Many of us are already on the same page regarding the idea that all children should be given a basic education in music as a core component of the liberal arts curriculum, and that such should be started at a young age. (AHUM’s position on this matter—drawn from a host of recognized authorities—can be explored in further detail here, here, and here.) Children should be taught the basics of where music came from, how it influenced the development of prehistoric and ancient culture, how Medieval European church music developed into classical music, how European and African folk music came together in varying degrees in America to yield a wide variety of popular music over the last 100+ years, and how an appreciation for various musics of the world has greatly impacted (and continues to do so today) both the “serious” and popular music that came from these European and American traditions. (This on top of actually engaging the children in playing musical instruments, learning to read music, etc.)* But what if I was to say that when it comes to studying Western popular music we should ensure that this musical curriculum places a particular emphasis on progressive rock? After all, that’s just one niche genre among many, right? Why should a special weight be placed on the music of Yes, Pink Floyd, the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Kate Bush, Genesis, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer?

By way of disclosure I should admit one thing right off the bat: I really like progressive rock. Have for a long time. Some of my neighbors over time have become painfully aware of this, such as during college when someone from a neighboring apartment (not a student, mind you) felt the need to have the local police come and ask me to turn down ELP’s Tarkus at 2:30 in the morning just because it was playing on my stereo at a volume as close to that of a live show as it could muster. It’s no big secret, really, that a lot of my favorite rock music is from this genre that enjoyed its heyday from the early to late 1970s. So, admittedly, I have to be somewhat cautious to not let my personal bias interfere with my objectivity. But after a number of years of writing about music and formulating thoughts on the “big picture” role of music throughout the entire course of human development, I hope that by now I can speak about progressive rock at least as objectively as I would about the significance of the music of, say, Chopin or any other great musical innovator whose music I have been especially enamored with.

Progressive rock began as an outgrowth of the increasingly imaginative and sometimes experimental popular music of the late 1960s, such as The Beatles’ albums Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn, The Moody Blues’ Days of Future Past, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s Freak Out!, and the Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground & Nico. These were quickly followed up by offerings from Traffic, Cream, Jeff Beck, The Nice, Soft Machine, and other groups seeking to widen the scope of rock music by incorporating elements from a wide variety of 20^th century genres, including jazz, symphonic, minimalist, and experimental electronic. By the early ’70s a number of bands were strictly dedicated to testing the boundaries of what a rock band could be, rebelling against any notions of limitation that the rock tradition had already begun to settle down into, and a distinctive genre was born—sometimes called “art rock” but more commonly referred to as “progressive rock.” The creative drive had proliferated so far that it did not even seem unusual in 1973 to find the singer/songwriter Elton John put an 11+ minute opening song (“Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding”)—which boasted an extensive instrumental introduction teeming with synthesizers churning out classical music chord progressions—as the opening cut of an album (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road). Neither did it seem unusual that such a great song would be played in its entirety on the radio despite the fact that it almost reached the running time of 4 typical songs combined.

To fully understand and appreciate progressive rock, or any musical movement for that matter, we should look at the elements that contributed to its genesis. Any new genre in music can be shown to have its roots in a combination of prior musical efforts. Sometimes these influences even show up in that genre’s name, such as how rockabilly described a mix of early rock ‘n roll and hillbilly music. Jazz, which is perhaps the greatest of all American musical products, has been described by many as a “gumbo” of ragtime, the blues, marching bands, and foreign influences from Africa and the Caribbean. The birth of jazz certainly represents one of the great musical intersections of the 20^th century—it was a place where numerous roads converged to form a new “musical town square,” so to speak, and a multitude of new paths also branched off from there, beckoning the traveler to explore the adventures they had to offer.

Through the Creoles of New Orleans—who played a central role in creating jazz—and their education in, and love for, classical music, a classical European influence would even play a subtle role in the creation and development of jazz. But where classical music had its greatest impact on jazz was with its 2^nd generation innovators, those who laid out the framework for how jazz would progress (please note that word) beyond its Dixieland/”hot music” early life into works of fascinating depth and color. Duke Ellington and Bix Beiderbeck, and then later Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk, are just some of the examples of jazz greats who were very much influenced by the rather contemporary developments in classical music—Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky were among the composers they admired and sought to learn from in order to push the boundaries of jazz far beyond anything previously conceived. They were certainly criticized for this by some jazz traditionalists, but thankfully it did not deter them. Likewise, George Gershwin, who often seemed to work in the classical idiom while incorporating signature elements of jazz, is widely revered today, although panned by some in his day as having only one foot on the boat (whether it was the classical music boat or the jazz boat). History tells a different tale, of course: the real issue was that the Gershwin critics missed the boat altogether.

