over it. The album take runs past eight minutes; the single hacks it down to under four with a fade. It became their highest-charting Billboard single, and VH1 later ranked it 45th among the best hard rock songs.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.