and musicians played important roles in this developmental process, but none more than the Beach Boys and the Beatles. A slogan that I will appeal to more than once in the course of this book is the following: “If you don’t like progressive rock, blame it on the Beatles.” I only mention the one group in my slogan for sake of brevity and for shock value (hardly anyone wants not to like the Beatles), but the same blame could be laid at the foot of the Beach Boys. Consider the “danceability” question. I admit, for what it’s worth, that the issue of what happens to a music that is based in dance (or is originally meant to be primarily music for dancing to) when it is no longer danceable is a valid question. But, the fact is, the same reasons why much progressive rock is difficult to dance to apply just as much to “Good Vibrations” and “A Day in the Life” (where’s that backbeat?!).
On top of the firm foundation laid by Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Bo Diddley, the Beach Boys and the Beatles brought expansions in harmony, instrumentation (and therefore timbre), duration, rhythm, and the use of recording technology. Of these elements, the first and the last were the most important in clearing a pathway toward the development of progressive rock. Although this is an oversimplification, it might be said that progressive rock grew out of the combination of African rhythms and European harmonies that passed through the southeastern United States and then went out to the world as rock and roll. (This is the “Afro-Celtic” idea again, which has lately made a reappearance by way of hip-hop.) Certainly, by the time we reach the turning point represented by the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (1966) and the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts’ Club Band (1967), it seems that Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Mississippi, New Orleans, and Africa are a long way away. Then again, when we trace the evolution of, say, Peter Gabriel, from Genesis to Secret World, it seems that things have come full circle—or perhaps “full spiral” would be a more apt description. (In the video of the Secret World concert, Gabriel closes with what to my mind is a fantastic song, “In Your Eyes.” As the song and concert come to the finale, most of the large group of musicians is dancing around the edge of the circular stage, a wonderful—and utopian—image of this spiral.)
Framed once again in these terms, the line that leads from the originators, through the Beach Boys and Beatles, and ultimately to progressive rock, is clear. Look somewhere in the middle of this line, to King Crimson’s Larks’ Tongues in Aspic or the third part of Yes’s Tales from Topographic Oceans (“The Ancient: Giants Under the Sun”) or the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Inner Mounting Flame, and you find a solid core of adventurous rhythms, very much traceable to African music, and innovative harmonies, building on the tradition of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European classical music. A music historian might say, “So what? Isn’t this combination already in place with Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring?” Admittedly, there is a large component of Stravinsky in much of progressive rock—along with smaller doses of Debussy, Bartók, Sibelius, Orff, Messiaen, Cage, Stockhausen (and, though rarely, Schönberg and Webern)—but where the African European combination appears in Stravinsky as exoticism and dramatic juxtaposition (and even as colonialism and exploitation), in progressive rock there is an integration into a new kind of music. The Peter Gabriel example is apt, because the works by King Crimson, Yes, and the Mahavishnu Orchestra mentioned just now are already full-blown examples of “world music.”
This generous synthesis is already well along with the Beatles’ Rubber Soul (1965). This album represents a turning point in another regard: at this moment, for rock musicians who were pursuing the underground and developmental possibilities of the music, the album rather than the song became the basic unit of artistic production.
In discussions of progressive rock, the idea of the “concept album” is mentioned frequently. If this term refers to albums that have thematic unity and development throughout, then in reality there are probably fewer concept albums than one might at first think. Pet Sounds and Sergeant Pepper’s do not qualify according to this criterion; of the major albums of progressive rock that will be discussed in chapter 4, only a relative handful can truly be considered concept albums in the thematic sense. (One example is Thick as a Brick—though, as readers undoubtedly know, it’s more than a little difficult to figure out exactly what the “concept” is in this case.) However, if instead we stretch the definition a bit, to where the album is the concept, then it is clear that progressive rock is entirely a music of concept albums—and this flows rather directly out of Rubber Soul (December 1965) and then Revolver (1966), Pet Sounds, and Sergeant Pepper’s.
Without getting too ahead of our story, we might note at this point that, in the wake of these albums, many rock musicians took up the “complete album approach.” One magnificent example is Stevie Wonder’s trilogy: Talking Book (1972), Innervisions (1973), and Songs in the Key of Life (1976). (There are a few weak moments on the last of these, but then, there are a few weak moments on the White Album, too.) Another great example is War’s All Day Music (1971). These albums might belong to their own category: call it “progressive soul”—but, since they are coming out of rock music no less than Sergeant Pepper’s, why separate them from progressive rock? I will develop this question in the next chapter, but I want to make it clear at this point that the categories I will attempt to delineate are not meant as valorizations in and of themselves. Certainly the presence of these complete albums in the early and middle seventies demonstrates a very broad progressive approach that many rock musicians were taking up—these musicians were trying to say important things, working the terms of the culture in a critical way and with an adventurous musical style.12 What I am going to call “progressive rock” was just one segment of this larger trend—though one that has been much undervalued since its heyday. Going a bit further, it might also be argued that progressive rock was the core of this trend; I offer as “exhibit A” in this case the fact that, after the time of progressive rock, the tendency was for “albums” to once again be simply loose collections of songs.
Significantly, what this shows us is that progressive rock represented a concentration and heightening of all the trends in rock music that were set against the merely “pop” sensibility: the underground and developmental aspects, the complete album approach, generosity and synthesis. After the time of progressive rock, the dynamic that extended from the originators, through the Beatles, and to the broad progressive trend, was broken. How that happened will be explored in the final chapter of this book; for present purposes, however, the fact of this break demonstrates, in retrospect, that there really is such a thing as the prehistory of progressive rock.
Let us turn now to an altogether too-quick look at the further steps that led to the emergence of “full-blown” progressive rock. It is useful to keep in mind that everything that will be discussed in these next few pages happened in the space of about two or three years. Because there is so much to say about these years, roughly from 1966 to 1969—or from Pet Sounds and Sergeant Pepper’s to In the Court of the Crimson King—I am in fact not going to say much at all. Indeed, it pains me to even mention, with almost nothing in way of thematic development, the next set of groups whose music will simply be used as a stepping stone. The point is simply to show, in broad terms, the creative milieu that made it possible for progressive rock to become the next logical step—even if this step also represented a qualitative leap. In concluding this chapter, let us set the stage for progressive rock; some of the themes introduced here will be developed extensively in the next chapter.
Insomuch as any attempt to expunge progressive rock from music history must ultimately come to terms with the later Beatles, let us remind ourselves of the many attempts on the part of other bands to make their own Sergeant Pepper’s. Among these albums found under the long shadow of the Sergeant we find such disparate works as the Grateful Dead’s Anthem of the Sun and Simon and Garfunkel’s Bookends (both 1968)—and, for that matter, In the Court of the Crimson King (1969), on which much more will be said in the chapters
