I mean, check these freakin' lyrics: [Verse 1] Why's it never light on my lawn? Why does it rain and never say, "Good day" to the newborn? On the big screen, they showed us a sun But not as bright in life as the real one It's never quite the same as the real one [Chorus] And tell me, grey seal How does it feel to be so wise? To see through eyes that only see what's real Tell me, grey seal [Verse 2] I never learned why meteors were formed I only farmed in schools that were so worn and torn If anyone can cry, then so can I I read books and draw life from the eye All my life is drawings from the eye I did a search, and apprently he was never considered progressive rock, though at times he did play in prog bands. I know some of the criteria for prog is longer songs, complex music and lyrics, and unusual subject matter (not the standard love songs, rebellion against authority, paeons to drugs and alcohol etc, and I guess songs about fast cars—Sammy and Deep Purple, I'm thinking of you). This song (Gray Seal) came on last night and I thought about how strange the lyrics were. What other rock artist would have lyrics like "I never learned why meteors were formed"?! Only in the 70s, during the heyday of prog rock. So I guess rock in general just had a lot more leeway then to be artistic and complex and deal with unusual material. God I love the 70s (and the 60s). Thank god I lived through them. The record companies allowed so much freedom to experiment and to do what the bands wanted to—to create art, and then it would get played on the air. How it's changed since then. I know there are indy artists who can still do that, but they don't get played on mainstream radio now, you have to already know who they are and seek them out. Sorry, I don't really have a question, other than what would this kind of music be called. Just felt the need to send this out there.
I love Elton John but he's definitely not progressive. He's straight rock/pop/piano and fairly standard across the board. Prog Rock is categorized more by non-standard structures. Longer songs, yes, but more for its exotic meters, time changes in and out of exotic meters, key changes beyond the normal friendlies like E to A or C to G, and modal harmonies. Kind of like a Jazz structure wrapped in a Rock package. I've never considered lyrics or subject material an intrinsic element of Prog, but that makes sense. Rush and Yes are the two big ones. Pink Floyd is kind of progressive but so unique that they're almost they're own category. Metallica's And Justice for All is considered their progressive album. Listen to all the time changes and long instrumental passages, particularly in the title song. That's something that was not only non-standard to metal at the time, but also to their own style, though you do see progressive elements throughout their entire catalogue. Tool is fairly progressive, too, but from the wrong time period. They kind of get lumped between Metal and Alternative, which is a progressive combination of its own. Alternative and Progressive are kind of the same vibe in that they were non-standard to the popular music at the time. Dream Theater, if anyone remembers them, was considered very progressive too. The thing with Prog though is that the term doesn't apply anymore. Neither does Alternative, though you still hear things called that. It was a 70s thing to denote non-standards. Like Alternative in the 90s. We're kind of in a postmodern period now I guess where all the categories and definitions have been mixed up in all possible combinations.
See, this is the stuff I don't know. Did Elton use fairly standard chords and chord progressions? A lot of his music sounds pretty unusual to me, but it could be pretty standard chords etc. I remember Rick Beato not long ago (at least it wasn't long ago that I saw the video) talking about key changes, that pretty much every song in the 70's used them, and now almost none do. If I'm using the right term, I think it's key changes.
Yeah, when I talk about prog rock I definitely mean music made between the mid to late 60's and the end of the 70s. I know a lot of people talk about progressive rock and include things still being made today, but to me it's a particular period in music history that ended (like so many things seemed to ) just about at midnight on New Year's Eve of 1979. After that it's like all rock bands had to do short catchy tunes with much simpler time signatures etc. Adapt or die. Honestly though, I understand people talking about progressive metal and progressive rock still being made—it uses the same unusual signatures etc as were used back in the day, but the period is over now. Just like there was an expressionist movement in painting at a very particular time, and it's over, even though expressionism is also an approach or a system of ideas that were always present and still are in many artist's work. The period or the movement is a very particular thing, a time when it rose to prominence.
