Piano Rock
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Rock in which an acoustic grand or electric piano carries the primary riff and harmonic weight that a guitar would normally hold, descending from the pounding left-hand style of Fats Domino, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis but married to singer-songwriter melody. The characteristic devices are rolling left-hand octaves and arpeggiated figures against right-hand chordal stabs, wide dynamic contrast between sparse verses and full-band choruses, and a gospel-derived use of suspended and added-sixth chords. Vocals are belted and melodically ambitious, arrangements frequently add strings or horns, and the piano's percussive attack — rather than distortion — supplies the music's drive.
History
The style consolidated in the early 1970s as the singer-songwriter boom gave the piano a lead role that rock had largely ceded to the guitar since the mid-1960s: Elton John and Bernie Taupin's run of albums from Tumbleweed Connection through Goodbye Yellow Brick Road established the commercial template, while Billy Joel's narrative songwriting and Procol Harum's classically inflected organ-and-piano writing offered parallel routes. Supertramp built a distinctive variant around interlocking Wurlitzer electric piano and saxophone, and the format proved adaptable rather than period-bound: Kate Bush and Tori Amos turned it toward art song and confessional intensity, Ben Folds Five recast it as loud, drily comic power trio music in the 1990s, and Keane, Coldplay and The Fray carried a smoother version into 2000s stadium pop. Its persistence rests on a simple practical fact — one instrument supplies rhythm, harmony and lead at once, so the songwriting can stay foregrounded.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Elizabeth Rosenthal, "His Song: The Musical Journey of Elton John", Billboard Books, 2001
- Fred Schruers, "Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography", Crown Archetype, 2014
- Robert Palmer, "Rock & Roll: An Unruly History", Harmony Books, 1995