It kind of sounds like they were including early psychedelic and experimental rock/pop because of the waves that groups like those had on other musicians. I mean, Captain Beefheart's influence on people's music has been incredible and he's not even that well known outside of the music world. People would hear those bands and it wouldn't be like many that they had heard before so they were influenced by them to go beyond what was normal for the time. Once upon a time, before prog was the repetitive beast that it is, it was brand new to the people that were influenced by the music.
Like you said, it sparked the fire of imagination (see, I told you I could read one of your whole entries before I respond).
Beefheart's Safe As Milk fused two ideas together that hadn't been considered so much with the mixture of jazz influences like Coltrane (minimally compared to TMR, but still present), delta blues artists like Howlin' Wolf, and incorporating psychedelic elements into the music. It was a very unique mixture for the time (don't you remember?) and I think that's why it makes sense that Beefheart is considered a Grandfather or step-uncle of prog without having released any prog rock as we know it today himself. He did actually progress with this music, so I guess that he could be considered progressive from a semantic point of view.
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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.
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