Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / 1972: When Progressive Rock Ruled The World [Episode 180]

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1972: When Progressive Rock Ruled The World [Episode 180] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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It's not found by any barriers. It will take ideas from all sorts of
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places. And it's also music that I think is for the head. When
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I sit down and listen to music, I want to listen to something that's
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a bit challenging and makes me think, and progressive rock does that. We're
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totally bombed in rock and roll. I mean, I'll leave you. You're
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reading. Little Hands says it's time to rock and roll rock, roll up,
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I totally booked. Welcome to book down Rock, the podcast for those
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about to read and rock online at bookdown rock dot com, where you can
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find every episode along with links to listening platforms, exclusive videos, blogs,
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and the latest rock book releases. Kevin Firbank is this episode's guest. He's
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here to talk about his book nineteen seventy two When Progressive Rock Ruled the World.
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The year in nineteen seventy two is when progressive rock came of age,
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when bands and artists still revered today produce some of their most groundbreaking, inventive
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and enduring musical Kevin Furbank looks at some of the artists and albums that made
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nineteen seventy two is such a watershed in musical achievement. He follows their development
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from the first tentative notes and chords to the full blown recordings that, more
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than fifty years later, are still seen as the masterpieces of the genre and
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the gold standard by which all progressive rock is judged. In this episode,
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he talks about the book and the legendary bands covered inside, including Yes,
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Genesis, Jethro Tull, Emerson, Lincoln Palmer, You're Riah Heap, Pink
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Floyd, and more. Playlist of the songs from the album's discussed in this
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episode on the show notes page. Hi Kevin, welcome to the book Down
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Rock Podcasts. Nice to meet you. That nice to meet you. Thank
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you so much for inviting me on the show. So you choose twenty two
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progressive rock albums to spotlight in this book, and I'm curious as to how
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you come up with that specific number and what went into deciding which albums to
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include. Well, generally when the company does these books, they like you
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to choose twenty, but us couldn't decide. I couldn't whittle it down to
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twenty, so it ended up with twenty two. And of course, with
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some of the bands featured in the book, they may have done two albums
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in a year, you see, because back in the day, a lot
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of bands would do that. Actually, certainly back in the sixties, two
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albums a year would be would be standard for any band. I mean these
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days it's like an album every ten years. But yeah, so back in
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seventy two, there were a few bands that did two albums in the year,
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and I thought, I can't really do one without mentioning the other.
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So that's why we've ended up with with twenty two. Gotcha. So then
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what went into deciding what was going to make that list of twenty two?
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Well, first start, I love progressive rock, and now I was a
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little too young to fall in love with it in seventy two. I would
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have been about eleven, So my experience of progressive rock probably started around about
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nineteen seventy seven nineteen seventy eight. But then I went backwards and I discovered
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that seventy two has just got some of the most iconic albums of the genre.
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I mean albums that are still relevant and listen to today and still people
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talk about today. And in fact, modern progressive rock is judged against some
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of these albums that came out in seventy two, So I have to say,
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you know, a lot of these were no brainers. I mean,
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Jethro Toll Figures of Brick, how can you not include that? Yes,
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clost to the Edge is an obvious one, the Genesis Foxtrot, which has
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that sidelong, wonderful sidelong track in Suckers Ready. I mean, these are
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albums that people are still talking about and playing today. I did throw it
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in a few slightly off the War ones, like the Santana Is Santana progu
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I thought there was enough in their album of that year to justify that you
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rare heap. Some people saying this was your heat progue, and I would
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argue that was their most prog album, Demons and Wizards for nineteen seventy two,
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the only time perhaps they really were a prog So yeah, most of
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the time it was It's all fell into place. It was obvious what albums
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to choose, and also I wanted to choose albums I could write about as
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well. I didn't want this just to be a collection of facts and figures.
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I wanted it to be a good read as well, and I wanted
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to be able to tell the reader little things they may not have known about
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the albums, about the way they were made, and that sort of thing.
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So though, that's why I've ended up with the collection I've got,
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And now in the back of the book, I do do a list of
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other albums that were around that year. And you know, perhaps we could
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have a very long argument on your podcast about odd albums that perhaps should have
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been in and didn't and what have you. But there we are. That's
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all part of the fun. You know. It's all subjective, isn't it.
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And we all have our loves and our hates and what have you.
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And this is my collection of twenty two loves, and I hope for most
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people they would agree with most of those selections. Yeah, somebody recently was
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asking me how do you define progressive rac and I said, well, it's
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just longer songs, more experimentation. There's the use of different instruments. How
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would you define progressive rac. I've also written a book about nineteen sixty seven,
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and that's interesting because that's the growth of psychedelic rock, and progressive rock
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really grew out of that. It was a time when bands were being allowed
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to really spread themselves in the studio and do all sorts of things, and
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for that I credit the Beatles. In fact, I do quote in this
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book Bill Bruford, who you may recall was the drummer for both Yes and
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King Crimson, and he said, without the Beatles or someone else who had
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done what the Beatles did, it's fair to assume there would have been no
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progressive rock. They broke down every barrier that ever existed, and that's basically
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for me how it starts. The Beatles broke down the barriers. They allowed
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artists to have complete control over what they produced, which meant that the artists
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were pulling in influences from all over the place. It wasn't just rock and
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pop. It was classical music, it was jazz, it was folk,
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it was music from other cultures like the Indian music and that sort of thing.
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And I think that, for me, is what special about progressive rock
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music. That it's not bound by any barriers. It will take ideas from
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all sorts of places. And it's also music that I think is for the
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head rather than I mean, I like a good bop, I like a
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good dance, and that's great, But when I sit down and listen to
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music, I want to listen to something that's a bit challenging and makes me
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think, and progressive rock does that. It's amazing that Beatles. Actually,
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I had that quote pulled up here in front of me too, that Bill
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Bruford said, And it's amazing because it takes an influential band to break a
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barrier down, because otherwise you think, how are these record labels, how
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are you going to convince them to make this type of music because they had
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this mindset of three minute songs, got to get it on AM radio.
