The scene: Solid State University. By Rusty Pipes
Another session of Solid State's Music Appreciation 101 class. The aging professor, still with his long gray hair in a ponytail, looks intently at the students as they file in, gauging how many have done their homework this time. After they settle, he speaks.
Good day students! I trust you all enjoyed the first installment of The Golden Age of Art Rock where we went over the history of the Side Long Song form. Any questions on that before we begin the next lecture? No? Good!
Today we're going to talk about a different sub-genre of Art Rock, the great rock and orchestra collaborations. Like the Side Long Songs, most of them occurred between 1967 and 1979 or so. Actually there are quite a few titles here that are found on both lists, because classical music does tend to be longer than pop music. But on the whole there were not too many of these rock-band-and-orchestra hybrids produced, especially compared to the other Art Rock pieces. Anyone care to hazard a guess why?
Well hello again, Fred! Why are you always first to pipe up? No matter, your point is well taken, the combination of a rock band and orchestra rarely results in a single you can play on the radio. But that's only one of the two main reasons. Anyone else? No? Then finish your latte and wake up! It's pretty obvious when you think about it. The other reason is that this sort of work is simply expensive. It often involved 50, 60 or more musicians where a rock band was usually 5 or 6 tops. Still, the more ambitious and persuasive artists attempted a good number of these productions and the best ones are usually live recordings. There is something wonderful about so many artists bent to a single effort; I'm sure this is what personally attracts me to the genre. However not every rock songwriter was up to the task; so today you will also hear about some efforts that simply did not measure up or were uneven at best.
All that being said, one should point out that in a never-ending search for new melodies classical music has always borrowed from popular music forms. For example Chopin ripped off Polish folk songs, as did Beethoven and others, each in his own land. By the opening of the Twentieth Century, just as photography took the burden of realism away from the painters who were always doing portraits, the first recordings took some of the pressure of doing romantic themes off of the composers. More experimental forms were being done by composers like Claude Debussy, moving composition forward into a more abstract art, challenging musicians and audiences alike.
Still the most popular pieces always had to have a crowd-pleasing hook of some sort. Later in the Twenties and Thirties George Gershwin famously borrowed from blues and jazz in creating idioms for his opera Porgy and Bess and Rhapsody in Blue. Jazz artists like Duke Ellington built up sizeable touring companies that were really small orchestras and led him to several jazz orchestra experiments in the Forties. Still later in the late Fifties I have to mention Miles Davis and Gil Evan's work, especially on Sketches of Spain, and of course Leonard Bernstein borrowed from jazz and a bit of rock 'n roll for his immortal West Side Story. But outside of the orchestras there was a major shift going on. Instruments had become electrified. Suddenly the sound of a single guitar could rival the impact of a whole orchestra.
Rock and Roll of course is the electrified stepchild of blues, jazz and country music. Classical instruments didn't enter into the form until people like Buddy Holly did "True Love Ways" without his usual Crickets. In the early Sixties Phil Spector experimented with a classical feel when he overdubbed dozens of string parts for his wall-of-sound productions for The Righteous Brothers and others. Producer George Martin also deserves a lot of credit for bringing classical instruments to the Beatles' work of course. In 1966 he was behind the arrangement of "Eleanor Rigby"-- done with a string quartet and no electricity at all. Later The Beatles TV aired a performance of "All You Need Is Love" on The Smothers Brothers Show that featured a whole studio of musicians, including a small orchestra. Also deserving of mention are Richard Harris' hit "MacArthur Park" and around the same time Mason Williams and "Classical Gas". Even Simon and Garfunkle added plenty of strings to their work, especially by the time of Bookends, but that was later.
A true marriage of electric rock instruments and a full orchestra didn't really happen until the Moody Blues did Days Of Future Passed. Yes the same album we mentioned last lecture that figured so prominently in the development of all Art Rock. It was a creative landmark in rock and classical but it was never performed live and that rare live performance of dozens of musicians all playing together is the type of work I will talk more about today.
Days of Future Passed was originally proposed as a stereo demonstration record with the Moody Blues playing Dvorak works as rock music. They already had cut a version of "Nights In White Satin," and its strength overtook the idea of producing a Dvorak album. The orchestra they collaborated with was The London Festival Orchestra and the arrangements of their new piece, another take on a day in a person's life, were made with conductor Peter Knight. The mellotron, which we made a big deal of last lecture, mostly came to the fore in "Tuesday Afternoon." The band sounds most rock-like on "The Lunch Break," but the strings soak into the back of most every piece. Gaeme Edge, the drummer, wrote the prologue and epilogue poetry, which was to appear again on several of their albums, recited by their flutist Ray Thomas.
