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Prodigal Prodigy - Virtual Virtuosity
Parallels in the Incorporation of Classical Music Into Rock and Heavy Metal
by Shaun Kirk '04
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Works Cited
Introduction
There is no way to ascribe to one performer the honor of being the first rock musician; the appellation of "King of Rock" is given to Elvis, and, though one of the earlier — and certainly most popular — rock performers, he is mainly responsible for bringing a primarily black form of music to a white audience. When Elvis was first played on the radio, the question remained in the mind of the listeners whether he was black or white, for, up until this point, the music that would come to be called rock was played almost exclusively by some of Elvis’ black contemporaries: Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Little Richard (Podell, 7).
Of course, many of the songs these "rock" musicians played were more blues than anything else. Besides performing undisguised covers of blues songs, many learned to play the guitar by imitating some of the blues and jazz artists of the times like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry, for instance, would base their rock riffs on blues scales just as Elvis did. Throughout these formative years, blues would remain the basis and inspiration for rock musicians (Podell, 7).
Chuck Berry - Roll Over Beethoven While the roots of rock are spread over a number of groups and artists, the credit for the invention of heavy metal is usually granted to one group, and one man, in particular: England’s Black Sabbath, and their guitarist Tony Iommi, in 1969. Sabbath incorporated the ambience of their surroundings — the rather oppressive, industrial city of Birmingham — and their repetitive factory jobs and created an appropriately gloomy music. Iommi, though, was originally inspired by blues music, and was the guitarist for a couple of ephemeral traditionally blues bands before Black Sabbath was ever conceived (Paul). So, while some would accuse Black Sabbath of reducing the blues' "call-and-response format and riffed based structures" to a type of music that is really "all riff", the fact remains that the roots of heavy metal, like those of rock, lie in blues and jazz (Palmer, 126).
Both styles have been cultivated over the years, successively reincarnated through the innovation of many artists, who have brought to these styles ideas both old and new. Thus, while some groups and performers may have looked forward to electronica or other newly-developing musical ideas, others have looked backward for innovation, drawing from pre-existing styles and formulas in order to carry their music forward.
In the case of rock, this sort of experimentation began in the late sixties, largely due to the eclectic innovation of some of the so-called British invasion bands of the times. "Progressive" rock bands like Yes and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (ELP) expanded upon the classical notions and inclusions of groups like the Beatles, whose 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is considered a landmark album in its development of a "concert-hall" type of rock, a style that moved away from the more dance-oriented rock of the fifties and early sixties (Covach, 3-4). These experimentations in "concert-hall" rock ultimately led to the more consistently classically-based progressive rock style, which would eventually challenge itself to become more and more classical and intellectual.
This reaching back and away from the blues for inspiration is a tactic also adopted by metal. Both blues-based styles have, in fact, taken similar turns in their musical development, especially as it pertains to incorporating other musical styles into themselves. Metal has, in response to similar stimuli, subsumed classical ideas, sounds, and techniques into itself in much the same way that rock did years before it. The purpose of this essay is to explore the parallels in these two blues-based incarnations, with respect to the inspirations and implementations of their classical insertions.
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I.
Kevin Holm-Hudson, editor of Progressive Rock Reconsidered, a collection of essays written on progressive rock, points out in his introduction some of the first instances of classical music seeping into rock. He cites a "sped-up up 'classical' piano solo" on the Beatles' 1965 effort Rubber Soul and the near-synonymous release of into the Byrds' song "She Don't Care About Time," from the B-side of the single for their song "Turn! Turn! Turn!", which directly incorporates some of Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." He progresses little farther without notifying us that these classical references "are of course not progressive rock" (Holm-Hudson, 6, ibid.). What, then, would define a group, style, or song, as a purely progressive rock?
Beetles - In My Life The answer is disappointingly elusive. Holm-Hudson's introduction successively introduces and destructs all manner of definition and theory that might satisfactorily answer this question. The topics (many of them contradictory) of most essays within the collection are introduced, as is the concept of a jazz-based progressive rock, and the reader is left with virtually no idea of what truly defines progressive rock, although (s)he may have a slightly increased knowledge of the history of this (now) undefined genre.
Granted that this is a fine setup for an introduction, but a sense of satisfaction does not step in until the following essay, "Progressive Rock and the Inversion of Musical Values" by John J. Sheinbaum. Sheinbaum expands upon one of the last lingering concepts left after Holm-Hudson's crusade to eradicate all the biases and misconceptions that he has introduced — that of, as Sheinbaum's telling title spells out, the inversion of musical values. In Holm-Hudson's introduction the concept of an actual conscious attempt to bring a higher level of thought to rock as a genre is mentioned. This is the difference, the Editor says, between art- and progressive-rock; not only is there an attempt to create some sort of artistic interpretation using music, lyrics, and artwork, but there is a conscious attempt to "progress" from a lower to a higher intellectual level of music (Holm-Hudson, 7-9). Here is Sheinbaum's table of Conventional "High"/"Low" dichotomies:
HIGH
LOW
Label:
"Classical"
"Pop," "Rock,"etc.
Forces:
Orchestra
Electric/Electronic instruments
Coherence:
"Unified," with "development" — material repeated, but with important differences.
"Repetitive"
Historical Force:
Traditional
Trendy, momentary in importance
Site:
Mind (intellectual)
Body (sexual)
Difficulty:
Complicated
Simple, common
Response:
Moving
Uninteresting
Background:
Professional Training
Rough, casual, natural
Audience:
Fancy dress; silent attention
Comfortable; talking and applause
Class and Education:
Upper Class, elite
Middle and low social strata, not highly educated
Purpose:
Abstract contemplation
Entertainment, background
"Author":
Composer
Performer
Originality:
Innovative
Derivative
Skill:
Genius
Craftsperson
(Sheinbaum, 24).
