I need to find some decent videos of piano or keyboard solos in popular music. Maximum length of track is around 5 minutes, so most prog is ruled out – I suspect most tracks will be from chart singles, but I’m struggling a bit.
Obviously I’ve already got Lieutenant Pigeon. Any suggestions?
Piano/keyboard solos in popular music
by 95 Comments
Billy Joel doing the intro to Angry Young Man on the none-more-80s USSR gig. Not sure if it counts as a solo, but it’s a hell of a performance and a hell of a tune.
Here it is – I did say none-more-80s but….wowser: not an unrolled jacket sleeve in sight and some hardcore mulletry. I expect one of them to produce a brick phone at any moment.
Thought it was pretty brave of Billy to start his first Russian gig with a song about how awful and stupid socialists are…
Yikes that was horrible
Jools Holland does something worth hearing on Uncertain Smile:
@fentonsteve
His finest moment?
Sadly, it breaches the five minute rule.
Undoubtedly. A fine musician (and a smug, shouty, host).
Ben Folds may be a good choice.
Battle Of Who Could Care Less and/or Landed
Aladdin Sane
/thread
Andy Newman in Something in the Air, Donald Fagen in Fire in the Hole.
I always liked Steve Winwood’s phrasing when he played synth solos. He phrases like a guitarist (to my ears). I know he also plays guitar, but I prefer his keyboard soloing.
Nice solo in here, from about 2’40” till just after 3 mins. He plays a great solo in John Martyn’s “Small Hours”, but that’s to long to fit with your criteria
I think he used one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimoog
Look no further than George Martin on Beatles records. The most famous is In My Life but Lovely Rita is lit up by his intervention. My favourite is Not A Second Time with a solo that captures all the pain, sorrow and regret of the whole song in a matter of seconds.
Does this count?
It is a smashing tune anyway…
And it led me to this short but rather groovy documentary about Vince. What a pure jazz moustache!
From the days when teens had transistor radios!
Triffic bio-article about the man here…
http://www.fivecentsplease.org/dpb/pccbio.html
May I suggest this?
https://youtu.be/SAlYGL5KnGI
Already thought of that one! It’s on the list.
On a similar tip, Mrs Mills:
Mrs Mills?
I thought the Pot Black theme – “Black and White Rag”, was by Winifred Atwell…
You are absolutely correct. Posted in haste as Mrs F was
naggingencouraging me to shift a heavy bag of compost.Yann Tiersen’s music for Amelie any use to you?
Exquisite tune. But I’ve not found a video clip of him playing it
A little bit jazzy, but hey a verse/chorus structure, being a UK chart smash and Nick Park video surely make it eligible:
More or less all solo all the time…
Of course I remember this from the mid 80s, but watching that clip again, the first impression was it was a socially distanced performance – musicians all apart, no audience….. Bruce Hornsby was way ahead of his time.
The mighty Rooster!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As484UuVV2Y
Vincent C contributes a terrific bit of barrelhouse piano to the promo film for Dexy’s’ I Love You: Listen to This which was included with Don’t Stand Me Down: The Director’s Cut in 2005. Frustratingly, said film is not on YT
Not sure if John Cale doing Chopin is what you want, but it’s good.
Chick Corea, sadly, no longer with us.
More Jools Holland – this time on Fine Young Cannibals “Good Thing”
I’ve met Roland Gift. Charming feller.
I remember being in the front row at the Edinburgh festival when he did a Shakespeare play (I seem to recall it was Romeo & Juliet). He was very good. I took a friend who was a fan of FYC and she was very impressed – especially as he spent a reasonable part of the play stood right next to her !
I met him only a couple of years ago, he’s in his sixties now but if you saw him in the street and didn’t know who he was you’d still think, “There’s someone who doesn’t go without…”
Long before he was famous young Roland kicked in the window of my student house off Spring Bank* in Hull.
Very apologetic about it he was, too although he was too broke to pay for the damage, the young scallywag..