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To be able to do that, you had to have somebody like the Beatles
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push it forward or open the door. They too. And if it hadn't
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been the Beatles, but it been someone else, who knows, maybe the
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who could have done it. There's trouble is so much of the music of
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the sixties comes from the Beatles. So if the Beatles hadn't existed, like
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that film, I don't know if you ever saw it, in an American
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film called Yesterday, a chap wakes up to discover the Beatles don't exist and
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never existed. Oh I did see who knows the songs? And so you
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know, lots of other things that don't exist, like Oasis, and various
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other bands. But anyway, I digress the beatles of the Catalyst. A
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lot of the record companies the time, back in the sixties and in nineteen
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seventy two, they didn't know what on earth their artists were doing. They
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just had to trust that their artists would produce music that would sell. And
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undoubtedly there was a lot produced during the time that didn't sol. But they
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were lucky that most record labels had on their roster bands like Jethro Toll and
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Gentle Giant and Genesis and Yes, who were making music that really connected with
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people back in seventy two should ask for credit FM Free Forum Radio two.
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Absolutely absolutely no, you're absolutely right. And again back in my nineteen sixty
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seven book, I do point that out that FM stations were play saying sidelong
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pieces of music. They were happily playing the whole lot on an LP,
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and so that encouraged people to make music that stretched away from the three and
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a half minutes boundary that went ten minutes, fifteen minutes, the entire side
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of an album, or even in the case of Jetho Toll, one piece
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of music stretched across two sides of an album. Obviously, you had to
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turn it over. But if you listen to the CD version, there's no
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break between it all. There's a sort of nice windy effects in the middle
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that join everything together. So it's one long, continuous piece of music.
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And as you say, you know, if FM stations were brave enough to
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sort of play that sort of thing, I mean, I guess also it
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was a fairly cheap way of filling airtime at the time as well. But
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at the time, but yeah, and so that really helped those early bands
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get their music out there amongst the audience and encouraged them to do interesting things.
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Could you talk about how things like technology, the addition of instruments like
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the melotron and synthesizers, change in society as well, all play a role
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in what progressive Roark would become. Absolutely, if you go back to the
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nineteen fifties and you've got simple sort of three called rock and roll and things
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like that, and performed by people who weren't very well educated, and probably
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some of them could barely write their own names. And then of course in
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the sixties and seventies you get a lot more sort of education, people going
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to art school and coming out of that and reading lots of books and getting
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immersed in lots of philosophy and different religious beliefs and that sort of thing.
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And so their key to sort of put everything they've learned, all their knowledge
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into their music. And as so far as technology is concerned, you forget
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that. The Beatles when they made Sergeant Pepper they had four track recording to
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play with, which meant you had to record say, drums and bass on
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one track, and then something else on another track, and then soos down
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onto one track to get the orchestra. I mean, they worked wonders,
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but they just had four tracks of tape to work with. And of course
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you come to seventy two and you're talking about twenty four track recording and that
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sort of thing, and so people could endlessly tinker and put different bits on
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different tracks and then sit there and mix each individual track together. So yeah,
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the technology is amazing. The use of the melotron, and again melotron
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was around in the sixties, but it was huge. It was the size
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of a wardrobe and if you accidentally nudged it, it went out of tune
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and the tapes got mangled and all this sort of thing. But of course,
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by seventy two, you've got a smaller melotron, you've got other synthesized
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instruments coming along that a portaborn can be used on stage. So you've got
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the technology there really making a lot of this stuff possible. But don't forget
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though, I mean, these days you can do everything dishitally, can't you.
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You can sort of hit a key and you've cut something and you splice
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something. Back in seventy two, when they were making Close to the Edge,
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which is a sideline piece of music, they were still using a razor
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blade and a bit of china graph pencil to sort of cup bits of tape.
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There's one episode there where they're looking for a particular piece of music they
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loved. They couldn't find it anywhere. Where is it? Where in the
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studio did we put it? And they thought, well, maybe the planer
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threw it out, and so they go outside and they searched through the bins
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and they eventually find this important piece of tape that we chucked in the bin.
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So, you know, it was still very hand to mouth the way
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of working back then, you know, And it's amazing that they produced what
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they did, given that some of the technology was still quite basic. There
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were happy accidents too. A lot of those accidents would happen and say,
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hey, that sounds cool, let's go with that. Absolutely, And as
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you imagine, if the record company had been in charge of the studio,
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or the manager who had been in charge, or heaven help us, the
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accountants were in charge, although that wouldn't have ever seen the light of day.
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They would have said, no, no, that's rubbish, cut it
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out, redo it, do it properly. But the happy accidents are sometimes
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what make the music so special. I mean, I go back to the
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Beatles again, the beginning of I Feel Fine, where George Harrison hits a
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note and it vibrates a bottle that's sitting on top of a musical instrument,
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and they think, wow, that sounds great, and they keep that in
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as the intro. So yeah, happy accidents are what make the music just
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that little bit sort of extra special. So I want to pick up some
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of the albums from the list of twenty two that were released in the year
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in eighteen seventy two that are highlighted in the book, and the first is
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one of my favorites. Jeff re tells Thick as a Brick talk about how
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the previous album, nineteen seventy one's Aqua Lung would lead front Me and ianier
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Sid to come up with Thick as a Brick. Aqualong had a number of
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sort of themed songs on it. Ian Anderson very intelligent guy. I mean
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I've spoken to him on a couple of occasions. I mean brains to spare,
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and he does get quite heavily into the ideas of religion. I don't
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think he's particularly religious himself, but he would talk a bit about sort of
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religion and the church and things. Aqulang had a number of tracks that had
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that common theme. It wasn't a concept album, but it had, for
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example, one track that referenced another track and that sort of thing, and
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so people thought it was a concept album because of that. Ian Anderson sort
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of said to himself, right, I'm going to give you the mother of
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all concept albums. I'm going to deliberately create something that is a concept album
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and you can have endless fun poring over it and discussing it and thinking about
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it. And so that's how he came up with Thick as a Brick.
