Digging up popular prog with John Bagnall
Original position in magazine: pp 59-62
Contents: Who’s afraid of Prog Rock?, Genesis, King Crimson
Who’s afraid of Prog Rock?
One sunny Saturday afternoon about 18 months ago, I was skimming through a newspaper’s TV preview page. My eyes alighted on some promotional slop about ‘Dancing in the Streets’, a then forthcoming comprehensive rock survey. The series producer was boasting of how broad in sweep and catch-all his magnum opus would be - the lucky viewer was promised miles of dazzling footage from the last 40 rockin’ years. We’d be taking in the birth of the unruly rock beastie, with its blues ‘n’ gospel parentage through to Elvis, the Fab Four, Soul, Folk Rock, Psych, Woodstock, Glam, Punk, Disco, er, Live Aid, Hip-Hop, right up to today’s Ambient and Techno. Alright, I mused, why should I pass up the chance to let my eyeballs soak in moments like Iggy Pop falling flat on his sweaty face circa 1970, or to gawp again at the orchestrated circus of anorexia that was a 1965 Motown roadshow. I suppose we all have our iconic favourites.
Then came the supposed clincher. The produced concluded (perhaps with a knowing smirk) ‘We certainly won’t be featuring any Prog Rock’. Well of course not. Perish the thought. For about twenty-something years it’s been a universally agreed axiom that 70s Progressive Rock is only there to be despised. The genre that apparently led rock into a histrionic cul-de-sac is only ever mentioned when we recall 1977 was the year we were saved from such sins. Otherwise Prog can be safely written out of rock history and any embarrassment will thereby be niftily evaded.
You get no prizes for guessing I found ‘Dancing in the Streets’ predictably selective. But you’re not about to suffer a table-thumping fan’s-eye defence of Prog Rock’s excesses or worse still a claim that it’s still alive via those dire-sounding contemporary outfits you see listed in the back pages of Q and Mojo (Regenesis, Solstice and Spock’s Beard to name but three).
My gripe, hopefully along with much of this mag’s small readership, is that prevailing critical orthodoxy has become increasingly hard to swallow. Like some Soviet-era youth dissatisfied with the biased history of his Stalinist schoolbooks I find the post-punk consensus not just wearing thin but altogether worn out. In my experience rock hardly ever follows homogenous or tidy lines of development; in fact, some of its triumphs lie in detours of brazen stupidity. It’s OK to invoke benchmarks of quality or key moments of ‘revolution’, be they The Beatles, Sex Pistols or The Velvet Underground, but count me out when these models become diluted nth-generation ghosts, be they Britpop, Three Colours Red or some whining sophomore discovering Lou Reed for the first time.
Maybe I’m talking after the tide has turned. A stroll through today’s CD Hypermarket seems to reveal the triumph of post-modern pluralism. In true democratic fashion once dubious items, now reissued, nestle right next to those thought ‘hot’ and ‘cutting edge’. Increased choice makes record company fat-cats even fatter but it also breaks down the power of the taste-makers. The rehabilitation of former musical no-nos like Easy Listening and German Cosmische Rock is perhaps just the start of a great shattering of taboos. Journalist Paul Stump has weighed in with a brave booklength defence of bad ol’ Prog itself: The Music’s All That Matters (Quartet 1997). The salivating collector’s market in obscure UK 70s Prog has been evident for some time and is covered by Ed elsewhere in this issue. But surely the experience of buying and hearing rare Prog by the likes of Andromeda, Elias Hulk or Arcadium is inevitably coloured by the hipness-quotient of digging out and possessing arcane nuggets of vinyl archaeology? These artefacts often only differ from their more famous counterparts by virtue of original poor sales and promotion. Can we stick our necks out and also find some (illicit) pleasure in 70s Prog items which sold by the truckload? Just maybe. Abandon all hope ye who enter here…
Moogs on Ice
In the early to mid-70s every record buying white kid who wasn’t strung out on Glam or Northern Soul would be sure to have a gatefold Prog item by ELP, Genesis, Greenslade, Camel or Yes stuffed into his army surplus knapsack. Hurriedly, these grease-haired teens would scurry into their Roger Dean postered bedrooms, lift up their teak veneer hi-fi’s smoked plastic lids and slip on a glistening black vinyl LP with its l-o-n-g complicated tracks, little knowing they’d later be regarded as a generation of misguided lepers. Let’s give the devil his due and remind ourselves, according to the consensus, of the main popular crimes of these Prog years.