Pretty sure it was Roland’s mum who ran the shop where later Hull Uni studentsTracy Thorn and Ben Watt got the name EBTG from.
* 73 Morpeth St if you’re interested, Moose
I don’t think Gift’s mum ran EBTG, she had Pauline’s Gift Shop (geddit??) a sort of weird junk shop on Prince’s Ave. It’s still there, but hasn’t been open for years.
Your version is better though, a sort of Hull version of Stella Street – I imagine Paul Heaton going in for his crisps and Mick Ronson dropping by for some eyeliner. Oh look! There’s Tom Courtenay shopping for trainers etc.
Morpeth Street eh? These days a broken window would be the least of your worries…
Maureen Lipman and Philip Larkin’ll be nipping in for a couple of fancy cakes and a cuppa a bit later! Got to rush, here comes the late Alan Plater…
I quite like the fact that because we had Larkin, Courtenay and Ian Carmichael, without Hull the 1950s basically wouldn’t have existed.
Somewhat appropriately, we’ve stayed there. Daddio.
Wasn’t @rthur Lucan who played Old Mother Riley from Hull, too? IIRC there’s a a statue of him there
There is, because he died here – he was actually from across the river.
There is also a statue of the execrable David Whitfield outside the New Theatre. And elsewhere there’s King Billy on his horse. He’s painted gold like that lass off of James Bond, so there’s your cause of death right there.
Does Andrew Marvell , onetime MP as well as poet extraordinaire, get a statue?
Yes he does – quite right after he put in those hard yards stumbling on melons.
Larkin was actually from Coventry – as I am myself. Met him briefly once when I and a mate who knew him from the University Council were sharing a joint outside a student occupation of the Uni’s Admin block. He declined my offer to take a toke
This is the thing about Hull – apart from Ronno virtually none of the “famous” (ha) people who “come from” Hull actually come from Hull. John Prescott is from Wales. 3/4 of “that” line-up of the Housemartins aren’t from Hull. EBTG obviously aren’t… the list goes on. It’s a place where you come and often get stuck.
Lucy Beaumont – I know someone who was at school with her and says she used to speak like Princess Anne., but she’s made “Am from Ull, me” her schtick. Like Maureen Lipman, she’s from Hessle which is definitely not Hull any more than, say Alderley Edge is Manchester..
Larkin liked jazz and cigarettes, you’d have thought the combination would have been irresistible…
Henry Priestman is a Hullite
Yes. He’s what I said in reverse – he was born here but went to school and subsequently lived elsewhere. Driving away from home, as it were.
It’s Hullensian, btw – Hullite is a man-made carbon alloy made of compressed fish guts.
As piano players go, Paul Rodgers plays in a pretty rudimentary style (no Rick Wakeman he), but there is a solo in Heavy Load off Free’s Fire and Water album.
I like his rudimentary style – see too My brother Jake
Me too. It works perfectly with the song.
The Free piano parts were played by Andy Fraser, were they not? He certainly performed at the piano when they played My Brother Jake on TOTP, without a bass player
When I saw Free (with Andy Fraser on bass) Rodgers played the piano on both Heavy Load and My Brother Jake – the latter I recall followed Heavy Load – introducing it with the words “We’ve got a piano. We might as well use it”.
One of my favourite songs…should’ve been a hit etc With a great solo.
https://youtu.be/d2OcIqwmSaY
He was great….I even love the video….the world needs a Phillo….
Probably strictly Squaresville for some, but I dig it (as the kids used to say)
Floyd Cramer, you say? This is a fave…
Can’t let this thread go without these
To make a change from the classic rock how about some late-eighties indie ivory tickling?
Bit longer than 5 mins but worth it for the brilliance of Roy Bittan:
Sorry, what part of “Alladin Sane /thread” did you not understand? 😉
I don’t like Mondays. Is that on the list? Surely.
Dave Greenfield needs representation too. This would be my choice, sounding remarkably Emersonian.
His solo in Walk On By is awesome.
