Progressive Rock
Progressive rock, also known as prog rock or prog, is a rock music subgenre that originated in the United Kingdom with further developments in Germany, Italy, and France, throughout the mid-to-late 1960s and 1970s. It developed from psychedelic rock, and originated, similarly to art rock, as an attempt to give greater artistic weight and credibility to rock music. Bands abandoned the short pop single in favor of instrumentation and compositional techniques more frequently associated with jazz or classical music in an effort to give rock music the same level of musical sophistication and critical respect.
Progressive rock abandons the danceable beat that defines earlier rock styles and is more likely to experiment with compositional structure, instrumentation, harmony and rhythm, and lyrical content. It may demand more effort on the part of the listener than other types of music. Musicians in progressive rock typically display a high degree of instrumental skill. Musical forms are blurred through the use of extended sections and of musical interludes that bridge separate sections together, which results in classical-style suites. Early progressive rock groups expanded the timbral palette of the then-traditional rock instrumentation by adding instruments more typical of folk music, jazz or music in the classical tradition. A number of bands, especially at the genre's onset, recorded albums in which they performed together with a full orchestra. Progressive rock artists are more likely to explore complex time signatures such as 5/8 and 7/8. Tempo, key and time signature changes are common within progressive rock compositions.
Songs were replaced by musical suites that often stretched to 20 or 40 minutes in length and contained symphonic influences, extended musical themes, philosophical, mystical and/or surreal lyrics and complex orchestrations. The genre was not without criticism, however, as some reviewers found the concepts "pretentious" and the sounds "pompous" and "overblown".
Progressive rock saw a high level of popularity throughout the 1970s, especially in the middle of the decade. Bands such as Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, The Moody Blues, Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP) were the genre's most influential groups and were among the most popular acts of the era, although there were many other, often highly influential, bands who experienced a lesser degree of commercial success. The genre faded in popularity during the second half of the decade. Conventional wisdom holds that the rise of punk rock caused this, although in reality a number of factors contributed to this decline. Progressive rock bands achieved commercial success well into the 1980s, albeit with changed lineups and more compact song structures.
The genre grew out of the 1960s space rock of Pink Floyd and the classical rock experiments of bands such as The Moody Blues, Procol Harum and The Nice. Most of the prominent bands from the genre's 1970s heyday fall into the "symphonic prog" category, in which classical orchestrations and compositional techniques are melded with rock music. Other subgenres exist, including the more accessible neo-progressive rock of the 1980s, the jazz-influenced Canterbury sound of the 1960s and 1970s, and the more political and experimental Rock in Opposition movement of the late 1970s and onward. Progressive rock has influenced genres such as krautrock and post-punk, and it has fused with other forms of rock music to create such sub-genres as neo-classical metal and progressive metal. A revival, often known as new prog, occurred at the turn of the 21st century and has since enjoyed a cult following.
Progressive rock originally referred to progressive pop music or "classical rock" in which a band performed together with an orchestra, but the term's use broadened over time to include Miles Davis-style jazz fusion, some metal and folk rock styles, and experimental German bands. It does not refer to a single style but to an approach that combines elements of diverse styles. Jerry Ewing, editor of Prog Magazine, explains that "Prog is not just a sound, it's a mindset," and Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci points out that it is defined by its very lack of stylistic boundaries.
The advent of the concept album and the genre's roots in psychedelia led albums and performances to be viewed as combined presentations of music, lyrics, and visuals. Progressive rock abandons the danceable beat that defines earlier rock styles and is more likely than other types of popular music to experiment with compositional structure, instrumentation, harmony and rhythm, and lyrical content. It may demand more effort on the part of the listener than other types of music.
Musicians in progressive rock typically display a high degree of instrumental skill, although this is not always the case. Neither Greg Lake nor Boz Burrell had ever been a bassist prior to filling that role in King Crimson. Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond joined Jethro Tull because of his social compatibility with the band rather than musical skills. "Jeffrey didn't get into the group because he was a good guitarist," said bandleader Ian Anderson, "because he could hardly play a note." Pink Floyd, and Brian Eno are notable examples of artists who are able to build complex structures out of simple parts and who are virtuosos in the sense that their instrument is the recording studio.
The genre has received both a great amount of critical acclaim and criticism throughout the years. Progressive rock has been described as parallel to the classical music of Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók. This desire to expand the boundaries of rock, combined with some musicians' dismissiveness toward mainstream rock and pop music, insulted critics and led to accusations of elitism. Its intellectual, fantastic and apolitical lyrics and its shunning of rock's blues roots were abandonments of the very things that many critics valued in rock music. Progressive rock also represented the maturation of rock as a genre, but there was an opinion among critics that rock was and should remain fundamentally tied to adolescence, so that rock and maturity were mutually exclusive.
Criticisms over the complexity of their music provoked some bands to create music that was even more complex. Yes' Tales from Topographic Oceans and "The Gates of Delirium" were both responses to such criticisms. Jethro Tull's Thick As a Brick, a self-satirising concept album that consisted of a single 45-minute track, arose from the band's disagreement with the labeling of their previous Aqualung as a concept album.
These aspirations toward high culture reflect progressive rock's origins as a music created largely by upper- and middle-class, white-collar, college-educated males from Southern England. The music never reflected the concerns of or was embraced by working class listeners, except in the US, where listeners appreciated the musicians' virtuosity. Progressive rock's exotic, literary topics were considered particularly irrelevant to British youth during the late 1970s, when the nation suffered from a poor economy and frequent strikes and shortages. Even King Crimson leader Robert Fripp dismissed progressive rock lyrics as "the philosophical meanderings of some English half-wit who is circumnavigating some inessential point of experience in his life." Bands whose darker lyrics avoided utopianism, such as King Crimson, Pink Floyd and Van der Graaf Generator, experienced less critical disfavor. Critics similarly came to regard krautrock as a genre separate from progressive rock. The simplicity of punk was in part a reaction against the elaborate nature of progressive rock.