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Now, as I say in the book, it's interesting that he's doing it
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bit by bit, and they're rehearsing it, and they're adding bits on,
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and they discover as they go along, Yes, this is working. This
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is working as one whole piece of music, and they put it all together,
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and then they spend more time actually working on the cover than they do
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on the music, because the cover is full of strange things that you can
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pour over. It's done in the style of a newspaper. It's got all
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the lyrics on there, but Ian Anderson pretends they've been written by young boy
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rather than an old fellow with a flutey Gerald bostoc Heyeah. And it's full
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of really weird stories and all done in the style of a very local,
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parochial newspaper. So that was a deliberate thing where Anderson said, right,
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I'm going to bambooz all everybody with a concept album, and he did it
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again in nineteen seventy three with the follow up, A Passion play Others Instantly
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accessible as Figures of Brick turned out a bit. I actually love it,
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but I can see why an awful other people would be turned off it,
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and he really sort of abandoned that and went back to doing song based albums.
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But yeah, Think as a Brick is for me, possibly the ultimate
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concept album, not just in the music, but in the packaging and the
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entire immense amount of thought and fun that were into it. I mean,
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it is an absolutely amazing work of art. And Gerald Bastak that character relates
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to Ian somehow, it only relates to him in that Ian Anderson had lots
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of thoughts about his parents, his father particularly. I mean, I think
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he's sung at times about his relationship with his father and that sort of thing,
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and I think he just rather than make it Ian Anderson's thoughts about himself,
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he tends to write from the third person. He's very similar to Roy
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Harper in a way. They both inspired each other. But Roy Harper was
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a sort of songwriter who would write about his feelings and what he thought.
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Ian Anderson wouldn't. Ian Anderson would tend to write from more of a third
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person, and I think that's why he did this. He didn't want this
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to be Ian Anderson's thoughts on parenthood and the world and everything, so that's
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why he created this character. And that's all it is. I mean,
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it has just come out of Ian Anderson's imagination. As you were writing a
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chapter on the Genesis album Foxtrot. Genesis were playing the final dates at the
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O two Arena in London. Back in nineteen seventy two, Genesis not the
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commercial juggernaut that they would become. Watcher of the Skies leads off the album.
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It's released as a single. This took shape while the band was on
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tour and performed long before the album was recorded. Can you talk about the
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lyrics? Who wrote them, when they were written and what are they about?
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Yeah, you're right to when you say that Genesis back in seventy two.
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Probably if this Fox Trot hadn't been a well received album and a popular
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album, that's a possibility we wouldn't be talking about them very much. There'd
16:37
be a footnote in progressive rock history. But thankfully they're not, you know,
16:45
and they went on to become a really big pop band. But so
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far as Watcher of the Skies were concerned, I mean, I spoke to
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Steve Hackett about this, and he was constantly on the band to get a
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metatron. He'd seen King Crimson perform and what an amazing sound King Crimson were
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making with a melotron. And then he saw an ad in the paper that
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suggested that Robert Fip of King Crimson had the very melotron used on their debut
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album for Sale. Turned out Fip actually had probably half a dozen different melotrons,
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and the saying exactly the same thing about each one, but nevertheless he
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persuaded them to buy it. Tony Banks was just practicing it during a lull
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during a stage show and just trying to find chords that really worked with it,
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because if you didn't play the right chord with the melotron, it could
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sound awful. So he was looking at these sort of chords and things,
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and yeah, came up with the beautiful chord sequence that you hear on the
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track. And then you've got Phil Collins who supplies that very strange beat in
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The Watcher of the Skies, very difficult to play along with, very staccato
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sort of beat. And there are some people, some bass players but John
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Rettend, who have tried to play along with it and sing at the same
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time and have found that they just can't do it. So far as the
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lyrics are concerned. Tony Benson might rather for wrote these while on a roof
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of a building during a sound check for a show. In Naples. That's
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a great story. Yeah, it is. And it's typical sort of public
18:17
school sort of education stuff. It's an eighteen seventeen poem by John Keats which
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they sort of mixed up with a bit of Homer and all sorts of things
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to create these lyrics. What do they actually mean? I'm not too sure
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whether he mean the huge amount. And this is the thing with progressive rock
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lyrics. They can sound very deep, but sometimes you look at them and
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they're not as deep as as you think they are. I mean, yes,
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sir, obvious example of this where John Anderson would write lyrics that really
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just sounded good and fitted the music. And even he wasn't too sure,
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wasn't earth he was singing about, So I wouldn't sort of read too much
18:57
into it, but you know, it's certainly lyrics that seemed to go with
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that dramatic funeral of the music. Seemed to work so well with it.
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Yeah, and I believe the poem is titled on first looking into Chapman's Homer.
