100 Glorious moments of piano in "rock" music

Being a pianist myself, I thought this is kind of interesting. Personally I find it easier to play ballads than faster stuff on piano, which makes me even more impressed when somebody comes up with something great on a piano in a faster song. Of course this goes for acoustic piano mainly, as the Wurlitzer is fantastic for faster music. Acoustic piano is harder and one act that I personally don't think really manages the use is Ben Folds. Surely, he writes great songs. But IMO they would have sounded better with a more guitar based backing, as his piano banging becomes a bit annoying in the long run.

Anyway, counting all kinds of piano: actual acoustic piano, electric pianos and Rhodes samples etc on modern keyboards. With "rock" music, I mean anything that some people could describe as "rock", that is post-1955 pop, R&B, funk etc.

1. Jerry Lee Lewis: "Great Balls Of Fire" - the solos. Influenced by boogie woogie, and surely a great deal of Fats Domino influence, yet nobody had really done anything like that on a piano before.

2. Ray Charles: "What'd I Say". The intro etc. Introduced the electric piano in "rock" related music.

3. The Beatles: "In My Life". The instrumental solo. Glorious use of various effects to create a dirty "honky tonk piano" sound far far away.

4. Simon & Garfunkel: "Bridge Over Troubled Water". The entire piano arrangement. Perfect use from the beginning until the end.

5. Joe Cocker: "Delta Lady". Never really a fan of Joe Cocker but this riff is glorious

6. Randy Newman: "You Can Leave Your Hat On". Another immortal piano riff. "Short People" also comes pretty close

7. Chicago: "Saturday In The Park". Rob Lamm did another great piano riff here.

8. Genesis: "Firth Of Fifth". Prog had more technically advanced pianists in Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson, yet Tony Banks' piano riff from the beginning of "Firth And Fifth" is something of his own. He also did a fantastic piano theme for "The Lamia" on "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway".

9. Paul Simon: "Still Crazy After All These Years". The intro. Perhaps the most beautiful piece of music ever played on a Rhodes.

10. Queen: "Bohemian Rhapsody". The entire arrangement, more or less. Actually a fantastic piano piece in a lot of ways.

11. Billy Joel: "Honesty". Out of all his piano playing, I feel the intro here may be his most beautiful ever.

12. ABBA: "Thank You For The Music". Besides the vocal harmonies, the main hook in this song lies in the interplay between the lead vocal and the piano in the first verse. Some fantastic start-stop moments. And a great pastiche of pre-rock musicals.

13. Phil Collins: "Against All Odds". More or less whenever I sit down by a piano I somewhat end up starting with playing this. A great intro to what is IMO his best ever solo song (even better than "In The Air Tonight").

14. "I Know Him So Well" from "Chess". The intro Kind of cheesy maybe, but a great use of a modern Rhodes sample sound anyway. A very distinctive melody that most people will recognize once they hear it.

15. Maroon 5: "This Love". No, I am not a fan of them. Not at all. But the intro here is still a fantastic piano riff.

And then, a special section devoted to the man who has provided the largest number of great piano moments in pop music, Elton John. All of these songs are included for their fantastic overall piano arrangements

16. Your Song
17. Crocodile Rock
18. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
19. Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me (If I am to pick one by him, this would be it)
20. Someone Saved My Life Tonight
21. Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest word (mainly the intro and the verse)

And 22. "Maybe I'm Amazed" by Macca.

can't have a piano thread without mentioning 'the way it is' by bruce hornsby and the range, can you???

That is number 23 for certain. :)

24. The honkytonk fadeout at the end of "Sweet Home Alabama."

That bit in the extended version of Mannfred Mann's Earth Band's 'Blinded by the Light' where someone plays 'Chopsticks'

26. "The Caterpillar" by The Cure, because it's probably the best ever recording of piano by somebody who cannot play piano at all. See also the violin part :)

27. the piano coda from "Layla" (seriously, how am I the first one to mention this?)
28. The Zombies, "I'll Call You Mine"
29. Mott the Hoople, "All The Way From Memphis"
30. Guillemots, "Trains To Brazil" (fuiud)

31. Nicky Hopkins, everything he ever played, but his playing on Beatles Revolution is a good one (electric piano counts?)

32. The two piano clusters that serve as the intro to the Beatles' "The Word."

Richie Havens 'Going Back To My Roots'
Elton John 'Bennie And The Jets'
Sagittarius 'My World Fell Down'
Kiki Dee 'Star'
Madness 'Shut Up'
Tori Amos 'Silent All These Years'

39. "Backstreets" - Springsteen
40. "Seven Silver Curses" - Fiery Furnaces (i think that's the one with the best piano, can't remember. basically something by TFF)

41.) "Books About UFO's" by Hüsker Dü

42.) "Great Gig In the Sky" by Pink Floyd

43.) "Zanzibar" is my favorite Billy Joel piano song. That one or "Leyna".