This history is very useful in giving us a good perspective on the development of rock ‘n roll as well. Starting out as a mix of jump blues, boogie woogie, harmonized street corner singing, deep blues, and R&B (especially the “big bass” New Orleans sound of Fats Domino and others), and epitomized by the raucous, rebellious attitudes of Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Elvis, and Jerry Lee Lewis, rock music would also greatly benefit from subsequent innovations. In fact, rock was arguably saved from the late ‘50s/early ‘60s doldrums of the teen idols and other corporate patronizing through the daring efforts of such notables as Buddy Holly, Berry Gordy (and his Motown empire), Roy Orbison, and Phil Spector—each of whom were not only great songwriters but also great visionaries who helped establish a grander sonic palette for Western popular music to make use of.

Then along came The Beatles, whose early music reflected a “connection to the whole history of rock & roll up to that time,”[i] as Lester Bangs once wrote. The creative drive of these four lads from Liverpool was awe-inspiring to many musicians of all levels of accomplishment; from Leonard Bernstein to Bob Dylan, everyone talked about how their chord progressions were like a breath of invigoratingly fresh air. Far from inducing complacency, this praise for their early music only served to make them more determined to explore new territory and make each new album—indeed, each new single—a spectacular new adventure for all. Intent on following this progressive approach, they began to draw from a host of older music traditions (such as folk, jazz, show tunes, ukulele groups, etc.) as well as from their direct contemporaries (Bob Dylan, the Who, the Stax sound of Memphis, etc.) to create what arguably remains as the most diverse output of music from any popular performing artists ever (and certainly within the limited time frame of their 7 year period of work together).

Thus, it was only natural that the great creative minds who came up in the immediate wake of The Beatles would push the envelope even further and approach their work with a free spirit and a rejection of any notion of conventional boundaries. This was the fertile ground from which sprang progressive rock. It was the environment that encouraged the Moody Blues to pursue their mysterious candlelit ambiance of mellotron strings, finger-picked acoustic guitars, exotic instruments, and vocal harmonies reaching up to the heavens. It was the field in which King Crimson could safely attack the modern psyche, questioning its validity through the harsh harmonies of the 20^th century classical music innovators played on distorted electric guitars, and with periodic outbursts of incendiary modern jazz. It was the milieu into which the standard of the guitar-centered rock band could be defiantly challenged by a keyboard-centered band—Emerson, Lake & Palmer—which featured a furiously percussive organ sound at its core, a host of iconic synthesizer timbres that we simply take for granted today, and an embrace of harmonic innovations literally unheard outside of their original classical music sources (Bartok, Janacek, Scriabin, Copland, etc.). It was a seemingly limitless space in which Yes could take you to the outer reaches of the universe with new musical colors as vivid and compelling to the rock band idiom as the innovations of Berlioz and Strauss had been to orchestral music; concerned with the other-worldly, and seeming to transform light waves into sound, they yet still ground out some of the sharpest, grittiest, and technically coordinated rock music ever created. There was even a sense of timelessness so broad that we could be taken back to ancient mythology, up through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Victorian era, and then finally meet up with the current moment on a journey hosted by that symphonic-choral/spettacolo-teatrale powerhouse known as Genesis.

