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A challenge for all the guitarists here
I think modern classic rock has a lot in common with classical music of centuries ago. When I see these series of videos, I can’t help but believe Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven had the same music going on in their heads 200 to 300 years ago as Jimi Hendricks, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, or Jimmy Page did when playing one of their modern classic rock songs. I use to enjoy AC/DC a lot. I remember laying in my room with the ghetto blaster going just getting into Malcom and Angus Young’s guitar sounds, especially the early days when Bon Scott was alive. It just felt like a million fireworks going off in magical order and unity, so soothing to the soul. Decades later listening to a Beethoven, Bach, or Mozart Piano concerto, the experience is quite familiar, the same fireworks in magical order and unity and incredible beauty. Check out these short videos below and you will see what I mean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxNAwnTDrWc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnc4T26NslA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao9a6TQ44vE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqgQ7IYhvRg
Good music is just good music, whatever the genre from the Beach Boys to Beatles to AC/DC to Beethoven to MLT!!!…for me I found.
For the guitar people here, I challenge you try a classical piece in modern rock style. I think you’d be surprised just how alike modern and classical music is. -
30 Replies
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Perhaps that’s why I can’t get enough of a young Lisa playing this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MadVwtKkYos
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One thing that is very special about the 3, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven is that not only were they genius composers, they were incredible musicians, the best in their day. Mozart was a prodigy on the keyboard as was Bach. Beethoven was a powerful pianist, the absolute best in his day, when he was young before he became deaf. He kept breaking the strings on the piano, so they had to get him a special Broadwood piano from London that were the best then that could withstand the passion and fury with which he played. They were quite similar to the great guitarist song writers today.
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Good one Jung. Some awesome guitar work in those videos. There have been many rock guitarists giving classical music the guitar treatment. Dave Edmunds is one name that comes to mind.
Allegro from Mozart’s 40th Symphony
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Dave Edmunds, “The Sabre Dance”.
Can’t you just see lightening Lisa practising some of these tunes until she has “blisters on her fingers”!
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David Edmunds playing is brilliant Howard, and very classical too. Yes, I can just imagine Lisa lighting up her Duo Jet with this one!
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This may not be classical, but I like the title!
“Sweet Little Lisa” (featuring Albert Lee)
This video features Nick Lowe and Dave Edmonds of ‘Rockpile’, who I saw live in 1979. A fantastic live rock band with Nick Lowe on bass guitar and vocals and Dave Edmunds on lead guitar and vocals.
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If we`re talking guitarists who also incorporate classical music, i think we need this one with Glen Campbell too http://youtube.com/watch?v=GUBhE00h9U0
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One guitarist who routinely looked to classical for inspiration and ideas is Ritchie Blackmore. The guitar solos from Highway Star and Burn were directly influenced by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and he even learned the cello as a means to add to that influence. Listen to his later renaissance music with Blackmore’s Night, and the influence of classical music on his playing is obvious.
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True. Also Jon Lord`s keyboards were very influenced by classic music
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Oh yeah in Ritchie Blackmore’s Highway Star I can hear that Bach sound in that one section of the guitar riff. And Jon Lord is an amazing keyboardist, and I can see him getting inspiration from some of Bach’s keyboard works.
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There are many pop songs with a classical influence. Probably none more so than this one.
The Toys – “Lovers Concerto”
Songwriters Linzer and Randell based the melody on the familiar “Minuet in G major” (BWV Anh. 114) from J.S. Bach’s Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach.
The Toys original version of the song was a major hit in the United States and United Kingdom (among other countries) during 1965. It peaked on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart at number 2. It was kept out of the number 1 spot by both “Yesterday” by The Beatles and “Get Off of My Cloud” by The Rolling Stones. “A Lover’s Concerto” reached number 1 both on the US Cashbox chart (Billboard’s main competitor), and in Canada on the RPMnational singles chart. It peaked at number 5 in the UK Singles Chart.
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A Whiter Shade of Pale was directly from JS Bach too! Also, of Blackmore, he played a hard rocking version of Beethoven’s Ninth, and he performed this with Rainbow, and then with Deep Purple during the reunion period after 1984. Jon Lord added classical to DP’s music as early as their second album… and wrote several pieces melding classical and rock, including the incredible Concerto for Rock Band and Orchestra, and the later Gemini Suite! After Jon Lord retired from DP, he concentrated on writing and producing Classical works up until his untimely passing in 2012.
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The orchestral part in Whiter Shade of Pale is awesome, and I can feel Bach there. I will have to listen to Blackmore’s rocking version of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”!
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Check out the version performed by Deep Purple on their Come Hell or High Water DVD! In addition to Blackmore playing a slide version of the 9th, Jon Lord also plays some great organ stuff too!
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Usually……but not always, the first “classical” piece a guitarist tries is from Beethoven’s Ninth, Ode to Joy (3rd Movement, I believe)…..simply because it was on an album by Leo Kottke in the 1970s and there are several sources for the sheet music.
Another song that is close to a classical piece is Greensleeves (or What Child is This……same melody). It is not really classical, but would fall under the traditional folk category…still it would be a good exercise for a guitarist.
Also, as I understand it, Blackbird (White Album) was based on a Bach piece, but, I believe that Paul based the guitar part on playing the Bach piece backwards……could be wrong but remember hearing it somewhere.
After that some of the smaller classical pieces, i.e., not symphonies, would be interesting to give a try.