I still find Days Of Future Passed a little too sweet on the whole but its impact was undeniable and it inspired many other rock musicians to use more orchestration in the studio. Chad And Jeremy's The Progress Suite came soon on the heels of Days Of Future Passed and deserves honorable mention here. It has a lot of orchestral work in it but it's treated more like a film soundtrack. Notable are the performances of the Firesign Theater but it seems intended more as a work of social commentary than trying to stretch musical limits.
In any case the Moodies' success inspired several other bands to mount rock-orchestra collaborations as formal concerts in the late 60's. First there was the Five Bridges Suite, done by The Nice, the band where Keith Emerson later of Emerson Lake and Palmer first came to prominence. Just an aside here, Emerson covered quite a lot of classical pieces with his various rock bands, most notably Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition which was quite successful; also when he was with The Nice they recorded a lively take on Leonard Bernstein's "America" from West Side Story.
Pop quiz everyone, what major rock personality, who's named after a witch, also covered some of West Side Story with a rock band on his first big album?
What's that, Michael, you want another clue? Not until school's out!
C'mon, that WAS a clue. OK, here's another. Frank Zappa produced his first two albums, is that better? He has a girl's name onstage, but his real name is Vince.
Over here, Kenji? Yes, it was Alice Cooper. Of all people, rock star Alice Cooper covered a theme from West Side Story in "Blue Rondo Ala Turk" on the School's Out album. Frank Zappa of course was always interested in classical music, being a great fan of Erik Satie and Edgard Varese, but he was not involved in that particular production. But we digress, more on Frank later.
Keith Emerson's The Five Bridges Suite was recorded live on October 17, 1969 with Joseph Eger and the Sinfonia of London performing with The Nice. The album has a couple rock versions of classical music (Sibilius, Tchaikovsky and Bach) on side two in addition to the original work, dedicated to the bridges of Newcastle and the bridges between two worlds of music. It's pretty indulgent and the band overpowers rather than commingles. You might say Emerson liked the sound of his organ too much.
Even more indulgent in 1970 was the Deep Purple and Royal Philharmonic collaboration, which was composed by the Purple's organist, Jon Lord. Malcolm Arnold conducted the orchestra. It's said that their singer, Ian Gillian, was still working on the words right up until show time and there isn't really much going on there vocally; most parts of the performance are instrumental. Ritchie Blackmore gets in some good riffs but the orchestra is mostly silent in those passages. I think the worst flaw though is the inclusion of a drum solo by Ian Paice. He stuck to standard drum solo stunts of the time, things that must have impressed his rock audiences but I am certain the classical music fans and the orchestra members themselves must have snorted in disgust. Musically the compositions don't break any new ground
DP's Ian Gillian, by the way, later showed up as the lead singer in the original production of Jesus Christ Superstar. This work was in a completely different class, a fine, no, monumental rock and orchestra collaboration that put Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice on the map. Say what you will about its effect on the Christian Resurgence which was just getting into gear in 1971, JC Superstar is a magnificent piece of work, far better than Godspell or Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the next Webber-Rice opus. In composition it does not break any new ground; it's just handled really well. The trade-offs between the orchestral and rock band are always in service of the story. I trust that Superstar is pretty much a known quantity with you however, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time analyzing it today, but remember it did set the tone for a whole host of Broadway productions that came after and made sure that electric instruments are included in almost every show band now.
Let's return to the key live collaborations of the early Seventies. Another great Art Rock band, Procol Harum, reprised several of their best pieces, things like "A Whiter Shade Of Pale," "In Held Twas In I" and "A Salty Dog," in 1971 on Procol Harum and The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. More involved than the performances of The Nice or Deep Purple, it also featured a choir backing up the lead singing by Harum's Gary Booker. Overall it was a fine production and the orchestral version of "Conquistador" received some airplay, but there was nothing new written especially for this show.
