The Sound Of Silence: Classic Rock's 15 Most Powerful Pauses

[caption id="attachment_311454" align="aligncenter" width="615"] [Photo: Getty Images][/caption]Shhh….did you hear that? It’s… nothing! And… it rocks! From the earliest days of rock-and-roll, even the loudest and wildest of musicians have plugged into the power of silence; the pregnant pause. 

A blast of silence can mercilessly build suspense and massively pump up the power when the rock returns to re-launch the rest of the song down its rollicking road. Just witness any number of vintage live performances where Elvis Presley staggers his lyrics or Chuck Berry coming out of his famous duck walk by taking a beat.

After Sgt. Pepper propelled rock into the album era, artists more and more effectively wove loaded vocals breaks and instrumental full-stops into their very recordings. The result has been some of the most famous, most exciting and flat-out greatest moments in music. Here are the 15 most powerful pauses in classic rock.

“Bat” comes on just likes its name says, with an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer orchestral keyboard onslaught, followed by towering guitar leads, and a piano breakdown in which the song’s hero declares his zeal to ride free and just live, dammit—live! That’s when everything screeches to a halt, there’s a pause, then a electrifying blast of percussion and Meat wails: “I’m gonna hit the highway like a battering ram/on a silver-black phantom bike…” and it’s eminently clear he won’t be coming back. Rock itself never did, either.

Curry’s pause toward the end of the song is also one of filmdom’s most delightfully unbearable moments of verbal suspense. He sings, “So… come up to the lab/and see… what’s on the slab/I’ll make you shiver with antici….”

He holds his tongue (for once), prompting Rocky Horror’s famously interactive audience to shout maniacally, “Say it! Say it! Say it!”

Then, finally, Curry, relieves the tension by hissing, “….pation!"