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I love the Greensleeve melody Mike! Have a listen to this classical piano interpretation of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T4qdndPUW8&feature=share
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Hi Jung;
JT’s original cover of Greensleeves is on the attached vid. It is mistitled as Something’s Wrong and is really Greensleeves/Something’s Wrong. There is another version around YouTube Land which is live at the BBC but I like this one more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP9x3iOW1-4
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Blackbird was inspired by the racial tensions that exploded in the US spring of 1968 as a symbolic way to support the efforts of the Civil Rights Movement. McCartney underlined also that “bird” is a British slang often used for “girl”, which would make “blackbird” become “black girl”.
“Blackbird” was also inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach’s Bourrée in E minor, a well-known lute piece often played on the classical guitar. As teenagers, he and George Harrison tried to learn Bourrée as a “show off” piece.
The first night his future wife Linda Eastman stayed at his home, McCartney played “Blackbird” for the fans camped outside his house. The fingerpicking technique that McCartney uses in the song was taught to him by folk singer Donovan.
The song was recorded on 11 June 1968 at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London, with George Martin as the producer and Geoff Emerick as the audio engineer. It is a solo performance with McCartney playing a Martin D 28 acoustic guitar. The track includes recordings of a male Common blackbird singing in the background.
Since composing “Blackbird” in 1968, McCartney has given differing, contradictory statements regarding both his inspiration for the song and its meaning. In one of these scenarios, he has said he was inspired by hearing the call of a blackbird one morning when the Beatles were studying Transcendental Meditation in Rishikesh, India. In another, he recalls writing it in Scotland as a response to racial tensions escalating in the United States during the spring of 1968. So it is quite possible Michael that you heard somewhere that Paul played the Bach piece backward!
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Yeah, I remember hearing on the Sirius Beatles’ channel during an interview with Paul that he said he and George used to play some classical music on guitar during breaks in practice or recording and that he used the main notes (motif) of one of Bach’s pieces in reverse for Blackbird. Couldn’t remember it last night …….. oh well, memory is the second thing to go!!
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I learned to play Bour’ee as played by Jethro Tull on guitar just because I love their version from the Stand Up album (the first featuring Martin Barre on guitar). Speaking of Tull… lots of amazing classical connections with that band!
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When I first heard ACDC Thunderstruck, Bach’s famous Organ Toccata and Fugue immediately came to mind. If you compare the ACDC guitar riff from the very start that continues pretty much throughout the whole song, it sounds very similar to Bach’s organ piece from the 1:20 mark of the youtube video. That counterpointing whether by Angus Young’s electric guitar or Bach’s Organ just puts me in a zone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2AC41dglnM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipzR9bhei_o
Its sad what happened to Angus Young though with his affliction of Alzheimers and untimely death.
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It wasn’t Angus Young, Jung. It was his older brother, rhythm guitarist Malcolm you are thinking of.
“Though his younger brother Angus was the more visible of the brothers, Malcolm was described as the driving force and the leader of the band. In 2014, he stated that despite his retirement from the band, AC/DC was determined to continue making music with his blessing. As the rhythm guitarist, he was responsible for the broad sweep of the band’s sound, developing many of their guitar riffs and co-writing the band’s material with Angus. He was married to Linda Young and had two children, Cara and Ross.
Young left AC/DC in April 2014, to receive treatment for dementia. In September 2014, the band’s management announced that he would be retiring permanently. He died from the disease on 18 November 2017.” Angus Young is still alive and well and lead guitarist with AC/DC.
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Malcolm was a brilliant musician, and the real brains behind AC/DC. Not to take anything away from Angus… as he’s incredibly talented, but as you said, Malcolm essentially did it all. There’s a fascinating story behind his guitar. His 1963 Gretsch G6131 Jet Firebird started out in the hands of their older brother George (who was also in the band in the beginning), who modified the red guitar by adding a humbucker (Gibson PAF, I think) between the two Filtertron pickups. If you see the early video of Long Way To The Top, you’ll see Malcolm with the guitar in this configuration. Of course, George left the band, and the guitar in Mal’s hands. Malcolm eventually stripped the original red finish and removed all but the bridge position Filtertron pickup… and at one point, even stuffed socks in the empty pickup holes because he believed it helped the tone. For what it’s worth, I prefer the Bon Scott version of AC/DC. Here’s Malcolm with the Jet Firebird before the finish and pickups were removed.
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You’re right Howard. Got the brothers mixed up there; was late last night when I wrote that. Good info you provided about them; Malcolm Young was brilliant and the driving force of the band. That disease looks like progressed very rapidly for him to pass away in just 3 years like that.
So Malcolm used a Gretsch too, how nice! I too prefer the Bon Scott version of ADCD Paul. In my personal opinion, although ACDC was hugely successful commercially, I think they could have reached greater heights and appealed to a wider audience as a musical act like a Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple, had they expanded their musical lyrics and song subjects to more mature themes, and if Bon Scott had survived, or they replaced him after his death with someone with a little more vocal depth than the mono toned ultra raspy Brian Johnson who became their lead vocalist. They got stuck in the hard core heavy metal realm like a KISS or Ozzy Osbourne. They could probably have done some awesome ballads or vocals with more color too if Bon Scott was alive. However, ACDC’s guitar sounds I think were one of the best and why they became as big as they did. Some of their powerful riffs and beats when they get in your head are irresistible, hypnotic at times.
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Well in honor Malcolm Young and some awesome ACDC guitar riffs from the Bon Scott days, here are some of my faves:
First time I heard of a dueling electric guitar and bag pipes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sUXMzkh-jI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRo2m6RYJpI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSIFNuFa-RE
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