Then there was Rick Wakeman. Originally from a fine little Art Rock outfit called The Strawbs (next lecture maybe), he of course came to widespread fame when he joined Yes in the early 70's. He experimented with rock-orchestra music after the release of his first solo record, The Six Wives of Henry The Eighth. That work isn't really in this genre but deserves a mention. Released in 1973, Six Wives had a lot of classical influences, but it was a recorded with a small instrumental rock ensemble. Rick was on the cutting edge of synthesizer technology at the time and this record showcased his work beautifully. Almost 30 years later it still sounds great because it sticks to the central idea of a sketch for each wife's personality without going overboard. His second solo release was another thing entirely, a production of Jules Verne's Journey To The Center Of The Earth. This was a ponderous effort that took him a bit out of his league. Recorded live January 18th 1974, the event featured David Measham conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and The English Chamber Choir. Actor David Hemmings read the narrative sections and lead vocals were performed by Gerry Pickford-Hopkins. Like Keith Emerson before him he liked the sound of his synthesizers a little too much and they seem to be pasted onto the rest of the music. Worse, there are flubs in the performance, enough that Wakeman himself wrote a bit of a disclaimer in the liner notes. A shame really. Journey has it's moments and certainly the crowd there seemed to enjoy it, but it probably needed to cook a while longer before performing. Later Wakeman fared better in the studio on Myths and Legends of King Arthur, but he never saw the level of success he found on Six Wives or his other work with Yes.
Similar in story to Journey, much later in 1978 there was a production that was on a technical par with JC Superstar, Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds. The story is the H.G.Wells science fiction classic, and none other than Richard Burton narrates it. Guest rock musicians included the Moody Blues's Justin Hayward singing lead who had a fair hit with "Forever Autumn" and Thin Lizzies's Phil Lynot appears on one track as a crazed preacher. It was dying for a stage production, but as far as I know it was only a studio recording. Several years ago I saw that it had been re-released on CD and it's quite compelling, especially if you like science fiction.
In the background of course Frank Zappa was making some of his first experiments with classical and rock music. As early as 1967 on his second Album Absolutely Free, you can hear sections of Holst's The Planets"interpreted as rock in the middle of "Invocation And Ritual Dance Of The Young Pumpkin". At the time he only released the rock work, but a few years ago, one of his 1968 rock-orchestra performances was released on the CD Ahead Of Their Time. Many of the themes later found on 200 Motels were first performed here in London at the Royal Festival Hall on October 28, 1968 by most of the original Mothers of Invention and several members of the BBC Symphony in a 'cheesy psycho-drama' called "Progress".
Zappa later collaborated with Zubin Mehta and The Los Angeles Philharmonic for 200 Motels or Zubin and The Jets in May of 1970, where he included many of the themes he first wrote for Progress. A year later the movie of 200 Motels was released, this time featuring Edgar Holworth and The Royal Philharmonic. The 200 Motels soundtrack album was not a single performance of course but the music is far more adventurous and the rock instruments seem more at home with the orchestra. In a 1976 interview with Frank, he told me that the entire movie was done in 56 hours of shooting, seven eight-hour days. Most of the music was recorded live at the same time. Quite a bit of ground was broken in that quite a lot was recorded on video and transferred to film, making it in many ways the grandfather, sorry grandMother, of many music video productions. Musically Frank was more interested in sound paintings and his music is too challenging for most listeners. His odd cadences for the orchestra often seem like something Carl Stalling would have written to punctuate a Warner Brothers cartoon, more than the lush romanticism of most film scores. More accessible to most people are the rock numbers, speared by the terrific vocals of Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, formerly of the Turtles, who obviously relished their roles in the film's sexy comedy parts too. The most appealing single piece from 200 Motels is probably "Strictly Genteel," the film's finale. I find it most important for the philosophy in the lyrics rather than the composition, but there's nothing wrong with that.
Later Frank would do more pure classical work, my favorite being Moe and Herb's Vacation by The London Symphony. There are also several renditions of his earlier work on Orchestral Favorites, which was originally released as a single album against Frank's wishes. Many years later Orchestral Favorites, Studio Tan and Live In New York were finally released in the form he wanted on Lather. But we are digressing again. OK, a last digression, One of Frank's last live performances was The Yellow Shark. There are some electric instruments found there and some earlier themes are rehashed, but its much more a classical work than a rock piece. And oh yes another 'cheesy psycho drama' is found there too. It's one of my favorite Frank pieces, laugh now!
(Silence) Oh, come on people! I had that one on the list in the listening center, do the homework! You won't get the reference until you go hear Yellow Shark.
OK, just a couple more interesting pieces to go over and then we can break.
