as well as the more recent trajectories of some of the principal groups as they navigate the post-progressive period. Some attention will be given to punk, new wave, and recent music that might be called “postmodern.” I will also discuss the music and thoughts of Brian Eno as a figure who bridges the progressive era and postmodern music. Finally, considering Yes’s recent Keys to Ascension, I will ask whether progressive rock has a chance of once again becoming a force in the world.
In the afterword I will share a few thoughts on Paul Stump’s recent book, The Music’s All That Matters, especially concerning the distinction he makes between “alternative” and “mainstream” progressive rock. I will also discuss alternative approaches to the genre that might prove fruitful for future research.
Is there hope for the future? I see this book as an attempt to gather a few, mostly overlooked, seeds of redemption, and I look forward to a larger discussion with readers regarding the possibility of the sort of society that could enable good music, and the sort of music that might encourage us to work toward mutual human flourishing in a good society.
The prehistory of progressive rock: Generosity and synthesis
Above all, rock music is two things: it is synthetic, and it is generous. Taken together, these elements ensure that, at least in some significant sense, there always has been a progressive trend in rock music. One can only hope that the ongoing corporate commodification of everything will not lead to a day when the possibility of a progressive trend no longer exists. This more ominous thought properly belongs to the final chapter of this investigation, however: here, let’s focus on a much happier subject, the way that rock music became the first truly global music of immense possibility.
My aim in this chapter is to present a somewhat potted history of rock music—or, at least, a series of reflections upon that history—from the standpoint of progressive rock. Admittedly, this is something of a perverse project in that we will be pretending that progressive rock was the destination of rock music from its origins. The reality is otherwise, of course: rock music is a very big tree, with many diverse branches. (It is significant, though, how often the branches—or at least twigs here and there—intertwine. This can be seen most graphically in Pete Frame’s rock family trees.) I’m not of the opinion that progressive rock, or even what I would more broadly call “experimental rock,” is the only musically valid branch of the tree. An analogy might be made to Western classical music. Was it a valid creative approach for composers such as Leonard Bernstein or Benjamin Britten to write works more in the mainstream of the classical style, when avant-garde composers such as John Cage or Elliot Carter were working far outside of the classical forms? Closer to home, was it valid for artists more in the mainstream of rock music to continue to create songs grounded in blues progressions when the Beatles, and especially Sergeant Pepper’s, had opened up fundamentally new territory?
This is perhaps a weird way to broach the subject of musical avant-gardes, since the legitimacy of radical innovators is what has most often been called into question—even more so in rock music than in jazz and classical music. It seems that the prevalent point of view has been that rock is not supposed to become avant-garde. My standard response to this now well-established dogma is, “Blame it on the Beatles.” But what I hope to show here is that, in fact, the roots of progressive rock are intertwined with the roots of rock music more generally.
When I claim that “generosity” is one of the fundamental elements of rock music, one of the things I mean is this: “rock music” is an exceedingly large category, under which many, many kinds of music can flourish. However, we might identify two kinds of rock music that do not always get along so well. The first might be called the “real rock ’n’ roll” camp, which is mainly defined by statements about what is not (or what ain’t) “real” rock ’n’ roll. There is also the camp of simply rock ’n’ roll, which is more able to define itself by what it likes as opposed to what it is willing to excommunicate—the point being that “rock music” is now the broader category, which includes rock ’n’ roll. The “real rock ’n’ roll” camp is dismissive of anything that departs from basic blues-chord structure or beat, so I sometimes call this camp the “blues orthodoxy.”1 The music that especially departs from this orthodoxy is, of course, progressive rock.
Generosity in rock music also refers not only to the breadth of the form, but also its tendency to be ever open, ever growing, and ever willing to engage in experiments with redefinition. The irony is that, especially as regards the critical establishment around rock music, blues orthodoxy has been the dominant trend since the late seventies, even while this trend is, demonstrably, the least generous. Or, at least, it seems that the blues orthodoxy has come down heaviest on progressive rock, because the latter has taken rock music where it is presumably not supposed to go.
Perhaps rock music tends to be generous in whatever present it finds itself because it was synthetic in its origins. Rock music represents a flowing together of diverse music cultures: most especially musics of the African American experience, from Black church music to blues, jazz, and rhythm-and-blues, but also elements of country music, folk music, and the tradition of American popular song associated with such figures as Cole Porter and the Gershwin brothers. Arguably, rock music provided the first forum for what has more lately been called “multiculturalism.” Perhaps we would find, upon further study, that those who today warn us of the dangers of the latter were yesterday those who warned us about the former. Indeed, there was never a time when the social and the musical experimentation of rock music was not intertwined, as both the music and its larger culture presented the sedate, post-war, 1950s “era of good feeling” with its first truly dangerous example of “race mixing.” Today it may be the fashion in Lubbock, Texas, to pretend as though dear, departed Buddy Holly has always been the local hero, but in his day all he heard was condemnation from the older white generation for playing “nigger music.” Meanwhile, when Buddy and the Crickets showed up to play the Apollo Theater in Harlem, they turned out to be a good deal more pale of complexion than expected.
At the same time, class and gender also asserted themselves as central issues. This new music was made, for the most part, by both Blacks and whites who were from the wrong side of the tracks. Indeed, one of the frightening things about the music, from an establishment point of view, was that it had the potential to transcend racial barriers and prejudices by showing poor whites and poor Blacks that they had a great deal in common. In the United States, of course, there is not and never has been a question of class that can be isolated in a pristine way from the legacy of slavery, anti-Black oppression, and racism.2 (Similarly, in England, there is no pure question of class that can be completely separated from English imperialism, colonialism, and the ideology of “rule Britainnia.”)3 However, the fact that the kids were dancing together and digging some of the same music—what was, significantly, originally called “race music”—was a good start; could the specter of “miscegenation” be far behind?
Here, too, the question of gender—and the more recently named question of “sexuality”—is already intertwined with race and class. Even as the cultural, political, and economic establishments hoped for a “well-ordered” and “smoothly functioning” society, where ideology had come to an end and the appropriate roles and behaviors for well-adjusted individuals at all levels of the social hierarchy seemed rock solid, there began a kind of groundswell on the cultural front, a rebellion against the little boxes all made of ticky-tacky.
What brought these diverse musical and cultural elements together and allowed them to congeal into something called “rock music”? Arguably, the musical streams that flowed into the music could not have given rise to a new musical form without one key element: electricity. Rock music is the first music to be entirely formed in