This concept of intellectual progression, like so many in rock, can be traced back to the Beatles, and, specifically, their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Holm-Hudson includes some excerpts from extremely enthusiastic receptions of the Beatles' semi-progressive opus (Holm-Hudson, 7). He also includes an excerpt from John Covach's article "Progressive Rock, 'Close to the Edge,' and the Boundaries of Style" in which Covach stresses that this breakthrough album — and the appraisal it received — allowed bands to finally think that their work might be regarded as brilliant art, rather than simply a pop hit or something to dance to (Covach, 4).
From here Holm-Hudson and Sheinbaum diverge, topically. The former focuses mainly on the progression from innovative enthusiasm to self-indulgent avant-garde, whereas the latter, though touching upon this last subject not a little, chooses to outline the specifics of the traditional blues-based values of rock, versus those displayed within progressive rock. He quickly finds that they are polar opposites (Sheinbaum, 24-27).
Rock evolved from the blues, and the blues were, at the time of rock's birth, played by blacks. As such, early rock and roll was played, also, exclusively by black artists. Elvis Presley was the one mainly responsible for bringing this new, primarily black, form of music to a white audience. The text of an obviously racially-motivated pamphlet produced by the Citizen's Council of Greater New Orleans provides some insight into the attitude concerned listeners had toward rock:
STOP
Help Save the Youth of America
DON'T BUY NEGRO RECORDS
(If you don't want to serve Negroes in your place of business,
then do not have Negro records on your jukebox or listen
to Negro records on the radio.)
The screaming, idiotic words, and savage music of these records are
undermining the morals of our white youth in America.
Call the advertisers of the radio stations that play this type of
music and complain to them!
Don't Let Your Children Buy, or Listen
to These Negro Records
- (Palmer, 51-2).
Such concern over the moral and aesthetic vileness of early rock music shows displays the overall attitude towards this "savage" musical form. Even when the racial biases were no longer appropriate or relevant, the music maintained its "low" appeal. While some may have found Elvis' pelvic gyrations interesting, for instance, it is not likely that many would have considered them at all "intellectual" (Palmer, 25-26). So throughout the fifties and early sixties rock remained based in the base, so to speak, with emphasis on dancing and rhythm rather than melody or any sort of didactic theme.
This began to change, however, in the sixties. Bob Dylan's attempts at incorporating socially conscious lyrics into traditional rock, for example, marked a change in attitude from the "Dionysian" values described by Holm-Hudson to those more metaphorical, preceptive lyrics that, modified, would eventually become a staple of progressive rock bands. These sort of lyrics would eventually seep into the style of the Beatles as well (Holm-Hudson, 5).
The Beatles appear to be the great focal point of rock's evolution, in terms of the high-low dichotomy we are tracing. With the aformentioned "sped-up up 'classical' piano solo" in their song "In My Life" the group managed to instigate a series of classical borrowings that would continue through today (Holm-Hudson, 6). But for the time, the Beatles, and the success they had with intellectually appealing rock albums such as Sgt. Pepper's…, was emblematic of a turn that rock was taking at the time. The Beatles were part of the psychedelic culture that was developing and that encouraged so-called "art rock." Writer Ken Kesey and his friends the "Merry Pranksters" held the "Acid Tests" where "participants took LSD in order to enhance their experience of music, dance, experimental films, lighting effects, and recitations" (Hicks, 60). Such unabashed encouragement of art in music led to such professedly psychedelic groups as the 13th floor Elevators, who, with their 1966 album The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, released what "a local underground newspaper called 'the first head music we've had since the end of the Baroque" (Hicks, 61). The group did not try to hide that it had a purpose in writing its music, and states explicitly in the album's liner notes that "it has become possible for man to chemically alter his mental state and thus alter his point of view" and that "it is this quest for pure sanity that forms the basis of the songs on this album" (Palmer, 157).
So with an atmosphere that was ripe for innovation of all sorts, and with the advent of bands that would only be lauded for their intellectually-based sounds and lyrics, the time became right for the development of progressive rock. Progressive rock fulfills the "high" end of the high-low dichotomy. Sheinbaum includes in his essay a table relating the two traditional concepts of musical "highs" and "lows" — which may then be applied to progressive rock and to the blues-inspired rock heretofore considered uneducated and unintellectual. As he sees it, progressive rock musicians sought to create a type of rock music the opposite of that created by their predecessors, something that would last and be considered a work of art, as these people saw Sgt. Pepper's…described as in many of the more favorable editorials (Sheinbaum, 24-5).
His table provides direct contrast between the two in terms of purpose, production, and presentation. Progressive rockers do not write songs. They write compositions. The ideal progressive rock composition is not something to dance to, nor does it form the background for the audience's chatter. Rather, an audience should pay attention to the musical complexities unfolding before them, and take into consideration any higher themes or topics that would transcend literal interpretation. The target audience is not a "middle and low social strata, not highly educated," but rather an educated group who would appreciate the "genius" of the "composers" (Sheinbaum, 24-5).
Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
Beethoven - Fifth Symphony There are certain differences that exist between what is traditionally considered "high" music and what the progressive rockers of the late sixties and early seventies tried to do. For example, most "high," classical-style music would not aim primarily at an audience of teenagers. Likewise, chances are that those who attended progressive rock concerts did not do so in "fancy dress". Such exclusions aside, though, these musicians were consciously attempting to create a more "educated" or "intellectual" kind of rock music, and were using the traditional "high" values that Sheinbaum presents as their template. Inferences made that progressive rock would be consciously trying to create a stand-alone fusion between rock and classical becomes reasonable, and then viable when paired with quotes such as one John Covach borrowed from the liner notes for the Nice's album Five Bridges:
On a journey from the almost Utopian freedom of our music to the established orthodox music school I met Joseph Eger [conductor of the Sinfonia of London on the album] who was travelling in the opposite direction.
Since that meeting we have on occasions been catalysts in combining together the music from our different backgrounds forming sometimes a fusion, and other times a healthy conflict between the orchestra, representing possibly the establishment, and the [rock] trio, representing the non-establishment; ourselves having complete trust in a rebellious spirit and highly developed, broad minded, music brain whose reformed ideas in direction have been frowned upon, almost spat upon by so-called critics" (Covach, 7).
