Like a Rock is a small work, 30 inches in length by eight. My choice of browns and black fits the classic rock look seen in the images of Bob Seger. The colors silver and gold are also a good choice that you can see in these album covers:
Bob Seger is a Detroit “roots rocker,” who found his first national success with his 1976 album Night Moves. Although I can not recall ever listening or certainly buying the music of Bob Seger, here I am today spending two precious weeks painting his music. How did I get here?
The birth and the foundation of what music means to me began with The Beatles, and has spread wide from there. I know the exact date it was on February 9th 1964 when I was a sophomore in high school. That Sunday night The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. I along with 73 million others watched them perform in black and white, and unknowing joined my generation that night.
The range of my early sixties Rock band music tastes expanded to include The Rolling Stones, The Animals, Cream, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Doors, The Kinks, Jefferson Airplane, The Zombies, Buffalo Springfield, The Who, Credence Clear Water Revival, The Yardbirds, but not Led Zeppelin. I thought their music was too hard Rock. That tells me that my Rock music taste included a lot of bands like The Beatles like The Turtles, Simon and Garfunkel, The Dave Clark Five, The Four Seasons, The Beach Boys, The Righteous Brothers, The 5th Dimension, The Association, The Mamas & The Papas, Blood Sweat and Tears, and The Byrds.
Musically I also enjoyed the music of The Supremes, Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles, and the electric Blues of B B King. I mentioned that because I grew up in all white environments even though my family moved several times from different homes to different states. My first memory of ever interacting with a black person occurred while I was in college. It was than that my best friend Tom Haley and I attended a B B King concert at a local Madison bar. I remember going up to B B after the show, saying something to him and he responded how hot it was. That was all I remember. I cannot but think that it must have been the diversely of the University of Wisconsin environment, my Liberal Mother, and the impact of music that made prejudice meaningless in my life.
My attention and compassion for music changed in the late sixties, and early seventies after the garage band I joined disbanded, and I finished college. With the rise of Disco music and the Bee Gees through the seventies, I skimmed along musically with these Beatles style groups including The Eagles, Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers, and Fleetwood Mac.
In the eighties I wandered through those musical years with Madonna and Prince. In the eighties I bought one of my first CDs, Back in the High Life. Steve Winwood was again another artist in the style the Beatles. In the nineties and on I lost much of my connection to popular music, picking songs and artists, here-and-there along the way.
In early 2006 when I began painting music that expectantly became my second coming. Suddenly, music no longer started with the Beatles and that February night in 1964. Today, I see music as having no beginning and it has no end. From I Wanna Hold your Hand, to I am a Rock, from the Classical Barque composer Antonio Vivaldi, to the Jazz master Miles Davis, as long as it is harmonic I am all in.
Scott Von Holzen
aRT iN mUSIC 