In all the interminable books, memoirs, articles and TV documentaries considering punk rock, there’s one factor all of them appear to agree upon: that punk killed progressive rock. “Virtually in a single day, after the Intercourse Pistols prog rock got here to a halt,” declaimed one pundit in a latest BBC documentary. Very properly phrased – however completely unfaithful.
The truth that Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten as soon as wore a Pink Floyd T-shirt with the phrases ‘I HATE’ scrawled in biro above the band’s title is all the time held up as proof that punk was some form of response to prog. But Rotten (as John Lydon) was an enormous fan of Hawkwind, Van Der Graaf Generator, Can and numerous different bands whose progness was by no means unsure. The concept punk ‘needed to occur’ as a result of a complete era was idly fuming away on the complexity of King Crimson or the overblown theatricality of Rick Wakeman’s – admittedly daft – staging of King Arthur & The Knights Of The Spherical Desk on ice is simply absurd.
As a crop-haired indignant younger man myself, I can’t recall ever losing a minute of 1976, ’77 or ’78 desirous about how a lot I hated prog. Like most of my contemporaries I used to be having an excessive amount of of a great time to actually give a toss about prog, disco, rockabilly, pub rock or chart pop a technique or one other. There have been too many different issues on the earth to hate. If there was something musically that I couldn’t stand it was the fixed weight loss plan of crap novelty information and golden oldies and smug DJs that dominated Radio One and Prime Of The Pops in these days.
It was within the pages of NME, Melody Maker and Sounds that we had been advised that prog was the category enemy and inspired to really feel hatred. This was a revolution and, to paraphrase Lenin, what use is a revolution with out firing squads? The thesis was that punk was a product of the salt-of-the-earth discontented proletariat, whereas prog was made solely by evil, right-wing toffs, and consumed solely by Tory voters, fox hunters and people addled by false consciousness.
The truth, after all, was that whereas prog actually had its share of former public schoolboys, a minimum of the prog rockers had been trustworthy about their origins whereas individuals just like the privately educated Conflict frontman Joe Strummer felt that it was vital to faux a prolier-than-thou previous for themselves. At my complete faculty, in addition to a small smattering of punks, the favored artists of the day in 1976 had been Frank Zappa, Mahavishnu Orchestra and – for some purpose – The Unimaginable String Band. Conversely, the boys from the close by fee-paying faculty had been all the time making an attempt to persuade you that they had been ‘too avenue’ to hearken to something extra difficult than The Ramones, and that their spare time was spent sniffing glue, getting nicked by the pigs (maaaan) and smashing the state.
The perspective of prog musicians to punk was generally fairly condescending: Rick Wakeman allegedly despatched a letter to the top of his label, A&M, asking to have the Intercourse Pistols dropped; Roger Waters made it clear that he hated punk; the shortage of musicianship was decried. You possibly can sense that they felt threatened, although clearly they needn’t have. Outdoors of the fantasy world created by the music press, it was prog that basically dominated.
Within the official historical past, 1977 was the yr of anarchy within the UK, The Conflict, no future. Nevertheless it was additionally the yr of Rush’s A Farewell to Kings, Pink Floyd’s Animals, Sure’s Going For The One, Genesis’s Wind & Wuthering: all Prime 10 albums, all accompanied by huge excursions, some the bands’ greatest ever. In the identical interval that noticed the Pistols shoot and burn, not solely did prog not die, it really loved certainly one of its golden ages.
Within the final years of the 70s, prog continued to outsell punk each on album and dwell. The last decade culminated with one of the vital huge prog albums ever: Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Across the time, new bands like UK, IQ, Pendragon, Twelfth Evening, Marillion, After The Hearth and Pallas all shaped, whereas a realignment of prog’s superpowers created bands like Asia. It says a lot in regards to the hubris of the media that, having failed to note these bands, there was a kind of collective assumption that they didn’t exist. However with virtually no press, radio or TV protection anyplace, these bands commonly offered out reveals and shifted thousands and thousands of albums.
What’s extra, away from the stadium-level bands, the thriving UK progressive underground continued to make difficult and modern music: Delicate Machine, Henry Cow (and successor band The Artwork Bears), Van Der Graaf Generator and Invoice Nelson (previously of Be Bop Deluxe and later Crimson Noise) made a few of their finest albums round this time.
Maybe much more fascinating had been the bands who emerged within the quick aftermath of punk who tried to make music that did greater than repeat the identical three chord formulation. Cabaret Voltaire from Sheffield integrated electronics, sampling and Hawkwind-like mild reveals; Glasgow’s Easy Minds, significantly on their Steve Hillage-produced 1981 double album Sons & Fascination/Sister Emotions Name, integrated many parts from basic Genesis together with krautrock, disco and the avant garde; Ultravox, on their third basic album Programs Of Romance, made an album that appeared to proceed the route that Roxy Music deserted after For Your Pleasure.
The truth that most of the post-punk era had been making a brand new form of prog was not misplaced on some. “It’s bloody Curved Air,” sneered Nick Lowe when requested about Siouxsie & The Banshees, whose first three albums positively pushed the boundaries of punk rock to their limits. And when Wire – arguably a synthesis of Ramones-style minimalist punk and high-prog complexity – recorded a 15-minute monitor referred to as Loopy About Love for a John Peel Present session in 1979, Peel grumbled that it was a step backwards.
At present, prog is sort of all-pervasive. There are such a lot of bands – from the Dream Theater prog steel faculty to the experimental post-indie rock of Radiohead, to leftfield superstars Device – who can all be termed prog, and who’re certainly comfy
with the tag. Pink Floyd’s Stay 8 reunion not solely stole the present however noticed their album gross sales undergo the roof afterwards, whereas the affect of King Crimson, Floyd and Sure is in all places. (King Crimson themselves nonetheless make critically leading edge music.) Not unhealthy for one thing that supposedly ‘got here to a halt’ in 1977.
Initially printed in Traditional Rock situation 97, August 2006