This was written by Keith Emerson, later of ELP, who, along with Yes' keyboardist Rick Wakeman, represents the existence of genuinely classically-trained musicians in progressive rock bands (Rees, 942). In it we see that, for one thing, Emerson is entirely and fully aware of his goal of combining the two styles. This is clearly not a coincidental sort of fusion, one in which bandmates might say "Let's see what happens with this sort of sound…" but one in which there is, again, a recognized goal which the group is striving for. The thought echoes louder in King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp's flat-out assertion that "my interest is in how to take the energy and spirit of rock music and extend it to the music drawing from my background as part of the European tonal harmonic tradition" (Covach, 8). These admissions substantiate the claim that the progressive rockers maintained a goal that, whether they consciously thought about it or not, effectively produced, as Sheinbaum puts it in his title, an "inversion of musical values" (Sheinbaum, 21).
Emerson, Lake and Palmer - Fanfare for the Common Man However, it was this tendency to take themselves and their music too seriously that led to the end of the progressive era of rock. While the style would continue in the so-called "neo-progressive" strain of rock, it would never really regain the full popularity it enjoyed in the early seventies. Holm-Hudson stresses in his introduction that the seriousness and purposeful muscianship of the was generally interpreted by critics as "pretention," and that, rather than treat the groups' efforts as art, like Sgt. Pepper's…, the critics generally regarded them as high-handed abortions of innovation (Holm-Hudson, 8). To make things worse, as Covach points out in the specific case of Yes, progressive rock bands would tend to, more and more, indulge in increasingly complex song structures, instrumental parts, and lyrics. What was at first seen as a misguided and ineffective but earnest attempt at a "high" rock became seen as ridiculous pretension and pandering to the crowds.
So, then, while the popular success of progressive rock died out, a style of music that had begun to develop at roughly the same time but had yet to reach its apex was ready to begin to incorporate the progressive mantra of over-the-top showmanship and technical and intellectual virtuosity: that of heavy metal.
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II.
As stated previously, metal was, unlike rock, established almost entirely through the efforts of one band: the British group Black Sabbath and, specifically, their guitarist, Tony Iommi. While it may seem that metal formed simply as an extension of rock and roll — and, indeed, the terms "heavy metal," "rock," and "hard rock," for instance, are virtually interchangable in magazine articles and criticism — in fact, Iommi was largely influenced by the blues. As he says in an interview,
In the beginning I was primarily influenced by old blues records. Since liner notes on most blues 78's were sketchy, I never knew who half of the musicians were. I still don't. But those were my first influences, and my first bands were straight blues bands (Paul).
Iommi goes on to say that the "heavy, riff-oriented music" that his group created came about mostly because the band would grow impatient with unattentive audiences, and would turn the sound up mostly so that no one could talk over it. As for the gloomy and generally depressive atmosphere of their songs, Iommi accredits this, generally, to the conditions of the industrial city of Birmingham in which he lived at the time of his band's formation: "We were completely surrounded by violence and pollution, so that was a big part of our music. We were living our music" (Paul).
Both the "heavy, riff-oriented music" and singer Ozzy Osbourne's dissatisfied wailings would become staples of heavy metal bands to come. But Black Sabbath was far from progressive. While Iommi could not have been said to skirt solos entirely, neither could he have been said to have been a virtuoso performer, and neither could any of the other members of Black Sabbath. Ozzy's lyrics, while often containing social commentary of one sort or another, never really offer any profound innovation. In the liner notes to Ozzy's 1997 collection of hits, The Ozzman Cometh, he writes that " 'War Pigs' was probably one of Sabbath's most lyrically profound works," however, as such works go, it remains a relatively standard — though nonetheless fairly moving — look at war (Osbourne).
Black Sabbath - Iron Man Perhaps, then, Black Sabbath and its ilk — those bands that made up the genre of metal in its early years — might then be viewed as analogous to those that formed rock in the fifties and sixties. Sabbath certainly represent a working class people; the heavy, dirty sound of Iommi's guitar, for example, does seem inspired by a polluted, industrial city like Birmingham, and the repeated riffery of his guitars parallels the repetitive drudgery of a factory job such as the one in which Iommi was employed (Paul). The musical influence is clearly the traditionally "low" music of the blues rather than a style consisting of any sort of "high" classical references, and the lyrics' social and emotional subject is expressed in "low"-level language. On the whole, while it would be difficult to argue that the band is at all uninnovative or uninventive, the overall appeal of Black Sabbath's music and dark lyrics is reminescent of the sixties' movie from which the group gained its epithet: a B-movie horror film which gets its scares largely from gore and pure shock, rather than any sort of reliance on the creation of a tense ambiance or compelling acting (Palmer, 126).
However, though Black Sabbath may have been the first metal band, it was certainly not the only metal band in existance, nor should it be considered the lone representative of this type of music. While the propelled machinistic sounds of thrash-metal had begun to blossom, the music was largely bereft of any of the progressive elements that were to come later in the genre's development. Bands like Motorhead and Venom sped up Black Sabbath's slow, painful sound, but, though this speed seems to place much more emphasis on technical virtuosity, Motorhead's professed intent of creating "a sound so brutal it would wither your lawn" is a far cry from what would be traditionally thought of as pursuing a "high" purpose in the writing of music (Palmer, 170).
Also during the seventies came the style known as punk. This type of music, lead by innovators such as Black Flag, X, and The Birthday Party, seemed to revel in Black Sabbath's slow tempos and harsh minor chords (Palmer, 288). Holm-Hudson points out that this musical style's ascendancy began during the same years as progressive rock's waning and hints that this may have been a reaction to progressive rock's self-absorbed tendencies: "When punk became an ascendant force in popular culture in 1976-77, the excesses and high-cultural pretensions of progressive rock made it an easy target, hastening its demise" (Holm-Hudson, 2). Palmer suggests this more directly in saying "At a time when much of rock was getting so 'progressive' that it was becoming easy listening fodder, [punk musicians] were taking the music back to basics" (Palmer, 277). Given license to view punk as a sort of anti-progressive music — as the relatively simple and repetitive power chords used might imply aside from any historic context — one makes the connection between early metal and early rock more compelling after considering the flirtations existing between the two styles throughout this era. Palmer states that many of the second generation of thrash metal bands that sprung up in the eighties wrote tunes derived from both thrash metal and hardcore punk. While this does not necessarily make heavy metal an anti-progressive movement (if anything it protests the more upbeat themes of some psychedelic music) it does link the two together in implying a common audience and musical background (Palmer, 286).