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That's it. That's the one. So people can read the poem and
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listen to the song and maybe you can figure out what they're saying. Maybe
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what are they talking about about here? Yes, release Close to the Edge
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in eineighteen seventy two, and you note that the band was literally close to
19:22
the edge when they made this album. What was going on with the band
19:25
at the time, and the difficulties that they had making the album, the
19:29
difficulties they had received. They made Fragile in nineteen seventy one, and there's
19:34
a long track on that sort of half of the Sunrise, which really went
19:37
down well with audiences, and so they sort of said to themselves, look,
19:41
let's try and write more along tracks. In fact, let's try and
19:45
write something that's as long as the side of the album. But of course
19:48
the main songwriters were really John Anderson and Steve Howell, and they would sort
19:55
of be sitting there sort of bouncing ideas and thinking this and thinking that and
19:59
what have you, and some of the other members will be getting just a
20:02
little bit bored, you know. I mean Bill Bruford the Drama, I
20:07
mean he sort of says that really he was going out of his mind with
20:10
boredom, sort of sitting there waiting for decisions to be made, and they
20:14
weren't very good at making decisions. They sort of what do you think,
20:17
what do you think? I don't know. They got so bad at making
20:18
decisions that they were even asking the cleaner what they thought. And so,
20:22
you know, it could well be that the album is what it is thanks
20:26
to the input of the cleaners, who knows. But I think the actual
20:30
sort of composing process was so long and so difficult that it certainly drove Bill
20:37
Bruford out of the band. He just sort of said, I can't go
20:40
through that experience anymore, of not knowing what's going on, no one making
20:45
a decision, not being as involved in the composing as I'd like to be,
20:49
and all this. So he went, and then Rick Weitman followed him
20:52
pretty much after Tales from Topographic Oceans the year after. So it was really
20:59
that sort of compositional process. If you weren't writing the songs, then it
21:03
was very difficult to sit there and listen to it or and put up with
21:07
law. So that's what's happened unfortuate with that. But you know, at
21:11
the end of the day, great album comes out of it still and one
21:15
that they were all rightly proud of. The book. Done Rock Podcast will
21:18
be back after this Athor Kevin Firbank is with us. The book is nineteen
21:25
seventy two when progressive rock world the world Emerson Lincoln Palmer. They're interesting in
21:30
that they're one of the few progressive rock bands on this list to have a
21:32
crossover hit single, like a big hit single from the beginning was Top forty
21:36
in the US, and that's from nineteen seventy two's Trilogy album. But ELP
21:40
was often criticized, even by those who championed early prog bands like DJ John
21:45
Peel. Why was that and what is your response to those critics? One
21:51
of the big accusations always leveled at progressive rock music, especially by those who
21:56
like to take the gentle mickey out of it, is that it's so self
21:59
ind I mean, and it's I know, it's a bit pretentious, isn't
22:03
it. It's above itself. It's it has these high faluting sort of ideas.
22:08
And probably if you were if you were looking at a band that had
22:12
this, that had pretensions of being almost like a classical orchestra, then Emerson,
22:18
Lake and Palmer probably were that band, partly because they did play an
22:22
awful lot of music that was inspired by the classics, so in particular by
22:26
Annon Copeland, a great American classical composer of course, who did Fanfare for
22:32
the common Man, which Emerson, Lake and Palmer had a massive hit with
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in nineteen seventy seven, and so their music would be very much classical inspired,
22:41
I think for some people like John Peele and the very mind John.
22:45
I don't know how much your listeners know about John Piele. I mean,
22:48
he was a very influential broadcaster in the UK and he did back a lot
22:53
of progressive rock. He was very into it in the beginning, but as
22:57
soon as punk came along in about seventy six seventy seven, he pretty much
23:03
dispensed with progressive rock whatsoever completely and he concentrated on supporting punk bands. And
23:11
I suppose this might have been a very early example of him saying, wait
23:15
a minute, this is all getting a bit much, this is all getting
23:18
just a bit pompous and pretentious. And Emerson and and Palmers, as I
23:22
say, were probably a prime example of a band that could go heavily over
23:27
the top when they wanted to. I mean they did go on the road
23:30
with an orchestra, and Keith Emerson would put knives into his keyboards and sometimes
23:36
his keyboard and he would rise into the air and they would play in mid
23:40
air and all this, so you can understand why some people looked at ELP
23:45
and saw them as the almost unacceptable face of progressive rock. My view,
23:51
well, I love them. I think they produced great music. I never
23:56
got to see them live because I was too young. They did do a
24:00
few albums at the end of their times or the end of the seventies that
24:03
were a bit roping. But Trilogy is an absolutely brilliant album. I mean,
24:10
it's got such great music on it self, penned music and adaptations.
24:15
It's got Hodown on it, which is a Copeland piece of music. That's
24:21
almost a sense of humor in that track too. Well, they did to
24:25
make a point of trying to put a funny track on each album. Terribly,
24:29
they're the worst tracks on the album. So in the case of Trilogy,
24:32
It's a Sheriff is probably the worst track on the album, because they
24:34
are deliberately trying to be funny and trying to combat that image of them as
24:38
being sort of po faced and self important. But Hodown just thunders along and
24:45
a million miles an hour. It's an absolute last It's a fantastic piece of
24:51
music. Well done au in Copeland, but well done Emmason, Lake and
24:53
Palmer for taking it and speeding it up by one hundred and fifty miles an
24:59
hour and making something extra special out of it. I agree with you,
25:02
maybe also because I listened to these songs many years after they were initsue released.
25:06
So when you're listening to this music and you're not putting it into context
25:10
what is out at that time, and you're not inundated by the interviews that
25:15
you read, magazines and so forth, you can just listen to it as
25:18
is as a separate piece of work, and you're not considering the fact that
25:22
there's all these other bands that sound just like this band. I mean a
25:25
lot. That happened a lot with the eighties bands too, the hair metal
25:27
bands. You know, they fell into that same category where everybody's rolling their
25:30
eyes. But there are some very talented musicians that there are awesome. I
25:37
mean, if you look at the progressive rock of seventy two, they're very
25:41
talented musicians. An awful lot of them have gone to music school and really
25:45
learned how to play their instruments properly. I mean, the members of gentle
25:48
giant. I think they played something like twenty four instruments between them and something
25:52
like that. Wow. A lot of them instruments you've never heard of before,
25:56
and so they were very good at what they could do. The other
26:00
thing is is that they all came with different influences. They didn't come with
26:06
progressive rock influences. Steve Howe was a lover of chet Atkins and and others
26:11
had sort of different musical influences. They all brought together. The difference with
26:17
the nineteen eighties prock bands that popped up is that they were inspired by the
26:22
nineteen seventies progressive rock and so inevitably they were going to sound like the seventies
26:27
bands. But the seventies bands sounded like nothing else before them, and that's
26:33
what to me just makes that ear so special. In nineteen seventy two is
26:37
also the ear Pink Floyd released Obscured by Clouds. Your decision to include it
26:41
on your list of twenty two albums is interesting. Talk about why this album
26:45
is so important. I'm in a bit shinky with this one, really,
26:48
because I guess if you were really going to say, is it one of
26:52
the best progressive rock albums of nineteen seventy two. Then I think you'd be
26:56
hard pressed to support that. But then again, it's Floyd and nowadays Pink
27:03
Floyd, you know, one of the cornerstones of progressive rock. I mean,
27:07
how can you not include them? Of course, back then seventy two,
27:10
that was before Dark Side of the Moon, before the album that really
27:14
made their name, and for a long time from their debut in sixty seven
27:18
to Dark Side of the Moon, they were flailing about all over the place,
27:22
producing all sorts of strange music that just really wasn't doing terrifically well.
