Bach: Bold As Love

Way before the era of unauthorized sampling, rock and roll artists used classical melodies on which to base their songs. J.S. Bach was a perennial favorite. Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” is arguably the most popular example, as it was inspired by the composer’s “Air on a G String” and “Sleepers, Wake.” Paul Simon’s “American Tune” uses a melody line from Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion”.

Not long ago I discovered an unlikely example of boundary blurring during a listen to Bach’s “Prelude in B Major” from Book 2 of The Well-Tempered Clavier. About 30 seconds in, the piece has 17 notes in common with the Jimi Hendrix version of “Hey Joe”, when the rock legend, in what is essentially the song’s climax, outlines the chord progression by playing the root note of the chord, dropping almost a full octave to the third of that chord, and then ascending the scale chromatically until reaching the root of the next chord. With those seventeen notes Hendrix works his way through five major chords—C, G, D, A & E.

Though Bach wrote in a different key, the melody is the same. I should mention that Hendrix did not write “Hey Joe”, whose origins are disputed, and even those 17 notes can be heard, more or less, in a cover released by The Leaves in 1965, one year before the Hendrix version. Again, it’s important to note that I’m not referring to the melody that accompanies the lyrics, but the riff that drives the song to its conclusion.

Even if “Hey Joe” is a cliché, especially in context of America’s place in the world in the late sixties (a la Forrest Gump), I find it amazing that those 17 notes, played slowly on an electric guitar, convey madness and power all at once. They’re absolutely anthemic, even if the song has been overplayed into the ground.

On a side note, a study was released a few years back with the amusing conclusion that hard rock aficionados and their classical-music-loving brethren actually shared many traits. So maybe the iron wall between heavy metal and orchestral music isn’t as impermeable as we might think.