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III.
So, then, in holding that these seventies metal groups conform to the "low" end of Sheinbaum's dichotomy, the logical question becomes, "Where is the 'high' end?" Let us tune out, for a moment, both the "low" and "high" ends so that we might better hear the middle frequency: the eighties thrash metal that first began to include classical themes within itself.
Ozzy Osbourne, after leaving Black Sabbath, embarked upon a highly successful solo career. Though by now he has been accompanied by several guitarists, easily the most innovative — and certainly the most important, in a historical context — is the first he worked with, Randy Rhoads. Randy only worked with Ozzy for a scant two albums — he was killed in 1982 in a bizzarre crash between Ozzy's tour bus and the airplane he was flying in — but managed to firmly establish a relationship between metal and classical music during this time (GuitarOne Staff, 92).
Doubtless some of his influence is due to the hero-worship status granted a public figure like himself after such a tragic death. But Randy also managed to take steps towards the goal that his mother explains in the liner notes to the live tribute album released by Ozzy in Randy's memory: "In that last 2 1/2 years of his life [Randy] became intensely interested in classical guitar. His goal was to receive a Masters Degree in classical guitar and then combine the two fields of rock and classical guitar" (Rhoads). Here, the question of whether or not Rhoads actually managed to fully and completely implement the classical style into his playing is perhaps not so important as his mother's estimation of 1979 (two and a half years before his death) as the time when he decided to attempt to meld the musical styles he practiced. While a classical influence had certainly been felt before this time (Edward Van Halen's notorious "tapping" section from his infamous guitar solo "Eruption," for instance, has been compared to Bach in terms of technique and Vivaldi in terms of inspiration (Walser, 70)) this marks perhaps one of the first occurences in metal of that all-important facet of progressive rock: the intent to combine the style with a "higher" (i.e. classical) style of music.
Van Halen - Eruption Rhoads does incorporate his traditionally classical guitar technique into several songs. On the 1981 album Blizzard of Oz, much of "Goodbye to Romance," for example, is played in the classical style, and the album includes one short song, "Dee," including nothing but classical guitar. However, this sort of music could never be considered wholly progressive. While much of the musically literate Rhoads' writing includes fairly advanced musical concepts — a dissection of which Wolf Marshall writes about in an article in the magazine Guitar for the Practicing Musician — the song structure is far too simple for progressive music, especially when compared to that of the progressive rockers of the seventies, and Osbourne's lyrics, while still occasionally metaphorical and personal, still do not reach the level of purely highbrow appeal present in progressive rock. Perhaps, unencumbered of Ozzy, Randy would have produced true progressive metal, but the music he has left is merely a prelude.
Robert Palmer writes of another eighties thrash-metal band that has also implemented classical style and playing into its writing in his chronological inclusion into a time-table: "1986 — They said it couldn't be done, but here it is: Metallica's Master of Puppets, a thrash-metal 'concept' album" (Palmer, 288). The album of which he writes is indeed a concept album, concerning the seemingly ever-present issue, in rock, metal, and youth culture in general, of Us verus Them — Anti-Establishment versus Establishment. What Palmer speaks less of is the entire focus of Metallica's inclusion into Theo Cateforis' essay "How Alternative Turned Progressive: The Strange Case of Math Rock." In this essay, Cateforis traces rock that has virtually abandoned all sense of normal meter — the so-called "math rock" of which his title speaks — and relates it to the progressive rock of the seventies. Taking into consideration that metal is not really addressed as a genre — and progressive metal not at all — the name of Metallica fades in and out an almost undue amount as the study progresses. Towards the end of the essay, Cateforis subtly cedes the carefully maintained division between the thrash-metallers and math rock in referring to Metallica's 1988 album …And Justice For All as "math-metal" (Cateforis, 255).
The purpose for this division seems to be the virtuosity displayed by the band. Whereas the math rock bands that Cateforis analyzes, namely Don Caballero, create an almost intentional sloppiness around the confusing time signatures, and do not seem to indulge in any sort of technical instrumental virtuosity beyond that of the odd times, Metallica spends much more time cultivating — and displaying — their instrumental expertise. The album …And Justice For All is actually easily Metallica's most virtuosic, and, some time after it was released, members of the band have admitted that they think it excessively so. The rhythm playing tends to focus on the groups' trademark: extremely fast, palm muted notes on the low E and A strings, played almost exclusively using down-picking motions. This last, in particular, helps to create the machine-like sound that accompanies the shifts in tempo and time that occur throughout the album. There is also an impressive amount of soloing on the album, though the style, at some times, trades off between purely speed-based solos (for instance, the final solo in "One") and classically-based solos (either of the first two solos in "One").
More along this last idea, there is, in fact, some literally classical guitar playing on the album, particularly in the semi-instrumental song "To Live is to Die." The tune begins with classical guitar, and winds its way through one after another distorted perambulation before returning to a solo classical guitar, and, soon thereafter, ends with a repetition of the classical introduction. In this case, it is slightly more difficult to discern whether or not Metallica would constitute progressive metal. However, in looking at the group's history, once can see that, though this album in particular has some progressive elements (i.e. the virtuosity and the inclusion of classical music and playing into the songs) Metallica are, like Randy Rhoads-inspired Ozzy, simply another step from the "low" of Black Sabbath to other "higher" groups. In the same interview that revealed Iommi's blues roots, James Hetfield, singer, lead songwriter, and rhythym guitarist for the group, explains that the speed which the group brought to their style is mostly a result of attempts to maintain audience interest from their early club days, as well as no small amount of nervousness in these same formative times. Thus the (original, at least) motive behind their virtuoso techniques is less an attempt to take themselves to a new level of musicianship than it is an attempt to please their fans. Likewise, though some of Metallica's albums take on the semblance of art-rock in their addressing of themes, these are limited mostly to the two listed here. The groups' other works deal with social and emotional topics with little discernment.
