“Two Most-Beloved Rock Numbers From The 1970s---Van Halen’s “Eruption” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody””

(Podcast Script)

Opening music – Waltz in D minor, op. 39, no. 9, Johannes Brahms…

Welcome to another podcast episode from my series, “Pictures at a Music Exhibition”, where I focus on the music that I got exposed with, whether or not I performed it before. This time, we are going into not just rock---but “hard rock”, with two different songs by two different rock ensembles.

This episode is called “Two Most-Beloved Rock Numbers from the 1970s—Van Halen’s “Eruption”, and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

VAN HALEN AND ERUPTION

But let’s go first to Van Halen.

Well, this heavy metal/hard rock band had been known for “Eruption”---which I know, from my years of piano experience---even though I had very little guitar experience, is, in my two bits, “the rock guitar solo cadenza to end all other rock guitar solo cadenzas.” Actually call it a “rock guitar cadenza anthem” that transcended the history of American rock music as much as the development of the Moog synthesizer, and Jackie Wilson’s rock guitar antics onstage.

The band started in 1972, in Pasadena, California, by the Dutch brothers of drummer Eddie Van Halen, and guitarist Alex Van Halen. They then recruited David Lee Roth as vocalist, and bassist/vocalist Mark Anthony, leading to the hard rock quartet you know about. They started gigging in local clubs and venues at first, unnamed, and then, in 1974, as they became popular, to compete with the explosion of punk rock bands that sprouted all across America at that time, they branded themselves as “Van Halen.”

Later on, as the band became more and more popular, Gene Simmons—a rock musician who would play in the famous party hard-rock band, KISS, help them record their first demo, and then, the record label, Warner Brothers, called them up.

Then, they did their first demo in 1977, and finally released their first album, “Van Halen”, in 1978. Their first track, “Running With The Devil”, was a favorite driving down-tempo hard-rock favorite of loud chopper-bikers, with that pulsating E notes by bassist Mark Anthony.

But the track after that, “Eruption”, is what gave not just the song’s hook---but also probably the hook of the whole album as well. I did a piano version of this famous rock guitar cadenza and I put it on Finale music notation software to create a bit of his guitar effects. Let’s listen to all of it….

(The track is run.)

Interesting cadenza, of course. let me do this track again and let me speak over it……

(The track is run again.)

This rock guitar cadenza starts off with the help of a few drumming flourishes by Alex van Halen and Mark Anthony on bass, but it was Eddie who was the star of the show