After learning Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" on Piano, "Odd to Joy Rocks." (Yes, that's Odd).
After learning Beethoven's Turkish March, "Classical music rocks."
These two pieces have gotten him to study piano and really be interested. Perhaps we have too few piano players because of methods that provide distinct disincentive to continue. What say you?
Can one really learn to play piano without those methods?
I don't know. I studied piano for a few years, but I never became very good.
Many of the popular music methods were terrible. Sadistic nonsense like Czerny, daft notions that discouraged students from playing by ear or improvising, dull "easy pieces" that contain not a whit of musical interest, excessive emphasis on phrasing by dynamics versus the more musical and, ultimately, more useful phrasing by durations (something easily corrected by switching to harpsichord, or at least playing the piano as if it were a harpsichord), teaching Bach without teaching proper ornamentation, ignoring the tradition of figured bass, neglect of theory, etc. The list is long and seems almost like a conspiracy to discourage young musicians.
I don't know about Suzuki method, except that the people I knew in college who started with Suzuki tended to be good musicians with good ears. Ditto the Orff method, although Orff only gets you so far.
Just had a flashback of the times when one of my daughters thought the song was called "Eau de Joy."