Metallica - To Live Is to Die Thus, similarly to the Beatles' albums, we find the existance of music that is not quite progressive, but that is still elevated above the majority of the music of the style and time in terms of Sheinbaum's dichotomy. And again, such music as this, and the critical and popular appraisal that it gleans, serves as inspiration for other groups to explore their own "high" musical aspirations. Thus we have left only the absolute "high" end of rock to parallel, and the the analogous progressions between the two will have been proven complete.
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IV.
An article which appeared in a late 1997 issue of Guitar World Magazine attempts what its author admits to be the nearly impossible task of drawing lines for readers between the different types of underground metal. While it is doubtful that any of the brief blurbs that follow are actually able to fully delineate the boundaries between the ever-changing types of music that they describe, they at least provide useful starting points. The author addresses the style referred to as "progmetal" as echoing "the art rock of Seventies bands like Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and Rush, incorporating musical elements from jazz and 19th century Romantic classical music. The subgenre is notable for epic songs with spiritual themes and strong tenor vocalists" (Dasein).
Here, a few things should immediately become apparent. Beginning with the most obvious, "progmetal" is short for progressive metal. Next in line is the classification of ELP as "art rock" rather than "progressive rock," and, subsequently, so casually placing Rush in the same category as ELP, since the former is more oriented in hard rock, though it does certainly have the same progressive elements of ELP. Lastly would be that "Baroque" might have been a better choice than "Romantic," though this last is still certainly applicable to some degree.
This having been straightened out, the question of whether or not this excerpt actually tells us something useful is brought to the forefront. The answer is that this quotation does give us some pertinent information. The first is that progressive metal is recognized as part of the metal style as a whole, and that it is familiar enough that some people would call it "progmetal." Secondly, and probably far more importantly, is the fact that someone who may not have put much research into the topic or even really known much about it was able to connect the progressive elements of this style with that of Seventies' progressive rock. One of the bands listed directly after this excerpt is one of the metal bands most easily connected to the progressive rock bands of the Seventies, Dream Theater.
Dream Theater represent, as did ELP and Yes, a group possessed of a degree of formal musical education (the group formed at Berklee College of Music), who have taken their knowledge of the western musical tradition and of metal and formed their own distinct musical pastiche. Though formed roughly two decades after their progressive-rock predecessors, their music is extremely similar: the songs' and albums' lyrics trace intelligently expressed emotional themes while the lengthy, contorted songs writhe and squirm with shifting time signatures and scathing solos (Huey). The group — and in particular their guitarist, John Petrucci — is known for virtuosity, but while the band clearly does indulge in their own particular brand of technical chicanery, it is clear that the emphasis is placed on musicianship — not just flash — in quotes such as, "classical music… runs the gamut in musical intensity from really complex, fast stuff to real beautiful moments… if you can strive for that level of musicianship, that's the perfect thing," in an interview with Petrucci (Kleidermacher).
This particular interview reveals a side to Petrucci that seems atypical of most progressive music; he stops and reflects on his own "pretentiousness," as many of progressive rock's critics and scholars seem to call it. He claims that the group's attempts to churn out, in his interviewer's words, "nutty, idiosyncratic, progressive material," occasionally would "take a really good song idea and mess it up!" (Ibid.). Petrucci is admitting of himself what many had said of progressive rockers back in the Seventies; that is, the bands would sometimes become so enrapt by their own quest for the creation of art that they would often lose track of the actual quality of their songs. Petrucci seems to think that the group was "immature," and attributes this to the members' youth, now wanting to explore the possibility of art without virtuosity (Ibid.).
This brings us to the hitherto neglected aspect of instrumental virtuosity in the Sixties' progressive rock bands, a characteristic of the style that only draws more parallels to progressive metal. If any one term may be said to represent these progressive styles, it may well be that: virtuosity. Whether this is of the technical sort, or whether, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, of "interest or taste in the fine arts, esp. of a fastidious, finical, dilettante or trifling nature," it serves as useful a term as any for the style of these musicians. Let us examine, first, the parallel aspects of that technical sort of virtuosity displayed by such as Petrucci.
As Kevin Holm-Hudson states in his now-familiar introduction:
…the stage histrionics of Keith Emerson's organ playing… with ELP — which included stabbing the keyboard with knives and coaxing feeback from the instrument — offer compelling parallels with Hendrix's theatrics. However, the blues-based background of Hendrix… was supplanted with (but not entirely replaced by) classical ambitions (Holm-Hudson, 6).
Progressive players outside of ELP developed virtuosic techniques, too — members of Yes, King Crimson, and Genesis, for example. Emerson would often work bits of Liszt into his keyboard solos, as would Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman. This fact, in combination with the influence of Hendrix mentioned above (who has, doubtlessly, affected most every virtuosic guitar player since his time), only furthers the similarities between the progressive rock musicians' brand of technical proficiency and that of the metal virtuosos' type (Covach, 7). Let us first examine, as a prime example of the latter case, one guitarist who epitomizes the type of progressive, flamboyant, heavy metal guitarist we speak of: Yngwie Malmsteen.
Guitar World magazine published an article entitled "Yngwie Malmsteen: Going for Baroque," the author of which — conveniently enough — is none other than John Covach. His first paragraph supplies us with much the background information necessary to examine Malmsteen:
At the heavy metal marriage of baroque music and rock and roll, Yngwie Malmsteen is often accused of holding the shotgun. Since the early Eighties, Malmsteen has released several albums and established himself as one of metal's most influential guitarists. His stylistic trademark has always been the use of harmonic and melodic elements derived from J.S. Bach, combined with a penchant for aggressive technical display in the tradition of 19th Century virtuosi such as Niccolo Paganini. Stylistic hybrids abound in the history of rock music, but perhaps no combination seems more unlikely than that of classical music and heavy metal — could two styles have more dissimilar audiences? (Covach)
Despite the horribly obvious lead-in at the end of the excerpt — if any could have read this far and still answered with a "yes" in response to this question, then something is seriously amiss here — we now have a basic understanding of Yngwie Malmsteen. Malmsteen seems to consider it his mission in life to forge together the two musical styles, preferably in the most flashy manner possible. The progressive-wary Covach makes sure to mention, some lines further down, that Yngwie has recently recorded covers of such progressive artists as Kansas and Rush, but it is likely the two musical epiphanies cited within Robert Walser's book Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music that are most important in connecting Yngwie's style with that of, say, Emerson.
