Disco's Influence in Very Non-Disco Music

[redhouse_ca]

I was reading the thread on Joy Division/Television and it reminded me of something I figured I'd risk my life and run past you all...

I've truly started to enjoy the guitar of some disco music. Some of it is really great (IMHO), mostly straight up funk guitar, but, well it's disco, something else.

Anyhow, I was playing stayin alive the other night (it's a super fun song to mess around with) and I stopped at some point realizing I've played something really close to it before. It took me a bit to put it together but then it hit me: Another Brick in The Wall Part Two. And it's not a little close, it's really, really close.

Ok, before slamming me, listen to both, then feel free to bring it on.

I checked the top 50 the year The Wall was released and it hit me that it would be hard not to pick up a little of that. I always felt Gilmore has a great funk right hand, and I love his playing but man, The Bee Gees influence on Pink Floyd? Who'd a thought?

Dare I ask, was disco influential to rock and roll? Any other examples like this you can think of?

 

[pypa]

Disco was rejected not because it wasn’t good music. It was rejected because it was associated with the people who were drawn to it.

At its core, disco is great bass rhythms, funky guitar, strings, some new words. Maybe it’s only crime was a little too much high hat.

Emotional Rescue, Da Ya Think I’m Sexy, Another One Bites the Dust are 3 that sound pretty disco. Very insightful call on the ABITW2.

Did Bowie do anything that was NOT disco? At least in attitude?

 

[BigDaddyLH]

Today, disco is part of the furniture. K-Pop group Brave Girls can summon it and it sounds natural.

 

[redhouse_ca]

Disco was rejected not because it wasn’t good music. It was rejected because it was associated with the people who were drawn to it.

At its core, disco is great bass rhythms, funky guitar, strings, some new words. Maybe it’s only crime was a little too much high hat.

Emotional Rescue, Da Ya Think I’m Sexy, Another One Bites the Dust are 3 that sound pretty disco. Very insightful call on the ABITW2.

Did Bowie do anything that was NOT disco? At least in attitude?

That's a great way to put it. You are right, those arr good examples. IMHO, bowie did a lot of non-disco stuff but the disco stuff is pretty clearly disco influenced (man, Fame takes it to another level - awesome song).

Quick edit: I laughed at the high hat comment. I'm a huge prince fan and most players get Kiss wrong because they don't have the right hand for it. I bring that up because prince is god-level, IMHO, so (head bowing low) it's prince. But Kiss is a really interesting song, a lot of high hat and great funk/disco guitar, but the guitar doesn't show up into about a minute into the song, before that both the rhythm "guitat" and the high hat are synths played through some effects. It's a cool move, cuz when the guitar shows up it's so pronounced vs what came earlier. But alas, that high hat....

 

[Ed Driscoll]

Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall's" groove was directly inspired by producer Bob Ezrin hearing Nile Rodgers and Chic recording at the Power Station in New York and wanting to incorporate their rhythm guitar style and disco groove into the Floyd's otherwise very-un-disco sound:

 

[redhouse_ca]

Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall's" groove was directly inspired by producer Bob Ezrin hearing Nile Rodgers and Chic recording at the Power Station in New York and wanting to incorporate their rhythm guitar style and disco groove into the Floyd's otherwise very-un-disco sound:

That's super interesting. It works amazingly well. Very special approach. I love funk and I listen to a lot of it, so naturally I'm a big fan of Nile Rogers. Unquestionably a massive influence on music, but this one surprised me. Now I like it more knowing this was intentional.

I like the way Carlos Alomar put it (describing funk, and I paraphrase), "it's about putting holes in the music, spaces for people to dance". That's what makes chic sound so great, two guitars, each making and filling the holes they make in the tune.

 

[Festofish]

Where have you been?
Check out my favorite Kiss album.

 

[redhouse_ca]

Today, disco is part of the furniture. K-Pop group Brave Girls can summon it and it sounds natural.

I just watched video. I got a bad attitude about k-pop but I should maybe lighten that up a bit. I can't say I like this song but I like the band and the groove.

 

[redhouse_ca]

Where have you been?
Check out my favorite Kiss album.


View attachment 1079659

Late to the party, clearly. Didn't even get invited, tho, so technically I'm crashing it

 

[Ed Driscoll]

That's super interesting. It works amazingly well. Very special approach. I love funk and I listen to a lot of it, so naturally I'm a big fan of Nile Rogers. Unquestionably a massive influence on music, but this one surprised me. Now I like it more knowing this was intentional.

I like the way Carlos Alomar put it (describing funk, and I paraphrase), "it's about putting holes in the music, spaces for people to dance". That's what makes chic sound so great, two guitars, each making and filling the holes they make in the tune.

Here's an excerpt from Mark Blake's 2007 book Pigs Might Fly, the Inside Story of Pink Floyd on how the song was recorded, and the disco influence:

While in New York, Ezrin had been producing guitarist Nils Lofgren at the Power Station studios. Also recording there were the funk band Chic, making their third album, Risqué, containing the future dancefloor hit ‘Good Times’. ‘I stood out in the hallway listening to [Chic’s] Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards play, and hearing this whole other approach to rhythm,’ recalls Ezrin now. ‘And I kept going out to listen because what they were doing was so funky, and there I was, working with white people, who weren’t very funky at all, and thinking: Damn! Maybe we can do some of that!’