Yes, definitely regarding Beato's take on key changes in the 70s vs now. I'm not sure about Elton's use of progressions, but that almost doesn't matter because his songs were so catchy and poppy and his voice was so unique. Thinking about it a little more--and I was just having this discussion with a drummer friend--I think with Prog you kind of saw Jazz bleeding back into Rock after Rock had separated itself from Jazz and established its own familiar sound. All those 60s and 70s bands were driven by Jazz drummers. Beatles, Floyd, early Black Sabbath... all powered by classic Jazz drummers, mainly because rock drums hadn't been invented yet. Listen to the first few Sabbath albums as compared to the later Ozzy years and then the Dio era. And about 70s key changes, that's all from Jazz too. Jazz and Classical were--and still are for the most part--the only styles of music that were formally taught. With Jazz, moving meters and keys was a nothing-burger. But so much of that music was non-lyrical. Once singing became the operative method of instrumentation, the timbre of the voice set the key and kept it there, but even that progressed from the group of singers to the individual vocalist. Listen to Motown. Not a hell of a lot of instrumentation. Whether it was the Supremes or the Temptations, you have 3-5 singers providing their own harmonies and driving force behind the music. The drums and instruments are just kind of there to hold everything together. But flash forward a bit to the Jackson 5 style of Motown with heavy funk grooves and riffs you could actually hum. Still a lot of harmony, but somebody looked at Michael Jackson and said, shit, let's have this kid sing by himself!
Wow, I had no idea! I remmember an interview with Yes where the drummer and bass player said they just did all kinds of crazy things because nobody had ever told them you couldn't do that in rock music. But they were joking of course, they were highly skilled in jazz I think, or at least steeped in it. In those days jazz musicians and rock musicians would mingle a lot, at music festivals and in clubs and bars, and talk shop, get together and play together. Yeah, there was jazz fusion, and then there was prog rock which sort of approached it differently. the way I look at it (and this is probably extremely simplified. and possibly just wrong) jazz fusion was more like jazz with a little of the spirit of rock infused it, whereas prog rock blended the two together (with influences from many other sources as well, like gospel, bluegrass, country, and many more) and made something that broke free of the jazz conventions, and really of the rock conventions, except that I guess the Beatles were already heading that way with their ever-evolving sound. Really though, rock itself emerged from jazz, with Chuck Berry just putting a lot more energy into a certain type of jazz that was popular at the time and adding in the back beat.
Well, in the beginning, there were no rock musicians until jazz musicians invented them. Heh, I've been trying to think of who was the least progressive rock band ever, and I came up with... AC/DC! That's the same basic rhythmic shit over and over and over and over and over and over and... probably still over.
Does anybody else remember a band called Lucifer's Friend? The song Spanish Galleon? That has a strong jazz feel, but damn, it really broke the mold! A weird song for sure, and the lyrics are very strange, really it's just a listing of things that I guess remind the writer of childhood fantasy. Here: Sailed the seas of broken Мen And freed their wealthy wives А warriors dream of riches Gold wiped up With blooded knives The captain the witches Warning of stories in far Off lands Well, it`s bread and water The prisoners daughter, Knights in shining gold The prisoners hard luck Story with the pain of an Empty cry. With lights of a far Away temple drifting Away, drifting away You and your dreams In a world of fantasy, turn Around chimed the bells In a world of silvered fire copyright <a href="https://elyrics.net">http://elyrics.net</a> I guess it's about conquistadores going around conqering various peoples and places, but with a definite flavor of childhood fantasy added in.
I have to admit to my own ignorance on this topic. But Elton John has always struck me as more pop than anything else. Alternative makes me think of Duran Duran, and the grunge bands. The progressive category has me thinking more of musical experimentation, like the British invasion of the 60s where there was a heavy mix of the blues into rock. Modern examples of the kind of experimentation I am thinking of would be Crux Shadows. I don't know of anyone else who has mixed the violin into rock, let alone done it successfully. It brings a haunting quality to several of their songs, that works.