The first concerns the television appearance Yngwie saw that first inspired him to dedicate himself to the guitar: "on the 18th of September, 1970, I saw a show on television with Jimi Hendrix, and I said, 'Wow!' I took the guitar off the wall, and I haven't stopped since" (Walser, 94). Thus we have the rock connection between the progressive rockers and this progressive metallurgist — an elliptical line drawn between the two, and crossing over Hendrix in the middle. As for the classical connection: "I first heard [Paganini's] music when I was 13 years old. I saw a Russian violinist playing some Paganini stuff on TV , and freaked… Paganini's intensity blew my socks off. He was so clean, dramatic and fast; his vibrato, broken chords and arpeggios were amazing. That's how I wanted to play guitar" (Ibid.).
Paganini - Fifth Caprice Thus the two are drawn together classically by these two nineteenth-century virtuosos, who are not seldom mentioned together in the same breath. Both the violin maestro Paganini and the master pianist Liszt — whom the former helped to inspire — served as musical role models for these more modern musical performers. A parallel corollary to (and supportive of) our thesis has thus been formed; each side of virtuoso performers — rock and metal — can be shown to have thrust its roots into the blues-based styles of Hendrix and to have spread, from there, its verdant boughs into the classical sky: yet another "high-low" dichotomy (Colles).
A difference arises, though, in the unique virtuosities of Malmsteen and Emerson, in that, Malmsteen, unlike his paralleling predecessor, performs with backing musicians rather than a true band, and that very few of his songs have any vocals or lyrics — and these only thrown in for commercial appeal. Thus, Yngwie's form of progressive metal is focused entirely on himself. Accordingly, his style of music becomes much more of a pure technical showcase, and part of his notoriety has become the techniques that he has worked to perfect. Sweep picking is a prime example. This technique is a tricky — but extremely effective — way to play arpeggios on the guitar. Rather than picking each string individually, the guitarist allows his picking hand to fall from string to string, and must successively fret and mute with his other hand in tandem. Sweep picking does not only allow a guitarist to play arpeggios quickly, though; it also creates an almost surreal look, as the guitarist's picking hand seems to be moving very slowly in relation to his fretting hand. This is a technique of choice for virtuoso guitarists. Malmsteen and Petrucci use it often in their work, and each has written series of articles for Guitar World describing his own opinion on how best to master this showmanly method of playing. The degree to which Malmsteen flaunts his skills is apparent in his instrumental piece, "Arpeggios from Hell," which is composed, perhaps not suprisingly, almost entirely of sweep arpeggios. Not only does Malmsteen write this song almost exclusively to show off his most devastating guitar ability, but the very title is nothing but a boast of how difficult the song is to play. Since Malmsteen cannot create songs with intricate interplay between instruments, or songs with elevated lyrical symbolism, he must resort to pushing his purely technical form of progressive metal ever "high"-er (Malmsteen).
Yngwie Malmsteen - Trilogy Suite Op. 5 Walser continues by providing a brief dissection of Malmsteen's song, "Black Star," which he is able to relate, in several ways, to classical styles and techniques (Walser, 94). However, to catch a glimpse of Yngwie's vision of a supreme mesh of classical and metal, we must look to the album concerning which he was interviewed by John Covach, his Concerto Suite for Electrical Guitar and Orchestra in Eb Minor, Op. 1. As one may tell from the title of the album, Malmsteen is trying to bring his guitar work as close as possible to true classical. The album consists of Yngwie playing, alternately, either acoustic or electric guitar over a full orchestra. This succeeds perfectly in elevating his music to the next, "high"-er, level of progressive metal, as may best be realized in the enthusiastic review this fan, "Jimi," posted to the internet:
The scope of this project is incredible. Play classical guitar on an electric guitar with a quality symphony backing you. The production is eloquent in that the guitar and the symphony compliment one another, and Yngwie's playing is magnificent. You don't hear guys like Vai or Satriani or Johnson or Blackmore [other notable progressive virtuosos] saying anything but glowing things about Malmsteen. This schtick about him being only a technician is [wrong]… No one else in the world could have pulled this off and Yngwie deserves all the credit that can be mustered. And to compare this effort to Metallica [who came out with their own symphonic album at approximately this time]? With all due respect to Metallica… get serious ("Jimi", 1/1/2001, amazon.com).
As far as "serious" goes, this fan certainly does not mince words or spare criticism. What can be seen here is a sort of veneration for "high"-er music. Metallica, who simply had an orchestra play over songs they had written and recorded years before on their album S & M, are not as "high" as Malmsteen; they do not have the same sense of purpose or technical skill, in this fan's opinion. The references to four other (generally respected and acclaimed) virtuoso guitarists only confirms this: those four are "high" (high enough for their opinions to count, at least) but Yngwie is "high"-er (Covach).
Having established a connection, then, between the technical virtuosity of progressive metal and rock — that each becomes "high"-er with each successive level of difficulty (or showmanship…) reached — perhaps our thoughts should turn to a different style of progressive metal band, one that exploits lyrical and artistic virtuosity as well as technical instrumental sophisms in its quest to become a "high"-er music. Recalling Covach's words that "perhaps no combination seems more unlikely than that of classical music and heavy metal," we find outselves following the statement to its logical extreme: death metal. Theo Cateforis' description of math rock serve the perfect way to express the essence of this genre: "the smooth lines, curves, frailties, and imperfections of the human body have been replaced by sharp angles, vectors and surgical incisions… [it] forces the body to make sense of the music via alternative methods (through comparisons to machines, for example)" (Cateforis, 256). Death metal fans have a simpler, more direct way to put it; across every review of a popular album, or seeping from every ecstatic fan's mouth at a concert, you will find the word "brutal." What this word describes is the effect related by Cateforis; that of the clashing effect of the sharp edges and unnatural rhythmic shifts of the music on the body that encounters it. "Brutality" is what occurs when a death metal band combines these machinistic techniques with speed and instrumental virtuosity; the listener runs up against a solid wall of sound.