As impressive as this list of accomplishments is, however, it merely scratches the surface. By digging only a tiny bit deeper we see rich veins in every direction. The relatively contemporary innovations of the minimalist composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass were incorporated by The Velvet Underground (members John Cale and Angus MacLise were former players in Young’s “Theatre of Eternal Music”), the Who (their “Baba O’Reilly” was a nod to Terry Riley for his influence on Who’s Next), Robert Fripp of King Crimson (whose signature “tape loops” were a Riley invention), Brian Eno (who has pointed to Reich as a primary influence and even participated while a student in the performance of a La Monte Young piece, something he considered “a cornerstone of everything I’ve done since”[ii]), Peter Gabriel (who started showing a recognizable appreciation of Reich with his 3^rd solo album and the song “No Self Control”), and David Bowie (who, along with Eno, was particularly smitten by the work of Glass). Grateful Dead members Phil Lesh (bass) and Tom Constanten (electronics wizardry) were associates with Reich when they were all students, and both studied composition with Luciano Berio. Constanten even studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen.

The experimental musical creations of John Cage, and his radical approach to music, were hugely influential on many leading rock musicians (and indeed also the above-mentioned minimalists themselves), including Lou Reed, Frank Zappa, and (of more recent note) Radiohead (truly, a progressive rock band of the 21^st century). Zappa pointed to the “father of electronic music,” Edgard Varese, as his primary influence as a young musician. The downstream effects of fellow electronic music pioneers Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening came through when the synthesizer work of their student Wendy (born Walter) Carlos set Keith Emerson’s ear on fire and led to his prominent use of the Moog synthesizer in the newly-formed band ELP.

These were indeed great times of interweaving musical genres, and while the progressive rock bands were not the sole prophets espousing the need and validity of this wide embrace, they undoubtedly played the leading role in bringing the classical music tradition—all the way up to the works of its most recent controversial artists—into the fold. What’s more, the spirit of progressive rock could be felt all over. Hell, even some of the distinctive characteristics of the seminal heavy metal band Black Sabbath, from their beginnings in 1970, are consistent with the approach of progressive rock, such as their large-scale, suite-like song structures and calculated use of unusual harmonies and dissonances. For alternate approaches coming from another direction, look no further than Miles Davis, who (inspired by the likes of Led Zeppelin and Sly and the Family Stone) gave us jazz-fusion/jazz-rock right at the dawn of the progressive rock era. After Davis’ opening gambit with Bitches Brew, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Chick Corea’s band Return to Forever, Herbie Hancock, and Weather Report (a set of artists largely comprised of various former Davis band members and associates) would feel emboldened enough to take up the mantle and go create a diverse output of tantalizing jazz/rock hybrids, bringing to full circle the ongoing efforts of Soft Machine, Zappa, ELP, and others to merge rock with modern jazz. Further along these lines, we can even point to the incredibly gifted Stevie Wonder, who put an entirely new spin on Motown and soul music by blending it with funk, jazz, pop, rock, and a dash of Latin influence—not coincidentally, at the very same time of this creative explosion.

This spirit of musical exploration didn’t just suddenly grind to halt—it continued to flow in numerous directions. It continued to progress and find new avenues of expression. During the 1980s, this was particularly evident in the Columbus-like “discovery” of great music from around the world that had existed for years but which had escaped the attention of Western popular culture, and in the way elements from these various musical traditions were more fully integrated into our own. The list of artists who reflected these changes is extensive, although a short list would likely include the Talking Heads, Paul Simon, and Peter Gabriel. Gabriel, who had already earned a bona fide progressive-rock-god status as a founding member and primary creative force behind the early work of Genesis, leveraged his emerging career as a cutting-edge solo artist to help promote music of the world by helping to found WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance) and establishing the recording label Real World Music. What’s more, his innovative work in music video was also highly influential—an inventive approach to visuals that can be traced back to his introduction of theatrical elements into early Genesis concerts.

The reverberations of progressive rock can also be heard in the music of a host of non-progressive-rock artists. When Eddie Van Halen became famous for his arpeggiated distorted guitar finger-tapping-on-the-fretboard work, those in the know smiled in recognition that Steve Hackett of Genesis had been doing that years before. When we encountered unusual time signatures in various songs from artists like Bjork, Black Flag, Nine Inch Nails, Muse, and the so-called “math rock” bands (like Slint, Chavez, Don Caballero, and Ruins), the progressive rock influences were quite apparent, if not openly acknowledged. And when Rihanna used the ascending portamento synthesizer in “We Found Love (In a Hopeless Place),” some of us undoubtedly turned to our kids and explained how that’s just a modified version of the end of ELP’s Karn Evil 9, 1^st Impression, Part II (i.e., the Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends . . . part). In fact, one would be hard pressed to find any techno or synthesizer-based dance music that doesn’t show a striking reflection of Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, Richard Wright, Tony Banks, Jean Michel Jarre, Larry Fast, and the other synthesizer masters of progressive rock.