One other orchestra collaboration stands out for me because it was done with a blues band. A great band indeed, but one that was not known for pushing the envelope of composition up to that point. This one is also interesting because it was a collaboration that came from the classical side into the rock world. Or blues in this case. I'm talking about Seiji Ozawa and the Siegel-Schwall Blues band, who performed William Russo's Three Pieces for Blues Band and Orchestra as early as July of 1968. Apparently there were several live performances of it with the Chicago Symphony while Ozawa was there, but it was never recorded for release until they did it with the San Francisco Symphony in 1973. It's a nifty little suite and I think it achieved a high state of perfection because it had those early performances and a chance to ferment before recording, like vintage wine. Apparently the band was not always told what notes to play in some sections, only a rhythm was specified and the band could improvise the melody. The orchestra always followed written out parts. The fixture was Corky Siegel's harmonica, which worked very well on the Deutsche Grammophone release.
There are a lot of other pieces I could describe in detail here. Certainly there was Tales of Mystery and Imagination by The Alan Parson's Project that put him in the public's eye, but it was a rock-orchestra collaboration only on "The Fall Of The House of Usher," which you may remember from the Side Long Song list. Many soundtrack albums also contain rock and orchestra work and some of it is quite good, but mostly it didn't have the strength to be performed apart from the film. An honorable mention should go to Grace Slick for her solo album Manhole, which featured a long rock-orchestral piece that may have been written for a film, which she sings partly in Spanish. Also there are orchestral versions of many bands' work, like Oldfield's Orchestral Tubular Bells and The Who's Orchestral Tommy - even Chuck Berry has something called Concerto In B Goode - plus any number of symphonic tributes to The Beatles, Pink Floyd, even Jimi Hendrix; but I don't see these as true rock-orchestra collaborations.
Anyway we are getting close to the end of the class period. Now for the finale, here are my two favorites of the genre-- The Mahavishnu Orchestra's Apocalypse album and Caravan and the New Symphonia. Both of these were mentioned on the Side Long Song list last lecture because of the long pieces they contain, but though they are very different I consider them the pinnacle of achievement in this genre. I take that back, there is one thing in common here-- both bands featured electric violinists, Jean-Luc Ponty in the case of The Mahavishnu Orchestra and Geoffrey Richardson respectively in Caravan. But that's about it.
Recorded in March of 1974, the compositions on Apocalypse are all from Mahavishnu, which of course was the name that guitarist John McLaughlin went by at the time. Having worked with jazz giants like Miles Davis, he was a leading force in fusion music. It should be noted that the redoubtable George Martin was the producer on this ambitious project; the orchestra was The London Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting and playing some piano too. Apocalypse is actually a fusion-classical album, not just Art Rock. It's a studio piece. There are few vocals to get in the way, just fantastic virtuosity, all pointing to a lovely chord at the end, held 90 seconds long like a meditation.
Caravan and the New Symphonia is actually a kind of greatest hits of Caravan, recorded live October 28th, 1973. Conducted by Martyn Ford at the Royal Theater in Drury Lane, it has vocals by Pye Hastings who sings with a pop sensibility, but not the cloying sweetness found in so many string arrangements. And there's no insipid hippie poetry or narration either! The band never overpowers the orchestra and they all pull together, especially in "Mirror for the Day," "For Richard" and my favorite, "The Love In Your Eye." It was originally released in 1974, but a few years ago there was a CD version that has a few extra songs from the same performance included. If you only check out one thing from this lecture, this is it.
Any questions? Here's a list of these collaborations to listen to for homework. It's not a hundred long like last time and I've probably missed several candidates, so feel free to give me your feedback.
Alan Parsons Project..............Tales Of Mystery and Imagination
Caravan.................................Caravan and the New Symphonia
Chad and Jeremy...................Of Cabbages and King (The Progress Suite)
Deep Purple...........................Deep Purple and The Royal Philharmonic
Emerson Lake and Palmer......Pictures At An Exhibition
Procol Harum.........................Procol Harum and The Edmonton Symphony
Mahavishnu Orchestra............Apocalypse
The Moody Blues...................Days Of Future Passed
The Nice................................The Five Bridges Suite
Mike Oldfield.........................Orchestral Tubular Bells
Seiji Ozawa............................3 pieces for Blues Band and Orchestra
Grace Slick............................Manhole
Rick Wakeman......................Myths and Legends of King Arthur
Rick Wakeman......................Six Wives of Henry The Eighth also
Rick Wakeman......................Journey to the Center of the Earth
Jeff Wayne............................War Of The Worlds
A. L. Webber & Tim Rice......Jesus Christ Superstar
The Who...............................Orchestral Tommy
Zappa...................................200 Motels
Zappa...................................Ahead of Their Time
Zappa...................................Yellow Shark
Until next time then, class dismissed!
(C) 2001 - Rusty Pipes