27:26
I included Obscured by Clouds because I thought it contained a lot of elements,
27:33
a lot of the sound that was to coalesce into Dark Side of the Moon,
27:38
certainly on tracks like Childhood End and things like that. You can hear
27:42
Time and Breathe two of the tracks from Dark Side in that. So that's
27:47
why I included that. I felt it was an important stepping stone to nineteen
27:52
seventy three's massive album, and I thought, I can't ignore the Floyd,
27:57
Sorry, I can't. Really, You're going to find a way to get
28:02
them in there. I got to get him in there, so I can't
28:03
relegate them to a foot Yeah, well they talk about metal to a metal
28:07
from the year before seventy one. It's another one where like one of these
28:11
days you hear What's to Come? Yes, absolutely, our echoes as well
28:15
in the full length Chod right right, and we hear also from that what
28:19
is to Come as well. So yeah, maybe I'm being a little bit
28:23
harsh on them. I mean, they did do things like Amma, Gamma
28:26
and more, and they did offer a lot of soundtracks, which is interesting
28:30
because I think they're sort of the music they came up with, which was
28:33
frequently long, slow, spacey, atmospheric. It lended itself well to some
28:38
of the films that were popping up in the late sixties early seventies, So
28:44
you know, that's worth pointing out as well. But as you say,
28:48
you know, you can listen to a few albums. Obscured by Clouds is
28:51
one of them. Medal was another one, perhaps Adam hart Mother as well,
28:53
traces of that, and you can hear it all coming together as Dark
28:59
Side of the Moon. Now, I'm doing a book on nineteen seventy seven
29:02
at the moment while we speak, and of course that year it's Animals.
29:06
Yes, oh, I love animals. I love animals, and actually it's
29:08
it's probably my favorite. But a lot of those later albums are Pink Floyd
29:15
trying to recreate Dark Side of the Moon. I'm trying to better it,
29:18
and do they ever succeed I don't know. That's that's what we can discuss.
29:22
But yeah, anyway, so that'll be an interesting project as well.
29:26
But you can't ignore the Floyd, I'm afraid, so that's why they got
29:27
in. Yeah, you know, my personal pick from Obscured by Clouds would
29:32
be Free for It's a fun song. It's an unexpected type of Pink Floyd
29:36
song, a focus type of song. Yet it's lyrics are interesting because they're
29:41
pretty much the first time that Roger Waters starts singing about his father, and
29:45
so the lyrics are a bit down, but the songs are jaunty, great
29:49
sing along you know. So you're absolutely right. It is an interesting juxtaposition.
29:53
I want to skip ahead on the list of Frank Zappa's album, The
29:56
Grand Wai Zoo. Zapple was lucky to be a lie to see this album
30:00
be released. There's the story of what happened to him in concert in December
30:03
of seventy one, which is interesting because it's it actually has a connection to
30:08
The Turtles. Mark Vohman and Howard Calen were a part of Zappa's band,
30:11
but after what happens to Frank in December of seventy one during their downtime,
30:17
they end up moving on and forming their own duel, but talk about what
30:21
happened in December of seventy one. This leads off the chapter on the album
30:25
The Grand wa Zoo. Go back just a little bit and just tell you
30:27
why I included the Zappa album. I mean a because there was a danger
30:32
that the book would be a little bit too British, because progressive book did
30:37
tend to be more of a British preoccupation than, for example, an American
30:42
one. But I think the big exception to that, and someone who I
30:48
consider to be one of the greatest of American composers is Frank Zappa. The
30:52
Grand Wazoo is interesting because he nearly died just before that. As you said,
30:59
He's at the Rainbow Theater in London and they're doing an on call I
31:03
want to hold your hand, and one of the members of one of the
31:07
fans decides to jump on stage and push Zappa into the orchestra pit. Why
31:14
is this, Well, he claims Zappa was looking at his girlfriend in a
31:18
funny way. Then he sort of also claimed Zappa wasn't giving value for money.
31:22
Well, I'll tell you something. There's one thing Zappa always did,
31:26
it was give value for money. He would play for hours, and he
31:30
would play non stop. I mean, everything will be segreate together and the
31:34
music would go on and on. So that doesn't really stand up as for
31:38
looking at his girlfriend. Will come on, I mean Zappa looks probably at
31:41
everybody's girlfriend. So yeah, so he plummets into the orchestra pit. He's
31:48
got a broken ankle, a broken reb he's got a crushed larynx, he's
31:52
got a paralyzed arm. Whether he would have survived, probably, but you
31:59
know, amazing that he takes a break from music. And because of this,
32:02
everybody in the band pretty much disappears. I mean, Howard Calan and
32:07
Mark Rohlman they go off and become is it the Flow and Eddie Blow and
32:13
Eddie Yeah, that's right, And so they go back to doing their own
32:16
thing, and a lot of the members of the band really just have to
32:20
make their own way and sort of find other jobs and that sort of thing.
32:22
While Zappa is convalescing, but it doesn't stop him. He continues writing
32:28
music, he continues conducting music. He conducts a big session from his wheelchair
32:36
that leads to two albums. One is Whaka Jaaka and the other one is
32:40
what I think is his best album with that year, which is The Grand
32:44
Wazoo. And it's amazing mixture of rock and jazz and sort of free form
32:51
jazz and a bit of free form caestra and all sorts of strange things all
32:55
mixed together, and the whole thing is done. It's a concept album that's
33:00
loosely based on Christianity. But then I won't go into it because it's really
33:05
convoluted and difficult to understand. But this is a man who you just can't
33:12
You can't kill him. You can't kill it was up. He just he
33:14
just comes flying back and produces great music no matter what happens to him.
