Classical encoded in rock

In keeping with the objective of this blog, I'd like to point out something that should be self-evident, but apparently isn't:

Playing an instrument, even in a 21st-century, anti-hero counterculture style, requires some training, and training in music must include some basics from the classical world.

Think about it: the guitarist in the raunchiest punk band still has to know some chords by name and be able to communicate the progression to the bass player without resorting to elaborate guesswork or the band will sound too horrible to make any kind of a dent in popular consciousness. A singer who can't understand how keys work or why harmonies should usually follow the key signature of the melody will have their career top out at being insulted by Simon Cowell.

It is, therefore, always a great pleasure to find musicians who have learned all they can learn from the classical world, and then import those lessons into the popular music of the modern era. I'm not talking about jazz (although those players have inevitably studied the same canon) because due to a trick of the human brain, 'popular' music tends to exclude that level of complexity. I'm talking about players like Thijs Van Leer of Focus, Imogen Heap or the incomparable Roy Bittan of the E Street Band.

I particularly would like to single out the Professor (Bittan) in this regard. Rock and roll piano has a long tradition of pounding the same chord rhythmically and playing outrageous glisses up and down the keyboard with a flat hand a la Jerry Lee Lewis. The occasional straying from this usually happened in pop ballads, and while some of these might lean in a 'classical' direction, they were usually most similar to a classical piece from the Grade 2 Conservatory book, like Chicago's 'Colour My World' or 'Morning Has Broken' as popularized by Cat Stevens. Roy Bittan did something new with rock piano: he utilized the skills of an advanced player in the simple chord progressions of rock tunes, and the effect was magical!

Here's how I found out about Roy Bittan: there had been some buzz in the news about this new guy, Bruce Springsteen, and some friends wanted to see him when he came to Toronto, so we lined up in the freezing cold outside an auditorium at Seneca College (we had to go into an ice arena to warm up, that's how cold it was outside) and were finally let in an hour late. I'd never heard any of his songs except one on the radio in the car on the way to the show - I don't remember which one. So we were all pretty grumpy from the cold wait when we sat down on folding chairs inside this big warehouse of a concert venue. The lights went down, a spotlight came on stage and this is what I heard:


I had never heard that kind of piano playing in rock music before. In later years I thought I heard other rock pianists who had learned the trick from Bittan, but afterwards I would check the album credits and find that the guest pianist was none other than the Professor himself. It seems no one else has ever perfected it. More shocking to me was realizing, upon listening to several different live versions of 'Jungleland,' that Bittan was actually improvising onstage each time he played it, and no two performances are the same.

BTW the photo is NOT from that night, but it should be marked (c)TheLightinDarkness.com - it was just the only two-shot of Bruce and Roy Bittan I could find.