Virtuosity - following the bolstering respect rock received as an artform via the explorations of The Beatles and psychedelia, the 70s Prog artists took heart and ran with the baton about 100 miles further. Aping the technical prowess of classical or jazz musicians, the Progster sought to impress with tricky, technically difficult displays of expertise. A background at the Royal College of Music, like the be-caped Rick Wakeman, was judged more cool than being some self-taught three chord bozo. Individual group members became stars in their own right, like a celebrated soloist of Paganini status. Witness the equal billing for ELP’s Carl Palmer, centre-stage with a drum kit so gargantuan you’d think it’d require arm-extensions to play. A peek at the inner sleeve photos of Fragile by Yes displays guitarist Steve Howe posing in a circle of about twenty string instruments and from his confident glare you just know he can play them all. While more experimental Prog outfits took inspiration from the 20th century avant garde (see Henry Cow) the mainstream giant’s symphonic leanings resulted in many overblown workings of middlebrow classics.
Pretension - again following 60s lyrical and conceptual developments Prog aimed to ‘progress’ beyond the three minute pop song. With literary aspirations abounding, the 7-inch single was far too shrimplike a vehicle to contain the epic imagination of the Progster. Jon Anderson, a vegetarian waif from Chorley, had already wowed fourth-formers with clumsy cod-mystical lyrics for Yes like ‘Siberian Kahtru’, and ‘Total Mass Retain’ and ventured on to compose Tales from Topographic Oceans, whose theme was the four parts of the Shastric scripture. With immodest Prog logic Yes spread the project interminably over four LP sides. Darker lyrical appetites might have found some masochistic pleasure in Van de Graaf Generator’s concepts, such as the impenetrable pessimism of ‘A plague of Lighthouse Keepers’. And if musical companions to the early 70s fad for Sword’n'Sorcery were required then surely Bo Hansen’s Lord of the Rings (three volumes condensed onto one LP!), Steve Hackett’s Voyage of the Acolyte and Dave Greenslade’s Pentateuch of the Cosmology fitted the bill?
A concept wasn’t a concept realised if it couldn’t be staged with Wagnerian grandeur. Peter Gabriel’s array of characters / creatures required both costumes and masks and culminated in The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway show. Here Gabriel appeared in a boil-encrusted seven foot latex outfit which prefigured Mr Blobby by a good fifteen years. But perhaps Rick Wakeman’s inflated spectaculars go one step further into bloated kitsch and represent the late-Pro super-ego in excelsis. Journey to the Centre of the Earth demanded not only a choir and scenery but an ice rink arena and chocolate voiced David Hemmings as narrator.
Quality Control. How can anyone defend such monstrousness? By invoking a tendency in art to the epic, the grand gesture? Possibly, but to deny that such excess reached a point where it virtually begged to be cauterized by the punk antidote means you’d be better off living in a velvet lined ivory tower on a diet of Carl Orff and Richard Wagner. Having a healthy acceptance, however, that Prog lost its way doesn’t mean that it should be condemned forever to the rubbish tip of history. An uncritical acceptance of our current musical climate assumes that anything that’s gone out of date is discredited simply on that account. We must remember our own time is also a ‘period’ and subject to illusions and ingrained assumptions. As time changes we notice the peculiar listening phenomenon, where a once much loved record loses all its appeal - and a certain musical approach you were previously lukewarm about suddenly ‘clicks’, and offers up unpredicted pleasures. In my own experience I have to mention those hoary Mancs, Joy Division. As a black-clad youth I found their two albums the perfect apogee of profound and delicious Godlessness. Now they sound like the clumsy ploddings of a gang of post-punk bricklayers with a couple of unread Albert Camus paperbacks in their pockets. Inexplicable shifts happen and shadowy spectres from the past re-emerge. During the early 70s the primitive twangings of Surf music would have sounded embarrassingly naive and corny, but in the 80s, the trash aesthetic established, it sounded relevant and exciting. The current revival of the Moog and predilection for eventless space-rock would have been deemed irrelevant and indulgent in the punk period. With just a little suspension of disbelief and a remembering of its original context, I’ve found aspects of Prog Rock once more highly listenable. Sifting out the over-ripe clamour of ELP and Yes, the early years of the styles (and its popular practitioners) contain their own peculiar pleasures.
The Marshes of Mellotronia
Rutherford M. and Banks Major waited in the groundsman’s shed on the far boundary of Charterhouse School’s cricket field. Out of bounds, even for sixth-formers - these chaps knew their activities wouldn’t be appreciated by Mr Sowerby, the music beak. With low volume, in fact with his blazer muffling the practice amplifier, Banks struck some sombre chords on a new Mellotron, a gift from his Aunt Victoria, the tune sounding not unlike an anthem which might have been heard in chapel, yet strangely mechanised. Rutherford joined in with his electric bass - a staccato motif he’d heard from Gustav Holst’s ‘Planets Suite’. Suddenly the door swung ajar. Rutherford dropped his bass on one of his brogues. ‘My hat, I thought it was Sowerby!’ exclaimed Banks Major nervously, while Rutherford M. hopped on one foot, his hand holding the other in pain. The intruder was Gabriel P., hair well below school-rules collar length and wearing a hint of black eyeliner. He clutched a dog-eared exercise book decorated with fountain-pen sketches of Lewis Carroll’s Alice. ‘I say you fellows’ he chirped, ‘I’ve just written a new song. I’ve called it “Stagnation”.’
