Harmonic Progression

What happens when classical music-style levels of ambition, invention and sheer length are brought to pop? The answer, as Meurig Bowen explains, is Prog Rock

- Meurig Bowen

'Everyone knows rock music achieved perfection in 1974: it's a scientific fact.' These are the wise words of Homer Simpson, no less. And while he may well have been thinking of all sorts of other kinds of rock music - album releases that year from The Who, Queen, The Rolling Stones or David Bowie I like to think he was referring to the high water mark, 50 years ago, of that most unique of species: Progressive Rock. Or, to use its ugly abbreviation, Prog.

Instead of being Glam, Hard, Soft or Bluesy, this largely British sub-genre grew out of Sgt. Pepper and psychedelia in the late 1960s and flourished globally for a few years before its snarling, consciously primal antipode, Punk, conspired (with only partial success) to snuff it out in time for the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977.

From my first teenage encounters, I knew that this was the 'pop music' which shared the ambition, breadth and drama of classical music. Here was the same rich harmonic vocabulary and technical mastery, a rhythmic sophistication that went far beyond four beats in a bar, a searching pursuit of extended structures and the same textural breadth that ranged from delicately intimate to floor-shakingly explosive.

With the help of iconic album cover artwork from the likes of Roger Dean (Yes) and Storm Thorgerson/Hipgnosis (Pink Floyd/Genesis), the music has a very particular look, evoking an era of loon pants, lank long hair and the wafting clouds of perfumed joints. As a result, some of it fares badly from being locked into that period and sounds badly dated now - consigned, with the assistance of elapsed time, to the category of barely listened to and the second-rate. Just as there are a lot of Vanhals and Wagenseils for every Haydn and Mozart, the Prog giants like Genesis, Pink Floyd and Yes have their Caravans and Gentle Giants in their rear view too.