33:19
And thankfully he went on, you know, for another good well fourteen sixteen
33:24
years as a as a touring artist. Died sadly in the nineteen nineties,
33:30
but still made some great albums after that. But he must have thought,
33:35
well, that's that's my guitar playing days over paralyzed arm fractured, this,
33:38
that and the other, but thankfully recovered. And I think he described him
33:42
in the book too. He's like steering blankly, just like looking off and
33:45
looking half you know, and they probably thought he was dead, you know.
33:49
It was so so scary. Another interesting album is Saint Tana's Caravanserai.
33:54
All right, so you have a chapter on this one. This is really
33:57
interesting. The head of Columbia and CBS, Clive Davis told Carlos who was
34:00
committing career suicide by releasing this album two sides of almost continuous music weaving through
34:06
jazz rock funk in Barcelonova, nothing that could be released as singles. But
34:12
opinions have changed over time. Why is it an important for you to include
34:15
this one in the book? I love it for a start. I think
34:17
it's an absolutely fascinating album. There are some people who don't think that's progue.
34:23
In fact, there was a review of the book in a publication over
34:28
here and they said he includes that Santano album. Is it progue? Though?
34:32
I think it is, and I think because of the huge range of
34:37
influences in it, I mean he stars Santana started off a great band,
34:40
but a great sort of Latin fuel band, But on Caravan Serie he really
34:46
stretches out. He embraces all sorts of strange jazz and ethnic influences as well
34:52
as for me, prog influences as well, and the fact that it all
34:57
links together into two sides of a suite. It said. It's a fabulous
35:00
album. And yes, at the time he was accused of committing career suicide
35:06
because there's a lot of instrumentals on it. There's a lot of tracks that
35:10
don't appear to go anywhere. There's a lot of percussion in them, and
35:15
some tracks that are a little more than just percussion. But later people,
35:21
i think later listeners have come back to it with fresh ears and realized just
35:27
what's interesting things he was doing. So yeah, it's for me. It's
35:30
a great album. I love the follow up Welcome as well, which is
35:34
again a very jazz influenced album. In for fans of Journey and Neil Sean
35:38
Neil's on this album, I think this last one before that's the last one.
35:43
Yeah, and off they went, and there was a lot of dispute
35:46
over the direction Santana should go. I mean Santana wanted he was getting quite
35:52
spiritual, reading spiritual things, wanting to put them into the music, whereas
35:57
the like Sir Neil Sean was saying, no, no, don't rock the
36:00
boat, don't change the formula because it's working so well. Having said that,
36:04
Neil Schung has a lot of writing credits on this, you know,
36:07
and so they're fully involved in making this album. It's not as if they
36:12
just sat down and played what he wanted them to play. A lot of
36:15
the time, they're taking the lead and some of this stuff. So all
36:19
credit to them. They really enter into it. They help him produce a
36:22
really interesting album, and then off they go and create Journey. Now.
36:25
I wouldn't say Journey of one of my favorite bands, as it's a bit
36:30
sort of aor for me. But great album from Santana. And is it
36:35
prog? I think it is. I think Welcome is Progue Amigos Later,
36:38
which is sort of his comeback album. It's not so much progue perhaps it's
36:44
more sort of Latin music, although there's one great prog tune on it,
36:46
which is Dances the Dance, which is fantastic. But yeah, I fully
36:51
justify. I think it's fully justified to have Caravan so I in this book,
36:54
and I think it's an interesting insight into the way the band worked and
36:59
the pressure because there was a time when Santana the band was touring without Santana
37:05
because they'd sacked him. People were turning up and saying, hold on,
37:09
where's the guy? Who's what time period was that? When did that was
37:15
around about that time? You know, you know when they have their big
37:17
falling out and they go on tour and they don't want him, but then
37:22
they have to ring him up and say, look, there's too many complaints.
37:24
People are saying, this is crazy. You can't have Santana without Santana
37:29
didn't need to take any changes. Name to Diva Dip Wow, yes see,
37:34
along with John McLaughlin, another great jazz guitarist at the time, both
37:37
of them sort of getting sort of heavily into East, into Eastern religion,
37:43
and they're given each given a name by their guru. Santana's is Deva Dip.
37:49
I probably could look through and remind myself precisely what it means, but
37:52
I can't remember the moment. That's home require our listeners, your a heap.
37:58
Well, you have to talk about your right heap Demons in Wisdens nineteen
38:00
seventy two. This is the album and that only was a hit in Europe,
38:04
but also broke them here in the US. Phenomenal album the opening track
38:07
the Wizard, let's talk about that, when the origins of the lyrics and
38:12
how a part of tea ends up in the song. Well, once again,
38:15
this is another band that some people don't think a prog and actually when
38:20
their first album was released, it really wasn't greeted very well. In fact,
38:25
I opened the piece with a quote from the Rolling Stone critic Melissa Mills,
38:30
who said about their debut album, if this group make it, I'll
38:34
have to commit suicide, which is a little bit extreme. Wow. Yeah
38:37
I read that. Yeah, yeah, And really, you know, if
38:39
someone were to say that these days in a review, that'd rightly sort of
38:44
slacked off, you know, because there's no it's no laughing matter, that
38:46
sort of thing. But I think what she was obviously trying to say,
38:50
she eated it so much. The idea of them, of them being successful
38:54
was was anathemat to her. But the heap have been going on for donkeys,
38:59
you, I mean, I again, we could look up a Wikipedia
39:02
and find out how many albums they've made, because they released one not too
39:07
long ago. Well, I just happened to have it in front of me
39:09
here, Kevin, let's see you're Rye Heap. Yeah, studio album's twenty
39:14
five total. So by the time they had this, well, this is
39:17
this has been one two. This is album number four, Demons a Wizard.