Consider the South-Carolinian death metal group Nile. Nile is easily one of the more "brutal" groups in the genre; their songs each tend to come in sonic blasts ranging, mostly, from two to four minutes in length. Such short song lengths — a couple so brief as one minute in length — are likely shocking to those who would expect a group presented as progressive to write mostly epic songs of ten plus minutes in length. However, the style of instrumental virtuosity used within Nile's music largely deprives them of the option of writing longer songs. One of the types of guitar techniques favored by the band's guitarists is that of "tremolo picking." Eddie Van Halen used — and subsequently immortalized — this technique in his short solo (mentioned some time previously) "Eruption" (Turner, 102). The idea is that one takes one's picking hand, and strikes a string continuously, up and down, as fast as one possibly can, generally disregarding any attempt at rhythm. The resulting sound is very reminiscent of a rapidly oscillating, sustained note. As the effect on one's wrist can become extremely painful surprisingly quickly; one will find that few death metal groups — many of whom use this technique to excess — are able to play songs longer than just a few minutes.
Now that an understanding of the genre and its standards have been presented, it is time to respond to the question of how — and why — this group qualifies as progressive. As may be inferred by their name, what sets this group apart from all other bands in their genre is that they incorporate Middle Eastern and Egyptian themes and sounds into their music. This aspect of their music raises the group "high"-er in both a.) technical and musical ways and also b.) artistic and lyrical ways.
Examining this last first, we note that most all of the group's lyrics concern topics such as the reign of Ramses II, pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, or the ruin of the Babylonian city of Ur. While such lyrics certainly show the same signs of pretension as many by the Seventies progressive rock groups, one realizes that the "pretentious" label must be branded on them when it is noted that the lyrics to some songs, such as "Nas Akhu Khan She En Asbiu" are actually written entirely in (what is supposed to be, at least) Ancient Egyptian. Immediately, the parallel must be drawn to the Yes album Tales from Topographical Oceans, since, as Holm-Hudson says, "the entire eighty-minute, two-album composition is based on a single footnote found in Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi" (Holm-Hudson, 14). Such self-indulgent lyrical aspects such as these — which clearly place lyrics outside the realm of art by virtue of the fact that practically no one in the groups' listening audiences would ever be able to understand/catch on to these things unless explicity taught/told about them — present more parallels between Nile and the bands that predate the group by thirty or so years. However, these tactics certainly work, as in this fan review titled "Mysterious and Brutal" [emphasis mine] — posted on amazon.com — of Nile's debut album, Amongst The Catacombs Of Nephren-Ka: "Although the lyrics are violent images, they are in an intelligent context. They NEVER resort to the usual horror movie (aka utterly cliched) lyrics of Cannibal Corpse" ("Chris Burton," 11/3/2001, amazon.com).
This review is persuadingly similar to that given by the Yngwie fan previously quoted in that each devotee makes it a point to recognize that his band is "high"-er than another band; here, Cannibal Corpse (a death metal band notorious for their cartoonishly explicit lyrics concerning murder, mutilation, and necrophilia) represents the "low". Parallels can again be seen in a more musically-oriented review posted by another fan concerning the same album:
…The band is beyond reproach both musically and lyrically. Original, inventive, and unafraid to try something completely different Nile surpassed all expectations on this, their debut effort… a diverse ansamble [sic] of tracks ranging from the fast and insanely brutal [there's that word again…] to dirgelike and vaguely introspective… It breaths [sic] new life into a musical subgenre which has long grown stale and raises the bar on all Death metal to come. The lyrics… are never your run of the mill Cannibal Corpse [again!] style… but are rife with inteligence [sic], written by obviously inteligent [sic] musicians that respect their art ("Micah," 1/7/2002, amazon.com).
The review here is, of course, extremely similar to that above in terms of its lauding the group for its lyrics, especially by the reference to the exact same band as previously. The attention paid to the music, here, shows that the group's attempts to incorporate the Middle Eastern influence has been successful in cultivating the image of genuine artists. It should probably be noted that, while the group certainly focuses on the Egyptian influence, classical music — ever representative of the "high" — still seeps into the songs, such as the introduction from "Ramses Bringer of War" taken from — where else? — "Mars Bringer of War" by Holst. The aggressive staccato rhythms which precede the stereotypically "brutal" music melds perfectly with the death metal style. There is also, however, the less audible classical influence, as revealed in the band's biographical page, written for their website. While the group's purely biographical information is doubtlessly accurate, it is obvious that there is at least some level of marketing strategy present, as in the excerpt below, concerning Karl Sanders' (lead songwriter, vocalist, and rhythm guitar player for Nile) writing of their album Black Seeds of Vengeance:
The writing didn't come easy. So ambitious and lofty were their ideas that it became an obsession that took up all their waking moments. Sanders spent every night composing, arranging, re-arranging and piecing together all the movements like a symphony orchestra. The lyrics alone took him almost a year as he sought to integrate them seamlessly with the music "making the combination of both form one unified piece, with each serving the other and working together to achieve the same thing." The wildly technical composition "Multitude of Foes" also took… a year to work out (nile-catacombs.com).
Evidence of an attempt to cultivate the image of a musical genius should be fairly obvious. The words and phrases such as "symphony orchestra," "ambitious and lofty," "wildly technical," and "unified" (recall that this last word appears verbatim in the "high" end of Sheinbaum's table) all work to create the image of musical geniuses who are bent on creating some incredible hybrid style of music (nile-catacombs.com). Note that both this and the concept of suffering for one's art (i.e. "an obsession that took up all their waking moments") are discussed in length with regards to Yngwie Malmsteen in Walser's book. Walser considers this part of creating the image of a musical prodigy akin to Paganini or Liszt (Walser, 98-99).
