My Rock 'N' Roll Favorites - the 'D's

Deep Purple: "Highway Star" - Deep Purple will forever remind me of Tom Gower, a friend of mine who perished, along with three other members of our ward, at Yellowstone National Park in 1973 during an Explorer "super-activity," from which I was blessedly absent. (A freak storm caught the group out in their canoes in the middle of Yellowstone Lake, creating 3' waves that scattered everyone and swamped several of the boats, in turn causing the four victims, which included both adult leaders [one of whose body was never recovered] to die of hypothermia in the 40-degree water.) Anyway, Tom was a big Deep Purple fan, and I can still remember listening to "Highway Star" with him in his car (undoubtedly on 8-track), which tune thankfully wasn't played to death like "Smoke On the Water," also off the Machine Head album.
Def Leppard: "Photograph" - Def Leppard is another one of those groups, like Bon Jovi, whose music I find pretty forgettable notwithstanding the numerous hits they had; however, "Photograph" is a stellar composition and transcends the rest of the band's work in my mind.
Devo: "Jerkin' Back 'N' Forth" - I remember reading a book some twenty years ago by Lex De Azevedo, the composer of the Mormon-themed Saturday's Warrior (and, if I'm not mistaken, a former rock 'n' roll record producer himself), in which he was trying to drive home the point that rock music has evil influences. De Azevedo gave this song as an example of an obvious sexual innuendo -- except it must not have been all that obvious, since he found it necessary to embellish on the title by calling it "You Got Me Jerkin' It Back and Forth" (my italics).
Dire Straits: "Industrial Disease" - I almost put "Sultans of Swing," but how can anyone resist lyrics like these?

Doctor Parkinson declared, "I'm not surprised to see you here;
You've got smoker's cough from smoking, brewer's droop from drinking beer.
I don't know how you came to get the Bette Davis...knees,
But worst of all, young man, you've got industrial disease!"
He wrote me a prescription -- he said, "You are depressed.
I'm glad you came to see me to get this off your chest.
Come back and see me later (ding!) -- next patient, please!
Send in another victim of industrial disease!"

Doobie Brothers, The: "South City Midnight Lady" - I once was a big Doobie Brothers fan, and I especially liked Tom Johnston tunes like "Without You," "China Grove" and "Listen to the Music." However, now I find that only the Pat Simmons acoustic numbers have stood the test of time: "South City Midnight Lady," "Clear as the Driven Snow," "Black Water," etc.
Doors, The: "Touch Me" - I remember listening to my brother Roger's 45 single of "Touch Me" on our family's old Montgomery Ward stereo. It's funny, but I didn't even notice the orchestral backing on the record until I heard it as an adult; it gives the song a slightly over-produced sound, but it's still a great record.
Duran Duran: "View to a Kill" - Most of Duran Duran's work from the 80s sounds cheesy now, as does a lot of the music in general from that era. "View to a Kill" (from the James Bond movie of the same name) sounds a little less cheesy than most of their music, however.
Dylan, Bob: "Lay Lady Lay" - I always read about people who say they finally "got" Dylan after not understanding him for a time; heck, I'm still waiting to "get" him some thirty-five years after first listening to his stuff! (One person who "got" Dylan dead to rights, however, was Weird Al Yankovic in his spoof "Bob.") Nonetheless, "Lay Lady Lay," unsavory though it may be in a thematic sense, is by far my favorite of his songs.