Prog out because all the tracks are too long? PSHAW!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFCniNYZoFg&list=PLCjLGgbfOxrx-5mn3m9K8s-5NYAuU1GcL&index=14
One of me very fave keyboard interludicals.
Damned – I Just Can’t Be Happy Today.
(about 1:36)
Dare I say it, the mighty Scott Flanigan on piano from 3:27-4:17 in this recent CH & pals assault on the pop charts:
Seeing as the thread seems to have drifted from solos within songs to instrumentals, here’s the none-more-French, none more 1981 morning-after piano piece from Diva.
One of my favourite films. I may have mentioned this here before, but we played it at my mum’s funeral. She loved piano music, and loved Eric Satie. As do I. We couldn’t decide on a Satie piece for the service, so I said well, how about ‘Sentimental Walk’. Vladimir Cosma who did the soundtrack had several goes at that bit, and eventually came up with what I think is the most wonderful thing Satie never wrote. Did Jules and Cynthia, though? Perhaps. Rarely has a film’s colour palette owed so much to a packet of fags, though.
Elton’s “Your song” is over exposed but still brilliant.
An opportunity to post the Peter Skellern song that a young Neil Tennant must have heard and thought, at some level, “hmmm….I should write songs like this”,
The video here is also great opportunity to watch “three fuckwits and Peter Skellern”.
https://youtu.be/ihYHTIwISV0
Speaking of Neils, I give you “After the gold rush”.
Mott The Hoople All The Way To Memphis
And some actual Little Richard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0Ujb6lJ_mM
From the same era Jerry Lee Lewis
The one, the only Nigel Tufnell
Rolling Stones I Got The Blues, they got gospel too with Billy Preston, see also Shine A Light. In the first case, succinct and sublime, in the second just wonderful.
There was a blues called “Exile on Main St” on the Exile giveaway flexidisk with Mick on piano. Still have my copy…
Not related to Les Dawson AFAIK
That always raises a smile. I met her once – she’s bonkers.
On Van’s ‘A Night in San Francisco’ at 2.40 into ‘In the Garden’ comes the loveliest piano break which trickles down silver. Quite beautiful. Not sure who is playing? Not sure if there is footage?
Georgie Fame?
You could just take the piano introduction and be within the five minutes.
The first 3.25 of this, which looks like it really belongs on a @Kaisfatdad post
Thanks @Mousey! That was splendidly wacky and I would be very proud to have it on one of my threads. It made me think of the Bonzos or Bob Kerr and his Whoopee Band.
I am going off piste for a moment and replying with this small Swedish gem.
I know its only 2.50 but it’s so lovely and should be played once a day at least
That reminds me of one Chas co-wrote with his late boss Ian Dury.
Normally, Ian would come up with a set of lyrics and a rhythm and Chas would create a tune to fit. On this rare occasion, Chas brought a fully-written tune and Ian wrote some lyrics to fit it.
Anyway. Some very tasty piano on this.
How about some lovely Peter Jones music from Tiger Moth Tales? Loads to choose from, all exquisite.
Here’s one:
I love this clip – the way that it suddenly opens up, relaxes, and starts to really swing when they switch to Oscar and his band even through the tempo doesn’t change at all.
In fairness, it’s not Keith Emerson that’s really the issue but Carl and the bass player – they are as stiff as a board.
As always the answer to any question is Jackie Leven, here in his Sir Vincent Lone guise
Ray Charles was a pretty damfine ivory tickler.
Many thanks for all your suggestions! Some I already had, some forgotten and some not heard before. Thanks again for your help.
No one appears to have mentioned Steve Nieve yet.
Similarly, I was going to suggest Mike Barson. But which Madness track to include?
The opening of Shut Up, which I always imagine being played by the pianist from The Muppets.
Our House has a great opener, but is it a solo? Discuss.
Isn’t the Shipbuilding solo by Steve Nieve?
This popped up on shuffle a few days ago. Live vocals to a prerecorded backing track inc a rolling pub piano solo.
https://youtu.be/Fm-pTIlM4uU