Nile - Ramses Bringer of War
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V.
It is questionable whether or not original blues innovators would much appreciate the screeching virtuosity of Malmsteen, and highly doubtful that Holst would look well on Nile's song "Masturbating the War God." However, as we have seen, each style is intrinsically linked to the other, whether purposely imitated or simply a second-generation ancestor. It is interesting that all the same developments which occurred within rock — in terms of forays into the realm of the progressive — would occur again within metal a decade or so later. But then, this simply implies that, in each case, there is an audience ready for a band to try and bring their music to the next step; to try to take it where no one has gone before. In some cases, as we have seen happen with technical virtuosos like Malmsteen and simply general ones like Nile, this can degrade almost into to the degree where the audience seems to root for their favorite like a sports team… always waiting for the next album to "top" the previous one, and any others that "low"-er artists have produced recently. It is also important to note that, despite the fizzling popularity of progressive rock, and the fact that progressive metal has been forced to play for an almost exclusively underground market, both are still alive and creating music, always ready to take their "art" to the next logical progression, and that another musical style, too, may still be reborn a prodigy.
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Works Cited
Books and Essays
Bowman, Durrell S. " 'Let Them All Make Their Own Music': Individualism, Rush, and the Progressive/Hard Rock Alloy, 1976-77." Progressive Rock Reconsidered. Ed. Holm-Hudson, Kevin. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Cateforis, Theo. "How Alternative Turned Progressive: The Strange Case of Math Rock." Progressive Rock Reconsidered. Ed. Holm-Hudson, Kevin. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Colles, H. C., Ed. "Liszt, Franz." Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 3rd ed., vol. II. New York: The MacMillan Compnay, 1948.
Colles, H. C., Ed. "Paganini, Niccolo." Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 3rd ed., vol. IV. New York: The MacMillan Compnay, 1948.
Covach, John. "Progressive Rock, 'Close to the Edge,' and the Boundaries of Style." Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis. Ed. Covach, John and Graeme M. Boone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Forte, Dan, et. all. The Guitar: The History, the Music, the Players. New York: Quill Press, 1984.
Hicks, Michael. Sixties Rock: Garage, Psychedelic, and Other Satisfactions. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999.
Holm-Hudson, Kevin. Introduction. Progressive Rock Reconsidered. Ed. Holm-Hudson, Kevin. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Palmer, Robert. Rock & Roll: An Unruly History. New York: Harmony Books, 1995.
Podell, Janet. Introduction. Rock Music in America. Ed. Janet Podell. New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1987.
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Robison, Brian. "Somebody is Digging My Bones: King Crimson's 'Dinosaur' as (Post)Progressive Historiography." Progressive Rock Reconsidered. Ed. Holm-Hudson, Kevin. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Sheinbaum, John J. "Progressive Rock and the Inversion of Musical Values." Progressive Rock Reconsidered. Ed. Holm-Hudson, Kevin. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Spicer, Mark S. "Large-Scale Strategy and Compositional Design in the early music of Genesis." Expression in Pop-Rock Music: A Collection of Critical and Analytical Essays. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000.
Walser, Robert. Running With the Devil: Power Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993.
Magazines
Covach, John. "Yngwie Malmsteen: Going for Baroque." GuitarWorld Magazine June 1998.
www.guitarworld.com/artistindex/9806.yngwie.html
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Kleidermacher, Moredachi. "Dream Theater: Acting Up." GuitarWorld Magazine November 1997.
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Garbarini, Vic. "When We Was Fab." GuitarOne Magazine January, 2001: 69-76, 196-204, 208.
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GuitarOne Staff. "Gone Too Soon: A Tribute to 65 Fallen Heroes." GuitarOne Magazine August 2001: 93.
Hendrix, James A. and Jas Olbrecht. "My Son Jimi - Part One: The Early Years." Guitar Magazine June 1999: 44-54.
Malmsteen, Yngwie. "Wild Stringdom: Appreciating the World's First Shredder." Guitar World Magazine Sept. 1999. www.guitarworld.com/lessons/artists/1999/0999.yngla.html
Malmsteen, Yngwie. "A Clean Sweep: Using Good Practice Skills to Master Sweep Picking Arpeggios." Guitar World Magazine July 1999.
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Marshall, Wolf. "Randy Rhoads Tribute." Guitar for the Practicing Musician August 1987.
Paul, Allen and Brad Tolinski. "Iron Men: James Hetfield and Tony Iommi." Guitar World Magazine August 1992.
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Scribner, Sara. "2001: An A.P. Odyssey into the Future of New Music" A.P.: Alternative Press January 2001: 36-37.
Turner, Dale. "Guitar School: A Private Lesson with John Petrucci." GuitarOne Magazine May 2001: 71-73.
Turner, Dale. "What's Between the Lines: Eruption." GuitarOne Magazine November 1999: 102.
Video
A Bach Companion: The Life and work of Johann Sebastian Bach. Dir. Levin, Robert and Kris Rossman. Videocassette. EuroArts, 2000
Other
Osbourne, John. "The Ozzman Cometh." Liner notes. Sony Music Entertainment Inc., 1997.
Rhoads, Dolores. "Ozzy Osbourne: Randy Rhoads Tribute." Liner notes. Sony Music Entertainment Inc., 1987.
Websites
Huey, Al. "Dream Theater: Biography." Artistdirect.com
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Reuben, Paul P. "Appendix I: The Modern Language Association (MLA) Style." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide.
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"Dark Lyrics — Metal Lyrics Archive" © 2001 DarkLyrics.com
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"virtuosity" Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 4 Apr. 2000. <http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/00278135>
"The Official Nile Website" © 2001 Nile
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"Micah," "A perfect album!!" and "Chris Burton," "Mysterious and brutal." amazon.com.
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"Jimi," "A Must Have." amazon.com.
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