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Growing up, I didn't have much musical influence on my life. My father didn't listen to music when he drove. My mother did, but she almost never drove anywhere. Never was music playing in my home, either – so I was forced into finding my musical tastes through my peers. I started with Weird Al Yankovic as many 10-year-old boys do. Then in my teens I favoured the grunge rock, and bad rap of the early 90s, which I carried with me until I found classic rock: Pink Floyd to be exact. Now, I know you are asking yourself "Pink Floyd in The WholeNote? What is going on here?" Don't worry, I do have a point to all this. |
I went to college for Technical Theatre, which started me onto the path of concert technician. I was lucky enough in 2002 to work locally for many classic rock bands such as The Guess Who, Kim Mitchell and April Wine. Eventually my experience had me working for the Canadian Children's Opera Company, and I remember asking my boss, Ken Hall, "Why is it I love classic rock so much, but all this new rock seems to drive me crazy?"
His answer was simple. "The artists you love were often first influenced by classical music, and often had classical training." This got me to wonder, what crossovers are there between the world of classical music and the world of rock? My first thought was one of my favourite Canadian bands, The Guess Who. While watching Randy Bachman's DVD Every Song Tells A Story, I found out that his first instrument was the violin – which he quickly gave up when he found the blues guitar when he was a teenager. But nonetheless, this may be why the Guess Who's music was so great: the ability to not only create music, but to do so with the fundamentals that have been driving music for millennia. Another person some may have heard of, John Paul Jones of Led Zepplin, was influenced by his father, who arranged big band music in the 40s and 50s (wikipedia).
Also, I remember in the great film Mr. Holland's Opus, how he teaches his students the appreciation of classical music by referencing A Lover's Concerto by The Toys, a popular song of the time which featured a melody that he tells his students is really Bach's "Minuet in G Major" just in 4/4 time instead of the original 3/4. And in the same tone, Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King has long been a song played by the heaviest of metal guitarists to show their proficiency and nimbleness on the guitar – so much so that the game series Guitar Hero features it as a "song" to play as the band Apocalyptica.
Now as I work for ensembles like iFuriosi, I wonder if we are all wrong about this rock thing we call a genre. We think it somehow started with or after blues and jazz, mainly popularized by Elvis Presley of course – but I am starting to think this is just the time when rock music changed instruments. Listening to some of the early music and baroque pieces I am now acquainted with, I think these composers were also rock artists. They just didn't have the electricity to make it as loud yet.
I ask WholeNote.com members, what other crossovers are there between classical music and rock that I may not know about?
Bryson Winchester
