What was the daftest moment in all of progressive rock? In a genre notorious
for prattish overkill, the No 1 slot usually goes to Rick Wakeman's The
Myths and Legends of King Arthur - on ice. A blur of school-panto wizard
hats, cardboard broadswords and skaters groping through dry ice, those three
nights at the old Empire Pool, Wembley are deemed the ultimate in hubris.
But I don't think Arthur counts. By this stage, 1975 - the dog days of prog
- Wakeman, bon vivant, showman, who had famously eaten a curry during the
boring bits on stage with Yes, was probably just having a laugh. He was on
his way to selling 12 million copies of the Arthur LP, why not camp it up?
There is much other daftness to choose from, though: Carl Palmer of ELP's two
and a half tonne British Steel drum kit; Yes's penchant for satin capes and
pixie boots; Keith Emerson's flying piano; the pustular monster garb that
Peter Gabriel of Genesis wore that looked scary but made lyrics inaudible;
oh, and the legendary ELP encore that consisted of Mussorgsky's Pictures at
an Exhibition pummelled out in its entirety.
Next month, the BBC celebrates this most vilified of musical genres in Prog
Rock Britannia, a 90-minute procession of big hair and improbable keyboard
solos. But unlike, say, Channel 4's Prog Top Ten show, this documentary does
not just laugh at the loon pants. Its maker, Chris Rodley, 56, who was a
schoolboy fan, treats the grizzled vets even-handedly as they offer a mix of
new insights and well-buffed anecdotes. So should the rest of us still be
chuckling at this unsexy, undanceable music? Or should we be nostalgic for
the fearless days when a band would plonk a 94-minute unreleased concept
piece in front of unsuspecting Saturday-night audiences - as Genesis did in
1974 with The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway?
Prog rock started off as a quaintly British phenomenon, for which you can
blame all sorts of people. Perhaps it was George Martin, the Beatles
producer, who urged the Beatles in the late Sixties to “think
symphonically”. Wisely, they didn't, but others - Procul Harum, the Nice -
did. Perhaps you could blame a group of hitherto loser musicians from
small-town Dorset who in 1969 produced the keynote prog LP, In the Court of
the Crimson King. King Crimson's debut contained all the tropes of prog
inside its wild-eyed sleeve: knotty riffs, fantastical lyrics, classical
textures - and some pretty decent tunes. Pete Townshend of The Who declared
it an uncanny masterpiece.
Stunned by what they had achieved, the Crims promptly fell to bits and later
line-ups would never again dominate the charts - unlike Yes, Emerson Lake &
Palmer and Genesis, the unholy triumvirate of prog. All three ditched the
blues and boogie that had inspired every strummer in pop from Bill Haley on,
and instead plundered jazz, folk, classical and the odd Romantic poet. Prog
musicians were grammar school lads who wanted to play something smarter than
Louie Louie, and for longer. Sometimes the results could be genius: Yes's
Close to the Edge suite; sometimes they could be horrible: Tales from
Topographic Oceans, er, the follow-up to Close to the Edge. And - baffling
to today's X Factor dumb-downers - the public loved it. ELP and their
souped-up classics and wibbly synths were prog superstars - only The Who,
Stones and Zeppelin outgrossed them in their prime. (Sadly, today all their
albums sound awful bar the first one.)
But, contrary to the Stalinist views of a generation of hip young gunslinging
NME types, many more chunks of prog rock stand up proudly. Genesis's
Supper's Ready has a whimsical charm; Jethro Tull's unwieldy Thick as a
Brick nevertheless contains durable tunes. What is the Zepp's Stairway to
Heaven other than prog? Of lesser known names, Gentle Giant, the era's
cleverest clever-dicks, still sound start-lingly original on Octopus. And
then there's that minor hit Tubular Bells ...
Of course come 1975, fuelled by hubris, cheap and plentiful stimulants, and
the huge fortunes that bands could make in pre-download days, the stars had
blundered into overkill - ELP with their tedious three-album live set; Yes
capsizing in the Topographic Oceans. But long before punk, the smartest guys
had moved on - Fripp laid off Crimson in 1974 after releasing the
intermittently electrifying Red, an album that would inspire Kurt Cobain.
Pop history has it that Johnny Rotten and the safety-pinned hordes nailed
prog's coffin shut. Well, up to a point. Yes and ELP would long continue to
clean up in the States, Genesis went pop and massive. The worst clichés of
stadium prog - empty virtuosity and OTT presentation - were inherited by
heavy metal music, which, oddly, has always enjoyed a better press. And a
few self-consciously prog bands have continued to surface - not just the
dippy Marillion. In 1999 the LA band Spock's Beard recorded The Healing
Colours of Sound, a song suite that would have been hailed as a masterpiece
if it hadn't missed the party by 25 years.
Of course, progressive rock had its failings but lazy critics often get them
wrong. Never-ending solos? Generally no - the music was too tightly
organised. Self-indulgence? Yes, sometimes, but if you want to hear a song
outstay its welcome try New Order's Blue Monday. Empty posturing? Again,
sometimes, but that applies to 70 per cent of hip-hop, too, and about 100
per cent of Queen.
Truth is, when lots of pop groups get experimental the P word is raised - be
it MGMT, Mystery Jets, the Mars Volta or Radiohead (a track apiece on OK
Computer and The Bends echo Crimson's Red).
So, yes, despite the best efforts of the punks, the questing spirit of prog
lives on. As Bill Bruford, sometime drummer of both Yes and King Crimson,
puts it in Prog Rock Britannia: “There is this permanent tension in rock
music between the ‘three chords and the truth merchants' - you know, three
chords and 4/4 time - and the others, the people like me, who say, ‘What if
we added a fourth chord and put it in 5/4?' There are always people like me
messing up what some people think is pop music.”Long may they continue.
Prog Rock Britannia, Jan 2, BBC Four, 10pm
PROG ROCK: THE TEN TELLTALE SIGNS
1 The drummer wants to do your Abba cover in 17/8 time
2 Your lightshow blows the Scout hut fusebox
3 Your planned next single is 24 minutes long and in three parts
4 Your fans know how to play twin-necked air guitar
5 The lyricist is reading Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi
6 Audiences have stopped dancing; instead they stare quizzically
7 Your old music teacher approves
8 You are No 3 in the Hungarian Top Ten
9 Your keyboardist not only knows what a tritone is, he plays lots of them
10 Your girlfriend has stopped coming to gigs. In fact, all attractive girls
have
