Episode 20: I Hear a Symphony: 70s Progressive Rock
PLAYLIST
God Only Knows by The Beach Boys (1966)
A Day in the Life by The Beatles (1967)
Lucky Man by Emerson Lake and Palmer (1970)
Karn Evil 9 by Emerson Lake and Palmer (1973)
Roundabout by Yes (1972)
Money by Pink Floyd (1973)
Funeral for a Friend by Elton John (1973)
Telephone Line by Electric Light Orchestra (1976)
SHOW NOTES
This episode examines progressive rock and why some rock fans of the 70s embraced this genre and why some did not. I am especially interested in why this form of rock was so popular in the 70s.
01:30 For some people, progressive rock is too pretentious and for others, it is sublime. Few people in the 70s were neutral on it -- it was a love/hate thing. If you loved it, you loved the complexity. If you hated it, you could not understand why you would take rock music and mix it with classical come up with a 20 minute song that has nonsensical lyrics and then have the gall to call it art.
01:49 Ellen Willis wrote in 1979, “after [Bob] Dylan went Electric, creating rock opera and rock poetry was, from the rock and roll fans perspective, a dubious one. At best it stimulated a vital and imaginative eclecticism that spread the values of rock and roll even as it diffused and diluted them. At worst it rationalized a form of cultural upward mobility concerned with the creating the appearance and pretensions of art rather than the reality -- the point being to improve Rock and Roll by making it palatable to the upper middle class. Either way it's submerged rock and roll into something more amorphious and high-toned called rock.”
03:27 Amy theorizes that rock and roll values might be code for “authenticity” or “purity.” She argues that there is no such thing as a purity test for rock and roll. We must keep in mind that rock was born out of the blues and through copying, or borrowing, or stealing, or culturally appropriating from African American musicians, it became many things. That, in of itself, is a stark reminder that rock was never pure.
04:53 Challenging the idea of art, which is entirely subjective, in the 70s is a very 70s thing. This is the “Me Decade.” The decade of psychotherapy and liberation -- or at least attempts to move toward liberation -- raising consciousness. We did not have a collective vision of what progress meant. It was up to us to explore that, as individuals.
05:31 Rock culture did not invent the debate over authenticity. In the years between World War I and the end of World War II, popular music in the US was jazz and do you think there weren’t debates about authenticity then? Of course there were! Big band vs swing? Guy Lombardo vs Count Basie?
06:49 The album, as a vehicle for a concept that carried through from the first song to the last was not a major focus for songwriters and musicians until the 70s. AM Radio wanted the hits and only the hits. Nobody listened to FM because there was nothing to listen to.
07:08 One of the first concept albums, which carried a concept from beginning to end, was “Pet Sounds” by The Beach Boys in 1966. Brian Wilson crafted each song with great care and said that in doing so, he hoped to make the best album in rock history. When it came out, critics and fans didn’t think it was even the best album in Beach Boys history, let alone rock history but I think they just didn’t know what to do with it. Wilson created this wall of sound with instruments never heard in rock before: french horns and strings and bicycle bells and even aluminum cans.
08:05 Amy plays a snippet of “Wild Thing” by The Troggs, followed by a bit of “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys, which was the B side of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” The sounds that Brian Wilson was offering to rock fans couldn’t compare to anything on the charts at the time. “Wild Thing” and “God Only Knows” are in different musical stratospheres. “Pet Sounds” is the parent of both progressive rock and psychedelic rock.
10:30 The Beatles and The Beach Boys went back and forth inspiring each other’s music. Every progressive rock band has “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in its DNA. This is an album that was presented to the world as evidence that rock could be art, that it could be intellectual. As evidence, Amy plays the dream sequence of “A Day in the Life.”
12:54 Baby boomers who wanted to make music could see a new path that was laid out before them by The Beatles with Sgt. Pepper.
13:48 Greg Lake wrote the Emerson Lake and Palmer song, “Lucky Man,” when he was 12 years old. What were you doing when you were 12? He also said in 1973 that European bands are based on classical music heritage and American bands are based on blues heritage.
16:10 Americans are not known for their appreciation of classical music. In fact, many Americans consider it to be snobbery. So, why was it popular? Amy will try to answer this question.
19:00 Prog rock was not Top 40 music, which made FM stations like WLS in Chicago so important. They were far more likely to play long cuts from albums, which was definitely not going to happen on AM radio. For example, “Karn Evil 9” by ELP is 30 minutes long but FM radio was willing to play part of it, making it a classic rock hit today.
21:37 Even if Americans did not like classical music, the new FM radio stations created an opportunity for prog rock bands to be heard in the U.S. These underground stations tended to play music that was not — yet — part of the mainstream, which included rock, blues, and country.