During its prime years, progressive rock was actually quite popular, and when the core progressive rock artists began to turn their attention towards a more widely accessible style, mostly in the 80s and 90s, they would achieve various moments of fantastic commercial success, while consistently continuing to offer innovative arrangements and production values. Yes’ 90125, produced by Trevor Horn (who, along with Geoff Downes, had joined the ever-evolving Yes family for its first 1980s release Drama) and energized by new guitarist Trevor Rabin, was a huge hit, with “Owner of a Lonely Heart” among the tracks that would set the music world abuzz with new ideas. Genesis drummer Phil Collins used the new, powerful, reverse-gated drum sound he had developed with Hugh Padgham and Peter Gabriel while working on Peter Gabriel III (“Intruder”) to establish himself as a major new solo artist with “In the Air Tonight”—and it was a drum sound that would soon after be heard far and wide in popular music. (Simultaneously, he was helping propel the remaining members of Genesis to new heights, singing and drumming on hit after hit.) Surpassing common expectations, the “supergroup” ASIA, comprised of keyboardist Geoff Downes (the Buggles), drummer Carl Palmer (ELP), bassist and vocalist John Wetton (King Crimson, UK) and guitarist Steve Howe (Yes), saw their first release—a decidedly “album-oriented-rock” offering with distinctive progressive elements—stay at the top of the U.S. charts for 9 weeks, a remarkable feat for a quartet of progressive rock heavy-hitters. And, of course, Pink Floyd’s The Wall was an incredibly popular large-scale concept album (in the tradition of The Who’s Tommy and Quadrophenia), that would mark a fitting end to the close collaborative efforts of the classic Pink Floyd lineup, a partnership that had earlier changed our whole conception of what a studio album could be with their The Dark Side of the Moon (which, it should be pointed out, remains by far the longest top-100-charting-album from any genre ever).

I realize that for some readers out there, this is all “preaching to the choir” stuff, for it is truly impossible to tell a comprehensive narrative of the progress and innovations in rock music without making numerous references to the founders and progenitors of progressive rock. Perhaps my passion would not be so strong if there was already a general understanding and appreciation. But I find that a concerted effort is still needed to educate about progressive rock, especially considering that numerous critics and rock historians have gone out of their way to minimize the successes, influence, and significance of the music and the musicians. Some of these writers have banded together in a “piling on” of mutual disdain, casting the musicians in a cloak of pretention and self-gratuity, hoping that by reducing them to these accusatory terms, and vehemently hurling them at the public a sufficient number of times, the claims will stick. So, yes, I have felt the need to set the record straight. But this is far more than addressing a pet peeve. What we find in progressive rock is a major aspect of the story of music in modern times. When charting out the evolution of music in human culture, from the most primitive, distant times to today (as I have done in A Big History of Music), progressive rock inexorably shows itself to be central to the development of Western popular music. It unmistakably shines out as an historical focal point, or axis if you will, a rare thing in the overall story of music, but one which clearly shares much in common with other similar nodes of musical history.

Efforts today like the South Shore Symphony’s recent concert dedicated to the music of Keith Emerson, featuring a performance of his Piano Concerto No. 1 (played expertly by pianist Jeffrey Biegel) are encouraging, and hopefully point to a cultural shift in which the value of a retrospective appreciation of the progressive rock era will begin to take hold. Just as I am encouraged by all of the many organizations that have sprung up to help fill the void created by the pullback of music performance education programs in public schools, I am encouraged that our collective efforts to press for a general education about music for all students, and a greater cultural awareness about music in the general public, will also yield valuable, tangible results.

So, we’ll certainly teach our kids about Robert Johnson—and Muddy Waters, Lionel Hampton, Hank Williams, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and all the rest of them. What we won’t do, however, is teach the distorted, revisionist view which says that progressive rock was a bad experiment that went awry. Rather, we will showcase it as the dynamo it truly was in generating much of the progress of its time and of the music that followed.