44. Neu! - "Isi"

45. Aladdin Sane - Bowie

Pounding: The Chiffons - "One Fine Day" (w/Carole King on piano)

Hypnotic: Rickie Lee Jones - "We Belong Together"

Hypnotic-er: Traffic - "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys"

(46, 47, 48)

45. A Day in the Muthafukkin Life

who taught you to count?

50. one of those damned ben fold's five tracks whose name escapes me for the moment...

51. Rikki Don't Lose That Number - Steely Dan
52. Reason to Believe - Rod Stewart
53. Bring it on Home to Me - Sam Cooke

54. cold War kids - we Used to Vacation

53. the White Stripes - My Doorbell

"1. Jerry Lee Lewis: "Great Balls Of Fire" - the solos. Influenced by boogie woogie, and surely a great deal of Fats Domino influence, yet nobody had really done anything like that on a piano before."

Little Richard had hits with "Tutti Frutti," "Long Tall Sally," "Slippin' and Slidin'," "Rip It Up,"
"Ready Teddy," "Heebie-Jeebies," "She's Got It," "The Girl Can't Help It," and "All Around the World"
all before Jerry Lee Lewis did "Great Balls of Fire"

52. Little Richard - Tutti Frutti
51. Rufus Wainwright - April Fools

52. Pink Floyd - "Echoes" (esp. the opening piano + leslie speaker "ping" at the beginning and end)
53. U2 - "New Years Day"

54. ELP - Trilogy

55. Isley Brothers - Highways of My Life (the piano intro to this is one of my favourite pieces ever)

56. Jennifer Hudson - Spotlight (wonderful chord progression and a rolling piano figure that is beautifully poised)

57. The Who - Baba O'Riley (you can't get much more simplistic than this, but these three basic chords, deliberately played on the beat with no embellishment, have such power .. my only tiny niggle is the actual sound of the piano has always annoyed me a bit - it seems a bit distorted)

58 You Don't Miss Your Water - William Bell

59. Uncertain Smile - The The
60. Heartland - The The
61. Old Town - Philip Lynott

62. JOURNEY - DON'T STOP BELIEVIN

Wait, nobody mentioned Werewolves of London?

63. Werewolves of London - Warren Zevon

Of all the shitty things Kid R**k has done, his defilement of this classic is by far the worst.

64. Clockcleaner - "Vomiting Mirrors"

If you need a Ben Folds track, I think the most obvious is his solo on "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces." If ever a piano sounded like a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo, it's there.

65. Popol Vuh, Einsjaeger und Siebenjaeger

... et al

66. I Wanna Be Your Dog

67. Velvet Underground, All Tomorrow's Parties

^ what an omission!

68. "Take Me To The Pilot" - especially live, Elton's piano drives along the track

69. Kicking off the outro in 'November Rain'

57. The Who - Baba O'Riley (you can't get much more simplistic than this, but these three basic chords, deliberately played on the beat with no embellishment, have such power .. my only tiny niggle is the actual sound of the piano has always annoyed me a bit - it seems a bit distorted)

That's because it (as well as the organ/"synth" track) is taken from Townshend's demo.

70. bryan ferry's little cecil taylor tribute in roxy music's "re-make/re-model"

71. Walking in Memphis/Raving I'm Raving...

72. Madness - One Better Day (sort of a Gershwin flourish to it)

73: Wire - Outdoor Miner (solo on the single version)

74. end of Motorway to Roswell - Pixies

^yes

75. Closer - NIN

76. Lieutenant Pigeon, Mouldy Old Dough

Glenn Tillbrook 'Untouchable'

78. Pere Ubu, Chinese Radiation

103. Hüsker Dü - Monday Will Never Be the Same

102. SWANS - Blackmail

yes, and

104. swans, 'in my garden'

I need plenty of time to think about this but the first track that comes to mind is "Good times" by Chic.

105. "Nightswimming" - R.E.M.

73: Wire - Outdoor Miner (solo on the single version)

Would have been my vote.

106. "Walking in the Dark" - Throwing Muses

Is that an electric piano solo in the Zombies 'She's Not There'? Does that count?

107. "Thunder Road" - Bruce Springsteen
108. "What Jail Is Like" - The Afghan Whigs

Greg Dulli killed this thread.

Or maybe I should say Harold Chichester did.

109. David Bowie - Be My Wife
110. Diana Ross - My Old Piano
111. Steely Dan - Fire In The Hole

112. Jools Holland of Squeeze, "Pulling Mussels from the Shell," the bit after the guitar solo and before the last verse.

Is that an electric piano solo in the Zombies 'She's Not There'? Does that count?

