and melodicism of the bass-guitar part. (This song was released in 1966 as the B-side of a single, for which the A-side was “Paperback Writer”—in between the release of Rubber Soul and that of Revolver—all of which says a great deal about the enormous flow of creativity working in the world at that time.) In his very good book, The Beatles, Allan Kozinn writes,
McCartney’s bass, placed in front of the mix, is an ingenious counterpoint that takes him all over the fretboard. Yet even when it does comparatively little, it can be the most interesting element of the performance. At the chorus, for example, while Lennon and McCartney harmonize in fourths on a melody with a slightly Middle Eastern tinge, McCartney first points up the song’s droning character by hammering on a high G (approached with a quick slide from the F natural just below it), playing it steadily on the beat for twenty successive beats. The next time the chorus comes around, though, he plays something entirely different, a slightly syncopated descending three-note pattern that almost seems to evoke the falling rain. (p. 143)
McCartney’s bass lines are subtle, thoughtful, and virtuosic; from Rubber Soul forward, every Beatles album and almost every single provides an excellent school for bass-guitar playing, with Abbey Road demonstrating a very mature style.
Again there is a Beach Boys connection. Even more ignored as a bass guitarist than McCartney is Brian Wilson. His lines are not only melodic and integral to the compositions, they are also the product of some interesting studio technology—courtesy of Phil Spector (later infamous for his overproduction of the Beatles’ Let It Be). Spector would sometimes record as many as eight different versions of a song’s bass line, using different instruments and settings on the mixing board, and then piece together the final bass part from this conglomeration. Bass players used to go nuts trying to imitate what came out on the record!
And all of this also goes back to the Motown connection, which had such a great impact on English rock groups, both before and after the appearance of the Beatles. The bass lines of James Jamerson, Carol Kaye, and others had a melodic drive that simply took the music to a new place. And this is one part of the point I am aiming toward here: the expanded role of the bass guitar brought about a transformation in the music.
As a musician, my own main instrument is the bass guitar, so the reader might suspect that I am giving special attention to a personal interest of mine. Perhaps. However, there is still an interesting point to be made here, or perhaps a few connected points. First, all of the bass players I mentioned are well known and highly regarded, and none of them does what bass players are stereotypically thought or expected to do. Second, this instrument, which is supposed to be at the back or at the bottom of the music, played a leading role in the transformation of the music I have been discussing. In other words, “Rain,” for instance, is the song that it is because of what is going on with the bass guitar. Put another way, in all of the cases I mentioned, from Motown to the Beatles to The Who, the innovations in the music can be seen in microcosm in the innovations of the bass lines. Third, the greater role for the bass in this music is symbolic of the way that, in the development of the underground and visionary trends that emerged in the late sixties, groups took a more “symphonic” approach to musical arrangement. In other words, the part for each instrument was carefully crafted as a contribution to a larger whole, and compositions emphasized the possibilities of diverse timbres. Instruments that had been “last” became, if not “first,” then at least equal players in the band. And the contrapuntal contributions of McCartney and Entwistle, especially, encouraged a new level of synergy. This synergy flowered in the playing of Chris Squire, John Wetton, Glenn Cornick, Hugh Hopper, and the other major bass guitarists of progressive rock—and the music of their bands was qualitatively enriched because of this.
As we shall see, some groups were “born” as progressive rock groups, while others grew into this. Among the major groups, Jethro Tull (f. 1967) and Yes (f. 1968) started out as perhaps not quite progressive, in the specialized sense in which I will use the term. In either case, each group began writing and playing “full-blown” progressive rock somewhere in the vicinity of their third or fourth albums: Benefit and Aqualung for Tull, The Yes Album and Fragile for Yes—in other words, around 1970–71. (Incidentally, Benefit and The Yes Album make a nice pair in my view, from their album covers to the individual songs.) Among the groups that played progressive rock from their inception are King Crimson (f. 1968) and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (f. 1970). In both cases there was a predecessor group. King Crimson was preceeded by Giles, Giles, and Fripp, whose “cheerful insanity” (1968) is only of specialty interest today (though I still feel sorry for little Rodney thirty years later). However, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer was preceded by The Nice, and we should take a moment to mark the significance of this group for the development of progressive rock.14
Originally a foursome (the first two versions of the group included guitarists Davy O’List and Gordon Longstaff), The Nice became most interesting, in my view, with their third album, where they pared down to a keyboard-led trio. This assemblage, consisting in Keith Emerson, keyboards (mainly piano and Hammond B-3 organ), Lee Jackson on bass guitar and vocals, and Brian Davison on drums, was in many ways a streamlined paradigm for the progressive groups that formed around them. Starting with the first of the three albums recorded by this trio, The Nice (1969), Keith Emerson showed that it was possible to bring together a very large range of influences, including European classical music, jazz, ragtime, Broadway, boogie-woogie, psychedelic, and Bob Dylan. Emerson’s classical influences at that point ran from Bach to Sibelius, while his jazz chops seemed especially indebted to Oscar Peterson.
The Nice’s fourth album, Five Bridges (1970), was recorded live with a full orchestra. This was not the first major symphonic outing for a rock group—the Moody Blues had already pioneered this idea three years before, with Days of Future Passed (1967), which is certainly the superior album as well. However, as with the other sides of Sergeant Pepper’s that we hear in such albums as the Stones’ Satanic Majesties, there is something to be said for the second time something happens. In the case of The Nice, another blow was struck for an expanded range for rock music. The actual “Five Bridges Suite,” which fills side one of the original LP, moves from a more baroque classical style to, ultimately, a mini-concerto for jazz reeds and brass, featuring some of the major figures from the English scene (including Alan Skidmore, Kenny Wheeler, and Chris Pyne). Keith Emerson’s liner notes for the album capture nicely—if not altogether coherently (but that’s part of the trip!)—the experimental mood of the times:
On a journey from the almost Utopian freedom of our music to the established orthodox music school I met Joseph Eger [who conducted the Sinfonia of London in this project] who was travelling in the opposite direction.
Since that meeting we have on various occasions been catalysts in combining together the music from our different backgrounds forming sometimes a fusion, and other times a healthy conflict between the orchestra, representing possibly the establishment, and the trio, representing the non-establishment; ourselves having complete trust in a rebellious spirit and highly developed, broad minded music brain whose reformed ideas in direction have been frowned upon, almost spat upon by some so-called music critics. That being Joseph Eger, the fighter.
[The “Suite”] uses bridges as a musical symbol. I worked on building a musical bridge combining early baroque forms to more contemporary ideas. . . .
In conclusion to all this The Nice and Joseph Eger have been trying to build bridges to those musical shores which seem determined to remain apart from that which is a whole.
It was easy then and it is easy now to be cynical about this sort of thing.15 And so, a contrast opens up around Emerson’s sentiments that continues to permeate the discussion regarding progressive rock: a contrast between a visionary idealism—albeit sometimes a naive one—concerning both purely musical and