And a lot of that "alternative" vibe came from the why they dressed. An alternative to hair metal. Flannel instead of leather. Regular long hair instead of crazy poofy long hair. There were certainly differences in the music--that dirty raw sound that felt sloppy and underproduced, though in actuality it was anything but--the first thing everyone noticed was the image. Think about the Seattle Five: Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice and Chains, and Soundgarden sounded NOTHING alike. Not in the way we would lump Poison, Motley Crue, Warrant, et al together. The only things that really tied the Seattle Five together was that the came from the same scene at the same time and looked alike in an alternative way. What's the fancy word that refers to categorization for categorization sake, even if the things being categorized aren't necessary similar? It's like "pedagogical" or "heuristic" but not. The same thing happened to hip hop in the early 80s. Prior to Run DMC and Public Enemy, the early hip hop groups all dressed like Rick James. Glitz, glamour, makeup, polyester... all that shit. I think it was Marly Marl or Grandmaster Cass who said about Run DMC wearing sneakers, gold chains, Kangol hats, and Starter jackets, "What are you doing? You just fucked it up for the rest of us."
Most of the prog rock bands had a strong classical influence. Think Yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and Kansas (the Amercian prog band). Blues-based rock is its own thing. I do think Led Zeppelin qualifies as prog though. Again, I give you Kansas. They did for the violin what Jethro Tull did for the flute. I guess Tull was progressive too, I don't usually think of them in that context, but it does seem to fit. And yeah, I see where most of Elton's music does have a pop vibe to it, despite the songs being so long and meandering through what feel like the movements of a classical concerto. Though I wouldn't call Funeral for a Friend pop-y. But he doesn't fit prog, does he?
I think they're considered both jazz rock (that's a category, I never heard of it before) and progressive. I looked for info on them last night, trying to figure out what they were, and found a pretty cool prog site with some good discussion on the categories: Progarchives.org
Based on this i would have to say the Moody Blues would fit based on Knights in White Satin, and the use of a philharmonic ochestras.
I think 'I'm Just a Singer' by Moody Blues is also close to prog rock, but I have always wondered what the criteria is to be true prog rock. Would the Moranbong Band with tracks loke 'Tansume' be considered prog rock or prog rock adjacent? Or closer to New Age? Their music is pretty good if you can get past the fact that they are representing an oppressive regime and could suffer severe punishment if they have a bad performance.
Check out Innocence by Airborne Toxic Event, nearly two minutes of melodic strings before the drums kick in and it turns into rock. I'm pretty sure Modest Mouse have done similar. I don't know if The Pogues qualify as rock, maybe some trad-rock fusion, but violin was used in much of theirs. There's other fusion outfits around here as well, though that may be a sub-category. And who can forget Dexy's Midnight Runners with Come On Eileen that was number 1 for about 6 month in the 80's, about enough to turn it from "great song" to "not that again". Back to OP, never a massive fan of Elton John, way too "pop" for my liking. Interesting point about jazz drummers. Didn't John Densmore of The Doors have a background in jazz too? I find it very hard to categorize music, not having any music knowledge. I'd have thought of prog rock as stuff like Tommy by The Who, which always struck me as an exceedingly ridiculous concept in a concept composition, could never warm to it. And yet, War of the Worlds by Jeff Wayne, with similar bombast, still has hooks that I hum today, decades since I actually listened to it. No Nathaniel no...
I do think the Moodies were considered progressive rock, but having an orchestral backing band isn't at all the same thing as one of the band members playing the violin as a lead instrument. When Robbie Steinhardt left Kansas, they replaced him with two guys, one playing an electric violin and one a keyboard. But here's the man himself in action: Wow, that's a really rough video, the sound is terrible, and by that point Steve Walsh had lost his angelic voice due to drugs and alcohol. But at least this is a taste of Kansas at their most powerful and intense, outside of the handful of very commercial songs most people know about. The really good stuff is all deep album cuts you don't hear on the radio, from their first 4 or 5 albums.
If you really want to hear what Kansas sounded like live in the early days, here's a playlist of their album Two For The Show. It sounds so much better, as they did whenever I saw them in concert. They were one of the bands that were so tight they sounded just like the album, but with more energy. This is one of the best live albums I've ever heard.
To me, Prog Rock has multiple tempo changes and key shifts in the piece, more than just a singe solo in the middle. So, no, Elton did not really do Prog; he was pop. Ditto the Doors - they were psychedelic blues, as was Hendrix. Kansas can be, but not always. Zeppelin was generally hard rock; at the time considered heavy metal. The big thing is that most of the more successful bands did a variety off styles for different albums. Look at the Beatles - you can't categorize them as any one style. Even the Stones did a few different styles. Santana, Jethro Tull, and others. Bands began specializing in the early 70's.
