Chapter II: Children of the Revolution
It may seem odd to speak in terms of revolution when talking about a genre of music that has become identified with being one of the most indulgent, self-absorbed, overblown and pretentious in rock music (other than jazz)
, but back when prog rock was just forming as an idea, its ideals and intentions were certainly seen as outside the norm. Rock music had, until then, and for some time after too, been based on pretty standard formats: four/four time, verse-chorus-verse, and with lyrics mostly concerning love, sex, parties or other "earthy" subjects. To paraphrase and mix Shakespeare and Paddy McAloon, progressive rock musicians began to see that there were more things in Heaven and Earth than just cars and girls.
So they experimented with new time signatures, odd changes of rhythms and tones, different instruments and began to look beyond the tried and trusted lyrical content of rock and roll, bringing in elements from fantasy, literature, mythology and the emergent science-fiction, as well as the also emergent fascination with mind-expanding drugs, much of which enhanced and in some cases informed their music. To the staid and button-down rock scene of the late sixties, this was indeed nothing short of a revolution.
While we've certainly reviewed and listened to some very interesting, even pivotal albums in the subgenre from 1967 and 1968, in a very real sense 1969 was where it all really began for prog rock. With the summer of love fading away to a distant memory as the sixties drew to a shuddering close, and Vietnam looming large in the headlines as it would for another five years, psychedelic rock began to recede as hard rock took a more central role, both in the US and in Europe, with Woodstock sounding both the climax and the last hurrah for the hippy generation. Peace and love was at an end, and protest against an unjust war and a corrupt administration was on the agenda. Flower power was out, and people power was in.
None of which in the least sowed the seeds for the birth and eventual dominance over the seventies of progressive rock, which at its heart had little or no protest, few interest in politics or current events, and really in many ways was the music industry retreating into itself, hiding in the trappings of a softer, happier time and largely ignoring the events taking place around it. Certainly, as time went on, prog bands got more politically aware, but really for most of the seventies they were more concerned with singing about towers in far-off lands, dragons and wizards and higher states of consciousness. Rarely if ever did a prog band take on the issues of the day, and in this way perhaps they made themselves a target for the slavering beast of punk rock, which was waiting its chance to leap upon them and savage them as it snarled and growled and spat at the establishment, and roared in a primordial and often extremely raucous and off-key voice its disenchantment with the
status quo.
But that particular showdown was yet almost a decade away, and as American students protested and chanted “Heck no! We won't go!”, thousands of miles across the ocean to the west four friends at Charterhouse Public School were getting together and putting ideas down for a music group, a barman met a bassist and they began gigging at the Marquee, trying out various names for their new band before deciding on Yes, Robert Fripp prepared to unleash King Crimson on an unsuspecting world while Peter Hammill made his entrance with much less fuss, and The Beatles were putting the finishing touches to what would be their penultimate album, a true classic that was destined to be remembered for all time and enshrine the name of the studio where it was recorded in music history.
1969: the year hold almost mystic significance as the world prepared to move into a new decade, and a new way of doing things. The old ways, the old music, held on to so long by the guardians of the values of World War II and the fifties, were slowly being eroded away, and the new decade would belong irrevocably to the young. As synthesisers became more widely available and used, and bands branched out, embracing non-standard instruments such as violin, cello, harmonica, harp, mandolin and saxophone, a whole new sound, grounded in and conceived by the bands who had ushered in the beginnings of the prog rock movement over the last two years was about to come to fruition, and a new type of music was about to be born. Having given vent to its birth cries in bands like The Moody Blues, Camel and Procol Harum, progressive rock was beginning to feel its teeth grow, and its little fingers busily reached for the necks of guitars and the keyboards of pianos, while strange, half-formed ideas flitted through its impressionable mind as lyrics began to spool out like broken scenes from a film it was too young to see, never mind understand.
As hard rock and heavy metal would go one way --- and eventually the twain would meet, much later --- progressive rock would take the other direction and explore the road less travelled, and in the process would have a profound influence on the history of music for the coming decade.