As stated in the original post (and also evident from my mention of "What'd I Say": Yes!
(And a great suggestion too!)

Little Richard had hits with "Tutti Frutti," "Long Tall Sally," "Slippin' and Slidin'," "Rip It Up,"
"Ready Teddy," "Heebie-Jeebies," "She's Got It," "The Girl Can't Help It," and "All Around the World"
all before Jerry Lee Lewis did "Great Balls of Fire"

But the main hooks in those were the vocals. There were not wild virtuoso piano solos the way Jerry Lee Lewis did them.

80. "Dancing Queen" - those three celestial descending chords

Yes. But also the roll at the very beginning.

Simply because its such a simple line that carries the whole song:

Talking Heads - Stay Up Late

Hard to believe nobody has mentioned David Bowie's "TVC-15" yet. Roy Bittan should have quit the E Street Band and just worked with Bowie from then on out.

Oh, and also the entire piano line in Fleetwood Mac's "Hold Me," esp. the little bit before the final choruses.

Actually, everything C. McVie did was pretty much glorious.

113: Neu - Isi

114. the electric-piano intro to King Harvest's "Dancing in the Moonlight"

115. all of "Let It Be"

116. I honestly can't say I like much else of what I've heard from this band, but still when I think of piano rock, this song almost always comes to mind:

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117. the coda to "Epic" by Faith no More

118. Naughty By Nature - O.P.P.
119. Sonic Youth - Providence

But the main hooks in those were the vocals. There were not wild virtuoso piano solos the way Jerry Lee Lewis did them.

120. "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine," James Brown

121. The opening of The Loom (and of Hex) by Bark Psychosis.

122. "Message From The Soul Sisters" - Myrna Barnes

112. Jools Holland of Squeeze, "Pulling Mussels from the Shell," the bit after the guitar solo and before the last verse.

― The Five-Dollar Footlong Song (Pancakes Hackman), Thursday, November 13, 2008 12:44 PM (4 years ago)

This is such a weird thing. I hear this and think, "This kind of thing doesn't happen anymore," where some kind of virtuosic retro styling fits into the overall aesthetic of an otherwise non-explicitly-retro music.

Maybe it was even rare back in the day.

So weird that geir of all people would misread martin's pseudo-bach bit on "in my life" as "honky tonk."

123. "Absent Friend" by Bark Psychosis

123 Freebird- Lynyrd Skynyrd

the guitar is great & that's what the song is known for, but billy powell's piano bed is really beautiful. you get a good sense of it on the unreleased version from the muscle shoals album - this bbc version is a good example

http://youtu.be/CkTQUtx818w

So weird that geir of all people would misread martin's pseudo-bach bit on "in my life" as "honky tonk."

Methinks he reads "honky tonk"=upright (or tack) piano.

134. Bob Seger "Old Time Rock and Roll" immediately comes to mind

jools holland inspiring this revive makes me surprised to find "uncertain smile" by the the didn't get a mention here.

ah missed it upthread at 59.

not a big fan of 'old time rock and roll' itself but i've always really loved the kinda ominous sound of that piano intro.

Velvet Underground I'm Waiting For My Man. An avant garde piano exercise made to sound like Jerry Lee Lewis or someone.

Trying to think of specific instances for Scott Thurston and Don Godchaux.

Nick Hopkins on Hey, Frederick.

ESquerita hasn't been mentioned yet

135: b.bumble and the stingers: "nut rocker"

136. Bad Religion - Atomic Garden (doubling the rhythm guitar/bass)

darlene love - christmas (baby please come home)

Leon Russell for the piano that made Phil Spector run out of the booth and give him a hundred dollars.

137. Yes-South Side of the Sky

138. The Andrea True Connection, "More More More" (There's probably a better disco piano song, but this one popped into my head last night and took up residence.)

139. Brian Eno & John Cale, "Crime in the Desert" (for inventing Barrelhouse Minimalism)

140. carole king - i feel the earth move
141. joni mitchell - river
142. andy pratt - avenging annie
143. lcd soundsystem - all my friends
144. robyn hitchcock - sometimes i wish i was a pretty girl

145. Madness - One Better Day

146. Jo Boxers - Just Got Lucky

142. andy pratt - avenging annie

Digging this; never heard Pratt's original before. Daltrey's is ace:
http://youtu.be/Yp-fMERX67k

i miss the falsetto chorus in daltrey's version

Yeah, I really like the falsetto on Pratt's. But Daltrey had a shit falsetto which he compensated for by having an ungodly range.

143, Dire Straits - Romeo And Juliet (Knopfler was so into Springsteen that he went ahead and hired Roy Bittan for the album)
144. The Clash - The Card Cheat
145. Pink Floyd - Us And Them

(xp) daltrey didn't need a falsetto. he had townshend.