Yeah, it's the keys and tempos that are the biggest element of Prog. And not just the run of the mill varieties, but those asymmetrical changes that don't blend smoothly together. Like a 120 BPM to 84 or something. Or a shift from 7/4 to 15/16 because, screw it, why not?
Yeah, a lot of bands were prog for an album or just a song or two. And a lot of them are considered proto-prog or pseudo-prog, or very closely adjacent. Rock in general is/was a popular genre, so most rock bands in a sense are pop bands, by the technical meaning of the term. Lol, but of course a lot of fans bristle hardcore if you tell them that. There's also a lot of disagreement over specifically which songs are true progressive rock. As always with art, it's pretty hard to pin down these categories when ultimately it's pretty subjective. It helps to think of it on a sliding scale—I've run across discussions where people will argure just how progressive a band was at a certian point in their discography. Occasionally I wonder if Manfred Mann was ever considered close to prog, like when they covered Quinn the Eskimo and made it ridiculously long and complex with all kinds of electronic keyboard solos in it. Probably still not prog, but before I started looking into it I used to think it was: Lots of tempo changes, and they extended an extremely simple song that was originally about 2 1/2 minutes long (with nothing but a ridiculously simple flute solo of like 4 notes) to 6 1/2 minutes. And it seems pretty musically complex to me, but probably it's just an extended keyboard solo with some tempo changes. I'm having to go through and try to rethink which ones are really prog and which ones aren't. This one probably ain't.
Woah, hold the presses—just ran across this on Progarchives: "Manfred Mann would go on and have success with his new Prog Rock group Manfred Mann's Earth Band and Manfred Mann has gone back to his comercial roots and had major hits throughout the 1970s with this Art/Space rock group, famous for the hit "Blinded by the Light" in 1976." Art Rock being another term for prog. It's all so confusing. At the top of the page, under Manfred Mann, it says Jazz/Rock Fusion. Source: Manfred Mann Chapter Three
Here's an interesting post from Progarchives: "You know, back in the 60s, pop was a very well-respected genre. Traditional pop was a might force indeed. Bands like the Beatles, Rollng Stones, Who, and Beach Boys were pop and yet VERY creative in the artistic sense. It was actually considered 'progressive' in it's own way." Which is true. Pop wasn't maligned as it is now, and a lot of what were considered popular bands doing popular music were very creative. That comes from a rather intense thread about Elton John and Phil Collins, where some people seem to really hate pop music and everything associated with it. Strangely the threads are upside-down, you'd have to read from the bottom up for it to make sense. Source
In the spirit of some of the comments on that thread (which I've been reading more of)—Steve Walsh of Kansas and Peter Cetera of Chicago both are on record saying they hated the prog direction of the bands they were in. Peter Cetera said he hated the horn section and the long complex songs Chicago was doing, he just wanted to sing simple (I think country?) songs. But what a voice on him! Especially considering for a time he had his jaws wired almost shut and couldn't really open hs mouth, and yet conituned to be their singer (one of them). Steve Walsh similarly said he hated the long convoluted music Kerry Livgren would write, and his own songs were much simpler and shorter. He wanted to be in a gritty blues-based rock band, hence why when he formed Streets and then his own solo group named for himself, that's the kind of music he did. I never really cared much for any of his solo work, though I did always like the (very simple and pop) Narnia he sang on with Steve Hackett of Genesis: Hackett wrote the song for his daughter, who loved The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe books by C S Lewis (Narnia series). Years later, when a fan asked him about singing on the record, Walsh said he couldn't remember doing any such thing. He also forgot writing a few of the songs on Kansas' Monolith album. I think it was all the cocaine and alcohol he swam in, when he lost his amazing vocal abilities. But I gotta hand it to Walsh—even though he didn't want to sing for such a complex band, he was a perfect match for them and they for him. His own songs (for his solo stuff and Streets) felt very flat in comparison, and never allowed him to really cut loose as a singer and do the incredible soaring vocals he did for Kansas.
