THE MOST INFLUENTIAL ALBUMS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROGRESSIVE ROCK
Before we start, a word about what this list of albums is, and what it probably isn’t. It’s not a list of the best prog albums of all time. Although many of these records would sit quite happily in such a list. Rather it is a list of albums that we here at Prog, along with musicians as diverse as Steven Wilson, Pete Trewavas, Carl Palmer, Mike Portnoy, Magenta’s Robert Reed, Mastodon, Tim Bowness, Ihsahn, Alan Reed and more have debated and see as being pivotal in the ongoing development of progressive music.
So albums that probably inspired the originators of progressive music. Many of the high points of the early classic era of the genre. But also, as progressive music has developed over the years, other albums force themselves into the equation, which we think at least makes the whole list an even more intriguing proposition. Not simply great records, but those that have acted as a signpost to where the music would inevitably head.
Of course, how you react to the list depends on what you think progressive music is. Some might say it’s easier to discuss what progressive rock is not, but even then, you could easily become embroiled in a week-long debate and still not reach a logical conclusion. What prog – used as an abbreviation of progressive, not to suggest a subgenre of the music as a whole – is or isn’t is a topic that clogs up the many progressive music forums on the internet and Prog Magazine’s letters page. Indeed, one of the leading prog websites list no fewer than 23 different sub-genres of progressive rock. In reality, there’s probably even more than that.
“What we do have in common with those bands is the freedom to do what we want, musically.”
Colin Greenwood, Radiohead
The bottom line is that there is no strict rule as to what progressive music is or isn’t. Rick Wakeman says, “I always say that it’s about breaking the rules. But the secret of breaking rules in a way that works is understanding what the rules are in the first place.”
True, there’s a school of thought among fans of progressive music that essentially it has to sound like it was made between 1970 and 1974, arguably the glory years of the first wave of the genre, who hold rigorously to that view and woe betide anyone who suggests otherwise! And yet again, is that not a regressive conclusion? Stanley Clarke, jazz fusion bassist extraordinaire told us a few years back, “See, if you use the word ‘progressive’ properly, it’s about stretching boundaries, about stepping outside yourself and inviting something else to happen.”
This latter quote has far more to do with the majority of the music that you’ll read about in these pages. Admittedly there are some bands who will fall into the earlier category, but that’s okay too, because if progressive music is that which plays by no rules, as it most certainly did as the genre took form at the end of the 60s, should there be any hard and fast rules as to what it is in the first place?
In essence, as the imaginations of musicians became fired ever more, as popular rock music evolved, first from beat pop to the more imaginative psychedelia, propelled by the evercreative force that was The Beatles, so the sounds that were emanating from stereo speakers around the world were becoming more evolutionary and imaginative. As a case in point, were one to listen to the Fab Four’s and back to back – four records recorded over the space of just three years – the advancements made, not just in sonic texture, but also in songwriting and recording