22:30 Stereo equipment that made prog rock’s sound come to life also became more affordable for the average person
22:51 Of course, there was also the drug culture of the 70s. Prog rock tapped into that. Jon Anderson from the band, Yes, said that he was inspired to write “Roundabout” when he was high on weed... "everything was vivid and mystical." He was literally in a van as the van maneuvered through roundabouts.
25:23 Unfortunately for Pink Floyd, they had some personal experience with the descent into strange behavior when they witnessed the mental deterioration of one of their founders, Syd Barrett. Dark Side of the Moon touches on many things that can lead one to lose their grip on reality, such as war, work, and money. The album was on the Billboard charts for 917 weeks! “Money” was the band’s highest charting single of the 70s.
28:20 To give a sense of how different “Money” was from the song that was just in front of it when it peaked at #13 on the Billboard chart on July 27, 1973, Amy played a bit of “Monster Mash.” Pink Floyd did get a #1 hit in 1980 with “Another Brick in the Wall.” On the podcast, she misspoke and said “Another Brick in the Wall” was “another” #1 hit — it was their ONLY #1 hit.
30:00 Is “Funeral for a Friend” by Elton John prog rock? It sure sounds like it, even if Elton is known as a pop artist and not for prog rock. It provides some evidence that rock as art was influencing other genres.
34:00 Amy asked some prog rock fans what they liked about. They liked that it is complex and “satisfies the brain more than the heart.” Of course, that is exactly why some people do not like it. This is not just true about music, though. This is true for all types of art.
35:30 Electric Light Orchestra does not always satisfy the prog rock purity test because their songs lean more toward pop. Just using an orchestra did not signify much in the 70s because that was being done in many genres, including country and disco. ELO’s music was rich and layered, though. These are nicely composed songs that are reminiscent of the band that inspired their existence, The Beatles.
This live rendition of “Telephone Line” from 2017 will give you chills!
42:00 Bruce Elder wrote of this song earlier this year, “Telephone Line" might be the best Lennon-McCartney collaboration that never was, lyrical and soaring in a way that manages to echo elements of Revolver and the Beatles without ever mimicking them.”
42:21 David Weigel wrote a history of prog rock called The Show that Never Ends. He is also a political writer for The Washington Post and he covered the 2016 presidential election. He found that there was a lot of demographic overlap with prog rock fans of the 70s and Tea Party conservatives of the 21st century. The common denominator is white guy and in the case of now, older white guy. This may also speak to why the music was so derided by so many people -- it appealed to a limited group of people. Nostalgia might be allowing progressive rock to find wider acceptance now.
43:31 Progressive rock did not make it past the 70s. Some bands, like Emerson Lake and Palmer, sold out and did not try to make new music. Amy suggests that the influence of hip hop on rock and pop music may have had something to do with the end of prog rock, too. Still, progressive rock was some of the most innovative music that the 70s had to offer and it challenged us, collectively, to rethink both art and authenticity.
SOURCES
Aronowtiz, Nona Willis, ed. “Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock.” Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2011.
Dombal, Ryan. “Making a Serious Case for Prog Rock.” Pitchfork. July 11, 2017. https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/making-a-serious-case-for-prog-rock-david-weigel-interview/
Eder, Bruce. “Electric Light Orchestra: A New World Record.” All Music.
https://www.allmusic.com/album/a-new-world-record-mw0000650112
Elsas, Dennis. “The Inside History of the Electric Light Orchestra.” Best Classic Bands.
“Engineer Dave Hentschel Talks About Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” EltonJohn.com. October 4, 2013. https://www.eltonjohn.com/stories/engineerdavidhentscheltalksaboutgoodbyeyellowbrickroad
https://bestclassicbands.com/bev-bevan-elo-inside-story-1977-4-6-17
Greene, Andy. “ELO’s Jeff Lynne: My Life in 15 Songs.” Rolling Stone. January 26, 2015. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/elos-jeff-lynne-my-life-in-15-songs-29250/electric-light-orchestra-telephone-line-1976-29424/
Keightley, Keir. “Reconsidering Rock” in The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2001.
Meyer, Bruce. “Stuffed Shirt Attitude May Kill Off Rock.” The Latrobe Bulletin (Latrobe, PA.) May 16, 1973.
Rockwell, John. “The Emergence of Art Rock” in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll. New York: Straight Arrow Press. 1992.
Wilson, Alan. “Emerson, Lake, & Palmer’s U.S. Popularity Grows.” The High Point Enterprise (High Point, North Carolina). December 5, 1973.