39:20
Yeah, twenty five total, including one that just came out last year,
39:22
A Chaos and Color. That's right, Nick Barker got the band continuing
39:29
through. I think they're still going today. Yeah. So no matter what
39:34
some sniffy people may say about them, there's a huge fan base out there
39:37
that have kept the Heap going all these years, and so you have to
39:42
say, you know, hats off to them as the Demons and Wizards.
39:45
I think it is their most progressive album. They were getting closer and closer
39:49
to it with their previous albums. And the big song on it is the
39:52
Wizard, which sort of opens the album, and it does start with acoustic
39:58
guitar and then the sound of a wish Lynn kettle. So they were brewing
40:00
up a pot of tea in the studio such an English thing to do,
40:05
isn't it. And they discovered that the key of the kettle was in C,
40:12
which was perfectly in tune with the song. So there we are.
40:15
They happily incorporated the noise of the kettle. There's a happy moment, happy
40:20
musical moment of the musical mom and that you were talking about earlier. The
40:24
lyrics came from a dream that Hensley had. Ken Hensley and he had a
40:30
dream about meeting some wizard, and night after night he was meeting this wizard
40:36
in his dream. So eventually he wrote about this and suddenly the wizard was
40:42
gone, the dream didn't never happened again, so maybe you know it was
40:45
it was telling him to write the song. David Barron, he had quite
40:50
a voice, quite a pair of lungs on him, absolutely quite a pair
40:52
of lungs, and you know, and and other people in it as well,
40:55
you know, great guitarist Mick Box. Fantastic guitar sound from him.
41:00
They were also pretty good at writing the odd really commercial hit single as well.
41:07
So you know, they wrote easy Living which goes on, which appears
41:09
on the album and you know, had hit single written all over it and
41:13
became a hit now. A lot of bands of the time, especially progressive
41:16
rock bands, they looked down on singles. They saw singles as a sort
41:22
of a commercial sellout, and so you'd very rarely find prog bands releasing,
41:27
certainly in the UK. It happened more in America because the record labels thought
41:30
they wouldn't notice, and so a few yes tracks end up as singles in
41:36
America, you know, like Roundabout was pretty propuled in America, but very
41:38
few of them do. Apart from your are a Heap, who had a
41:43
totally commercial head on them and absolutely loved writing and having hit singles. Yeah,
41:47
Easy Living was TAB forty. They peaked at number thirty nine in the
41:51
US, written in just fifteen minutes, and then you see in the book
41:57
that the Ben's hectic touring schedule led to the song title, Yeah it was.
42:02
It was what's the word I'm looking for? You know, they were
42:06
being cynical about it. They really worked hard, they were exhausted, and
42:10
then one of them sort of said, this is easy living, isn't it.
42:14
I think because they'd also read somewhere that I mean, the idea of
42:17
a rock band is that they're you know, they've got it made a successful
42:21
rock band. They're having a great time. They're being buried around in limousines,
42:24
and they have all the young lady admirers that they could ever wish for
42:28
and all sort of this sort of thing, and it's a great life.
42:30
The reality is, of course for a lot of bands, but it's an
42:32
absolute hard slog and you get up, you get in the van, you
42:38
drive for eight hours, you get out, you play the gig, you
42:40
go to bed, you get up and you're on a treadmill. And that
42:44
was really seemed to be the case with Rah Heap at this time. And
42:46
it's like one of them sort of said this is easy living, isn't it,
42:51
you know? And he was being sarcastic, you know, And they
42:53
then created the song out of that title quite sarcastic because I had Steve Pilkington,
42:58
the author, fellow Sonic Bud Publishing author who wrote a book on Your
43:01
Right Heap, and he told the story, I can't remember which member of
43:05
the band, but he broke his hand. They were just like, no
43:07
time off, you got to get back out there on stage, you know,
43:10
and the guy's out there playing with the broken hair or whatever. I
43:13
mean, it was just that just the way it was back then. Like
43:15
I said, two albums per year, constantly touring, just the way it
43:19
was, Just the way it was. It's no wonder the Beatles gave up
43:22
in sixty six and probably produced some of their best work after that. But
43:27
yeah, it was. It was a treadmill. And of course you were
43:29
being fleeced all the time by managers and record labels this sort of thing.
43:34
So you know, unless unless you were really at the top of your game
43:37
and you really knew you were doing, you probably didn't make a great deal
43:40
of money. And I don't think the situation really has changed. You know,
43:45
these days you either have people who are making more money than you can
43:49
imagine, and then everybody else making less money than you think. And I've
43:53
known of bands who have come back from touring America come back to Northern Ireland
44:00
or they can afford to eat for lunch as a bag of crisps. Well,
44:02
you know, you're right. There are artists nowadays who have three four
44:07
bands going at the same time. It is yes, they love doing it,
44:10
but it's it's work, it's income. You have to make the money,
44:15
yes, and no one makes money out of CDs anymore out of albums
44:17
because obviously they get ripped and stuck on the internet before you know it,
44:22
or they're live streamed or streamed through Spotify or anything, and they don't get
44:27
a lot of money out of those. So yeah, it'd be interesting to
44:30
know what the future holds for popular music, which is why I think it's
44:36
so good to remember the ones in the past, in the days when you
44:39
know they were able to make this sort of music. It's story time.
44:44
Some of these artists and bands are still around and performing, yes, but
44:47
now it's time let's hear the stories. So many great stories from so many
44:51
great stories collection, because we could put out a play here Eric, buy
44:55
the albums, folks, don't rip them off by the albums, and buy
45:00
a ticket and see your favorite band. I mean yeah, ticket prices are
45:04
extortionate these days as well. That's the other thing. You know, one
45:07
hundred and fifty quid to see an artist or something like that. You know,
45:09
sometimes you do think that's that's a bit much. However, on the
45:13
other side of it, though, some of these bands and artists you can
45:15
see in a smaller venue. For like I went to see a show.
45:19
There's a band around here called Big Head Todd, the Monster's Great band.
45:22
It was like sixty dollars. Yeah, ran I was right there in front,
45:25
you know. So it depends the stones. You won't pay sixty dollars.