Trespass by Genesis (Charisma G369 905) dates from 1970 and is their first ‘proper’ album following some tentative recordings made with fellow Carthusian Jonathan King. I picked it up for £1.25 at a Saturday market two years ago, though most owners would have bought it as Genesis became massive in about 1973. It isn’t a masterpiece, containing as it does the dull stodgy epic ‘The Knife’. But the remainder shares the alluring, gentle qualities of those early-Prog entrees on obscure labels like Neon and Nepantha which collectors merrily shell out £500 for : melodic, post-psych motifs stretched out to generous lengths, swathed in rich, churchlike Hammond organ and, of course, Mellotron. Trespass benefits from not featuring any synthesizer - the less bombastic and natural-sounding early Prog has much more appeal to these ears. Also in its favour is the omission of printed lyrics on the watercolour gatefold. Peter Gabriel’s penchant for comedic character portrayal and awful wordplay can’t yet be detected. The listener can form his own interpretations and is not led by the hand as on later, better selling, Genesis LPs.
The mysterious, vapourous and suggestive mood which makes Trespass a muted success is evidenced on only three tracks: ‘Stagnation’, ‘Dusk’ and ‘Visions of Angels’. All over seven minutes, they evoke a stifling feel of being lost in an untended overgrowth of weeds, deadly nightshade and poisonous ponds of fetid water. The unclear ‘bad’ production strangely enhances the atmosphere. Piercing the murk of ornate acoustic guitar and flute meandering come sharp darts of musical sunlight to dazzle. These are created by surging anthemic keyboard riffs. In a clearing in the middle of the forest angels are dancing and they’ve been clothed by Burne-Jones.
Suffocating Pre-Raphaelite evocations, silver-flutes and musicians sitting down to play are a far cry from Chuck Berry. Does this kind of thing belong in rock? It’s too late to protest now, lodged in history and no longer a threat, Trespass is a last gorgeous gasp of moonlit English Romanticism, Once you’ve got over the moral hurdle of even considering listening to Genesis you may even agree.
Slowly Turns the Grinding Wheel
While Genesis never made an entirely satisfying record (and of course they made some stinkers, especially when P. Collins became General Manager) who can claim to have created the perfect early Prog LP? The obvious contender has to be King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King (Island ILPS 9111). Robert Fripp, the band’s stern-lipped overlord, would deny the Prog tag, claiming the term ‘evolutionary’ for his still continuing unit. Certainly King Crimson have evolved through various incarnations and Fripp’s talent for recruiting stringently creative players like improv genius Keith Tippett or anarchic percussionist Jamie Muir has earned a grudging respect denied to less forward thinking Prog dinosaurs. Yet this 1969 debut virtually lays down the ground rules of Prog: expanded pieces with symphonic mellotron, experimental tricky riffs on treated guitar, reeds, flute and percussion section, linked by florid lyrics. Oh yes, the lyrics, the great stumbling block in early King Crimson. Baroque wordsmith Pete Sinfield contributes lines such as ‘I chase the wind of a prism ship, to taste the sweet and sour’. Remember that suspension of disbelief!
Better to focus on the playing between Greg Lake’s straight faced vocals and you’re on an exciting ride through Fripp’s patented dischords and seamless sustain. No guitarist in Prog has so easily identifiable a style. His solos on the infamous ’21st Century Schizoid Man’ make for a Fripp sonic sampler, careering through hurtling clean runs into totally evil hot dagger in the cornea attack. The soft, aleatory interplay of Michael Giles’ percussion and Ian McDonald’s electric vibes during the twelve minute ‘Moonchild’ (perhaps skipped by many an original listener for being too weird) is truly astonishing to this day. I can hear echoes of all this in contemporary Japanese avant-noise units like Ruins and Optical*8. Perhaps their cultural distance has freed them from our own inhibitions concerning Prog?
Trespass may have been a relatively new pleasure but we had In the Court of the Crimson King in my childhood home from when it first hit the LP charts. As a pre-teenager I was fascinated by it, particularly its lavish EG Day printed gatefold sleeve. If the record is a Prog blueprint then the lurid wraparound painting of a silently shrieking crimson and blue face is equally archetypal. Like a magic talisman it would draw me to look at it when my family were elsewhere. Why did it look so different from other albums with their workaday cover shots of grinning singers? Unhampered by typography or border it seemed to extend into infinity. During the 80s it was relegated to a cupboard, perhaps by my Mother who was always spooked by ‘that horrible face’ or perhaps by myself, thinking I now had more enlightened tastes. On a recent trip home I liberated this lonely and unloved artefact and am now happy to include it with the rest of my collection. I’m sure my actions were prompted by something more than mere nostalgia.
JOHN BAGNALL