Trollheart

Before I move on to 1968, a brief word about this year and the albums I have listened to. With apologies to 1966, it does seem that ‘67 was the year prog rock began struggling towards some sort of birth. To paraphrase Yeats: “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, strides towards Canterbury to be born?” Whereas we had the likes of the Beach Boys and the Byrds laying claim to some sort of responsibility for, or hand in the genesis of prog rock, as I said I don’t really see it that way. Those albums certainly impinged on and helped spur the ideas and fire the imaginations of those who would later lead the way, but as for being fathers, or grandfathers of the subgenre? Nah. They pointed the way a little perhaps, but more in the manner of a farmer leaning on a gate who, when asked the way to the big festival, indicates the direction to the band in the van and then turns back to his cows and sheep. In the same way as that hypothetical farmer sent the band in the right direction but had nothing to do with them or their music, had no interest in fact in either and just happened to be there to point the way, the Beach Boys, the Byrds and to an extent Zappa helped prog along on its journey but could not really be said to have seriously contributed in any real way.

Make of that what you want, fume and rage and tell me I’m wrong, but I heard little in any of these three albums to make me realise a new era of music was approaching, a new direction being taken. Zappa particularly was experimental and that added to the prog melting pot, if you will, but to call him a prog rock artiste, or at least to say that Freak out! was a prog rock record is I think stretching it a little. You may disagree with that of course, especially if you’re a fan of the man and know his music better than I do, and there’s no doubting the possibility that down the road he may have contributed more widely or specifically to the subgenre, but for that album on its own, I think not.

So 1966, the year of the Beach Boys and the Byrds and the emergence of Frank Zappa, does not for me cut it for the year prog began. 1967 on the other hand has some gems. The ability of the Moody Blues to change from straight blues/rock to a more classical idea, leaning into what would become progressive rock, the coming to life of Pink Floyd, the birth of Procol Harum and the efforts of Keith Emerson to take keyboard players out of the shadows of the background and into the limelight, all speak to me of a new shift in music at the time, a real feeling that something was happening, that something was about to change, that something was being born.

There are exceptions. Not every album I reviewed here gives me that sort of feeling. Let’s quickly look at them one by one. Velvet Underground’s debut was the first one I took in ‘67 and as I said, I didn’t feel it with them. That, to me, was not progressive rock nor anything close to what prog rock would become. In parts, yes, it was maybe art rock, and that would be a kind of subset of prog rock, but too much of it is psychedelia or just plain rock to afford it a place in what I would see as the hatchery of this new music. Procol Harum, on the other hand: a great blend of the sort of influences that would indeed create prog rock --- the mellotron, the strange lyrics, the time signature changes, the longer songs. Sgt Pepper’s deserves its place because of the recording techniques used, as well as for almost singlehandedly redefining the idea of an album as opposed to a collection of singles plus fillers, and of course for being one of the first concept albums. But even so, it’s not what I would call prog. Or to put it in a topical setting, to tie in with Star Trek Month (and robbed from the pages of “Prog” magazine) it’s prog, Jim, but not as we know it.

The inclusion of Captain Beefheart's debut here baffles me, as it is so far away from prog rock as to be almost indistinguishable from it. It's a half-decent blues album but that's about it. Like Frank Zappa, though, it's true he had a pretty big effect on the subgenre with albums like the dreaded Trout Mask Replica, so I would not have the temerity to suggest he was not important to prog rock, just not with this record. Pink Floyd, although their debut was not quite what you would call a prog rock album, does have the beginnings of how their sound was to develop and evolve over the years, and there are some very proggy moments on Piper, so I would certainly count that as a very important album in the conception of progressive rock.

Nobody could deny the Moody Blues did more than nearly anyone to advance and even create the subgenre of progressive rock with their second release, Days of future passed, particularly with Pinder’s efforts to make the mellotron the prog instrument of choice, and the marrying of classical music with rock, the suites and the ecological nature of the music on the album, while leaving aside my contempt for his ego, Emerson and The Nice really advanced the cause by putting keyboards centre stage, developing the idea of a gig as more a show than just a concert (something Floyd had also done, but more with light shows and multimedia than by sheer force of personality), and of course again the idea of using classical music to set their own themes to, paying homage to the past while creating the future.

With a few very important albums then, the seeds for the germination of progressive rock were sown, and over the next decade would blossom and spread, though oddly again this new subgenre would be primarily a British phenomenon. Though other countries would get in on the act, most notably Italy, prog rock, even though it would grow to gigantic, almost bloated proportions by the end of the next decade, would still only be driven by and practiced in that sceptred isle. Later of course, America would get in on the scene, but not for a long time. For now, and for a considerable amount of years, as she had once ruled the waves, Britannia would rule the progsphere.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018