45:30
Now, you won't pay the sols of stones, and you wouldn't pay
45:31
for like Elton John or something like that. I think they charged sixty dollars
45:35
to use the urinal at a stone. That's why. Yeah, yeah,
45:38
that's the program. That's just exactly for the program. So you finished the
45:43
book with some honorable mentions, and you mentioned earlier that was hard coming up
45:46
with a list of twenty so you're able to get it to twenty two.
45:49
But even saying that, you get the Moody Blues seventh sojourn Elo self titled
45:53
album, just to name a few. And then that's followed by your thoughts
45:55
on where Progue went next after nineteen seventy two, what became of the bands
46:00
on the list. Also, you stayed their quote today we live in what
46:04
is both the best in the worst times for a progressive rock Can you explain
46:07
that? Yeah, Well, look, starting about where they went next,
46:12
the great era of early progressive rock was probably sixty nine to about seventy seven.
46:19
In seventy seven, punk rock did come along, but it's a little
46:22
bit of a myth that it sort of destroyed progressive rock. Some of the
46:28
bands changed. The Genesis for example, pretty much stopped being a prog band
46:34
and they became a pop band and became hugely successful. But personally my genesis
46:39
listening ends with their live album Seconds out in nineteen seventy seven, and I
46:44
probably wouldn't go much further than that. Yes also had a big hit in
46:50
the early eighties with Owner of a Lonely Heart, which was a hugely successful
46:54
single, and so Yes as well, you know, perhaps scale back on
47:00
the sort of progressive rock elements and putting in more sort of rock and aor
47:04
and that sort of thing. Some bands did break up. Emerson, Lake
47:08
and Palmer disappeared, Pink Floyd where they went on as we know up to
47:13
about sort of early eighties. Then and then Roger Waters left and Dave Gilmour
47:20
sort of carried things along and every now and then Pink Floyd hop out of
47:23
retirement. They did so for a charity single not so long ago for Ukraine,
47:29
which was fantastic to see, so nice that they are using their name
47:35
and their commercial clout to do sort of good things like that. Jetto Toll
47:39
actually are still performing now. I wouldn't say they're at their best, and
47:44
I think probably Ian Andson plays more flute than he sings these days. But
47:49
yeah, they're still going on and they're still releasing albums, and so yeah,
47:52
there's still an awful lot of progressive rock about. And that leads me
47:58
on to saying it's both the best and worst of times, because in one
48:00
way, there's never been so much music around. It's so easy to make
48:07
it now, and you can sit in your living room with a full mac
48:10
and garage band and you can produce music. And for an awful lot of
48:15
artists now, it's almost like a little cottage industry. I mean, I've
48:19
just bought the latest album by Steve Hackett, Genesis guitarist left Genesis in about
48:24
nineteen seventy seven, embarked in a solo career. Here he is with what
48:30
must be twentieth twenty fifth something like that. I mean, he's done loads
48:37
of solo albums. He records them himself in his own studio, he markets
48:42
them himself, he gets somebody to design the covers, He organizes the manufacturing.
48:47
No. I mean these people can do everything and do it a lot
48:52
cheaper than they used to and are able then to pump out their own music,
48:57
which makes it the best of times. The worst of times is the
49:00
fact that there's so little money in it now. Hackett where he'll go out
49:05
and tour, his touring NonStop. He must be in his seventies early seventies,
49:09
still touring NonStop, making a live album every time he tours, making
49:15
studio albums every couple of years, and I think making a bit of money
49:19
from doing that, and that's great. A lot of other bands finding it's
49:22
so difficult to make ends meet, and especially with brexits erk. I don't
49:25
know how much your listeners know about that made it very very expensive for British
49:31
bands to tour in Europe because of all the paperwork and red tape that's now
49:36
involved. So yeah, it's best of times in that you can there's loads
49:42
out there and you can listen to it and you can get hold of it.
49:44
Worse the times, no one's making money out of it, or a
49:46
very few hour anyway, and you know what's the future of it? Who
49:50
knows? Eighteen seventy two when progressive rap ruled the world's out now through Sonic
49:54
Band Publishing, and you can find out wherever books are sold, including BURNINGSHD
49:58
dot com or He's the best to get there if you're in the UK Amazon,
50:02
you can get it in the US. Where can people find you online?
50:06
Kevin? I don't really have an online presence, probably a little bit
50:09
too old fashioned for that. But if you go onto the Sonic Bonds website,
50:13
there you'll find a number of books on this theme of taking the year.
50:17
There you will find not only the seventy two book I've done, but
50:21
also the one I did in nineteen sixty seven, and you'll find a couple
50:23
of books I've done on a couple of bands. One is a folk rock
50:27
band called Fairport Convention which you may have heard of led Zeppelin Connection led Zeppelin
50:32
Connection there. And then another band sort of a space rock band who have
50:37
been around for decades called Gong, who are probably a little bit niche I
50:43
accept that, although I have to say it's actually close to selling out,
50:47
which is great to hear. So I'm going to be doing a reprint of
50:51
that. But you'll find loads of other sort of great books about music on
50:54
that, and if you love music as I do, these are just fantastic
50:59
things to read, you know, to find all the stories behind the albums
51:01
and all this and that. So it is fascinating stuff. It's fascinating to
51:06
research it. It's great to write it. It's even better when people read
51:08
it like yourself and say, I really enjoyed that. Thanks. So yeah,
51:13
I've got a few more in the pipeline and we'll see how it goes.
51:15
Yeah, I've really enjoyed this one. In nineteen seventy two the year
51:19
I was born, so I wasn't there. You were born. Fantastic there
51:22
we are, perfect folks, perfect birthday present for those who were born in
51:25
nineteen seventy that's correct. Yeah, Kevin, thank you. This was great,
51:30
fascinating conversation and look forward to having you back on and congrats on a
51:34
fantastic book. Well, thank you very much indeed for having me on the
51:37
show. It's a great show. It's great to be on it. That's
51:47
it. It's in the books.