Although our Bonfire Night is now behind us – apart from the neighbourhood twat still letting off fireworks late on Sunday night – I have collected many songs with fire in their title and, not wanting to be wasteful, I thought I’d play another set of them this week. I have probably played most of them before but they are all worthy of another airing, so here we go.

This looks like a re-created video but the song is still a classic to get us off to a great start:

I’m sure you don’t need reminding that Great Balls of Fire goes all the way back to 1957, when it was #1 in the UK and #2 in the US, a few months before his UK tour was cancelled after just three shows when it came out that his third wife (at the age of just 22!) was only 13, and was a first cousin once removed (don’t ask, I’ve never understood that either). I suspect that even after all these years, that might happen nowadays too. It doesn’t seem to have done any long term damage to his career, though!

I’m going back a few years for my next tune, too:

That is a fairly recent video for the song, which actually dates back to early 1965. Play With Fire was the B-side of The Last Time single (UK #1, US #9), and was also included on the US version of the Rolling Stones’ album from later in 1965, Out Of Our Heads, though not on the UK release – we were expected to buy the single too! It subsequently appeared on several compilation albums in the US, but we had to wait until 1971 before we got an album version here. To me, none of that matters: it is still a great song.

While I’m in slow mode, how about this one:

That still sounds as magical and beautiful to me now as it ever has, more than fifty years since I first heard it. Fire And Rain was a track on James Taylor’s second album, Sweet Baby James, released in February 1970, peaking at #3 in the US and #6 in the UK. It became the second single from the album, released in August 1970, and also reached #3 in the US, but only #42 here in the UK. There is a timeless quality to James’ music, I think: beautiful songs and his lovely, warm voice. And that BBC In Concert series was a treasure trove of great music, which also featured the likes of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.

This week’s outlier, by virtue of being much more recent, is from a singer-songwriter whose albums I love. She has been incredibly successful, and I think you can see why from this:

Is that just stunningly good, or what! Set Fire To The Rain was a track on 21, Adele’s second album, which was released in January 2011. Wikipedia shows it as having been #1 in thirty countries, including both the US and the UK (where it was at #1 for 23 weeks), it has won countless awards, including a Brit and two Grammys, it was the best selling album in the world in both 2011 and 2012 and has so far sold more than 31m copies worldwide, making it the fourth best seller of all time by a solo artist. I think that counts as a success, doesn’t it? Just for good measure, this song was the third single taken from the album, in July 2011. Although it somehow only reached #11 here in the UK, it made the top ten in many countries and was #1 in several more, including the US, where it was her third successive #1. Despite that relatively low peak placing, the song spent 56 weeks on the UK singles chart and has sold more than 2.4m copies here. It has also sold more than 5m in the US and over 2m in the rest of the world. Not bad for a lass from Tottenham!

In previous fire selections I have played the UK hit version of today’s final tune, by Julie Driscoll and the Brian Auger Trinity, but I fancied a change, so I’m going with the first version of the song that I knew:

The Band, with This Wheel’s on Fire. Considering that this video is 55 years old, I think it has stood the passing of time well, with the help of a little AI enhancement. It shows what a good live band they were, though I never got to see them – very few bands of their stature came anywhere near Dover (Kent, UK, the original), where I lived at the time! The song was co-written by Rick Danko and Bob Dylan – The Band had previously been his backing musicians. The album it was on, Music From Big Pink, was their debut, released in July 1968 and it peaked at #30 in the US but didn’t make our charts – it is still a great album to me, though. So much talent there, and I played that album to bits!

That’s it for my second set of fire songs. If you like these I still have more than enough for another set, so maybe I’ll run this theme again? Let me know what you think, or if I have missed any of your favourites (Pointer Sisters, Springsteen, Arthur Brown…).

I’ll see you again in a few days, but until then I hope you have a good week and better weather than I’m getting! Take care 😊