Back at Super Bear [Studios in France], Ezrin’s idea would find a home on ‘Another Brick in the Wall Part 2’, The Wall’s stinging condemnation of the education system, in which Pink is bullied by tyrannical schoolmasters, before standing up to his oppressors. The song contained a winning chorus that denounced the need for education, and refused to bow to ‘thought control’. By the spring of 1979, only Gilmour’s clipped guitar figure gave any hint of the disco rhythm of the finished version. ‘There was all that delayed guitar and the synthesiser melody and Roger’s voice on top,’ remembers Ezrin. ‘It was a funereal, gloomy thing,’ recalls Nick Mason. ‘Dirge-like might be a little too disparaging.’

Ezrin suggested adding a disco beat to the track, telling David Gilmour to go to a nightclub and actually listen to some of the music he was talking about. The guitarist grudgingly obliged. Waters and Mason had no such reservations. ‘I thought the disco drums were great,’ says Mason. ‘But then I did have a slightly more simplistic approach anyway.’ Another song on the album, ‘Run Like Hell’, would have a similar drum beat in the end. Listening to the new version of the song, Ezrin had another brain-wave. ‘The minute I heard the song with the beat on, I said, “This is a smash.” But the problem was it was only one verse and one chorus long.’

Despite a couple of ventures into the US singles market in recent years, Floyd were still resistant to the idea of chasing hits. ‘Roger said, “**** it, we don’t want a single,”’ says Ezrin. ‘So I started pleading, but he was like, “No, I’m not going to be told what to do.” So we waited until they’d gone home, and copied the track. I found a small disco break that we picked out of a verse, stuck it into the middle to link it and stuck the first verse back in and tacked the ending on. Now we had a single. James [Guthrie] and I played the song to Roger and he liked it.’ But with two verses exactly the same, the song needed some extra input. ‘There’s some controversy over who said, “Let’s put some kids on it,”’ admits Ezrin. The producer had used children’s voices on albums for Alice Cooper and Lou Reed, so has largely been credited as suggesting the same for The Wall. ‘I’m known as “the kid guy”, but James recalls that it was Roger’s idea. Whoever said it, it was a great idea.’

Guthrie and Ezrin made a twenty-four-track reel of the song, leaving twenty tracks open. They sent the tape from France to Nick Griffiths at Britannia Row in London. ‘We said to Nick, “Please find us some kids, and just fill up the tracks. Have them do it every way possible – cockney, posh, nasty, angelic …”’

 

[Festofish]

Late to the party, clearly. Didn't even get invited, tho, so technically I'm crashing i.

Crash away. Its one of my fave (sub?)genres.
Back in the New York Groove…Ace Frehley
Miss you…The Rolling Stones.
As disco as it gets!

 

[radtz]

Where have you been?
Check out my favorite Kiss album.


View attachment 1079659

I think Gene's "OMG what have we done look" on the cover sum up that album pretty well.

 

[buster poser]

Just to clarify, when I said in the other thread that I have an innate response to disco-adjacent music, I meant that positively. I love dance music and have since I have known what music was. Bob Wills is four-on-the-floor, after all.

 

[Len058]

Lets take a look at some of the roots

 

[0SubSeanik0]

I guess you've never seen this:

 

[Vibroluxer]

Shakedown Street, The Dead

 

[redhouse_ca]

Here's an excerpt from Mark Blake's 2007 book Pigs Might Fly, the Inside Story of Pink Floyd on how the song was recorded, and the disco influence:

Thanks, man. That was a great read. I'll get the book. Such a cool thing to see what was going on in the background. I didn't know Nile Rogers was at all involved in this and this and it's a really surprising to me that Waters would want him involved. I always liked what I saw/heard from Gilmore personally. I don't know much about him but when I read/watch interviews with him he seems to be pretty humble and ultra invested in his playing, so I can imagine him begrudgingly agrees to go to a club and check it out (although somehow I doubt he got on the dance floor). Rogers appears to me pretty headstrong, tho, so it's strange to think he would be at all open to this, especially after forging such a ground breaking path with Dark Side. But I guess there too Parsons played a big role so maybe they came to appreciate the role a geat producer/engineer can play.

Anyhow, great stuff. Thanks!

 

[redhouse_ca]

Just to clarify, when I said in the other thread that I have an innate response to disco-adjacent music, I meant that positively. I love dance music and have since I have known what music was. Bob Wills is four-on-the-floor, after all.

Thanks, you are right I read it wrong. I try and keep an open mind about music but I haven't always done that well and and prolly missed a lot of great stuff as a result. I had to look up who is Bob Willis, so there you go!

 

[redhouse_ca]

I guess you've never seen this:

Ha, you are correct, never saw it but enjoyed every minute of watching it just now!

 

[redhouse_ca]

Lets take a look at some of the roots

Great vid! I was playing guitar with my nephew last week, just jamming, and I said let's do a ballad, something stax like and I played rhythm for most of it (probably not an original lick at all, just Steve cropper and cornel Dupree stuff). Anyhow, he stopped me and asked me to show him a lot of the fills (he doesn't know r&b or soul very well), so I did, and then I showed him how, in another time signature and with maybe a little LSD, all those licks become Hendrix fills. It's was a cool moment for me, cuz when I was his age I remember being mind boggles as to how Hendrix could possibly have come up with all that and it wasn't until much later that I understood that continuity. It's what makes music great, history's greatest open source project.