Alright folks, put on your best headphones and strap yourself in for about an hour because we are going on a tour of the BEST (not the most popular) PROG EPICS from the golden age of progressive rock. Things are about to get very noodley indeed! 1/
Each of these bands produced LOOONG songs, many became the band's signature epic and in EACH INSTANCE I think they had basically no idea what they were doing, and wouldn't crack the Epic formula until years afterwards, producing their best epics way after their golden age. 2/
Let's start with the kings of the long-form epic. YES. After Close To The Edge (18 minutes) someone asked "what next, you're putting the Bible to music?" And Jon Anderson said "Fuck you, yes! Yes we will!" And they didn't. They tried putting Hindu scripture to music. 3/
That was TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS which might be really long (four 20+ minute songs) but at least it's really tedious! Little more than a collection of half-finished snippets stitched together, it basically killed the band. 4/
FOUR YEARS LATER they produced their masterpiece, synthesizing everything everyone loved about their longest stuff into an actual song. Fifteen minutes long, intricate, melodic, I think it's better than Close To The Edge. AWAKEN.
Folks forget, or more probably don't care, that RUSH was a latecomer to the prog scene, being influenced by bands like YES rather than their contemporaries. Like their heroes, Rush wrote long, incredibly indulgent songs. Their most famous, 2112, being a 20+minute sci-fi epic.
Like Yes, ELP and Tull, after Rush spent several albums noodling around, they got their shit together and learned how to write songs. By their time their masterpiece Moving Pictures came out, they'd cracked it. Influenced by The Police and the New Wave, Rush were a new band.
But they didn't abandon the long-form song! They produced one of their best. Not a 20+ minute fantasy epic, a tight, listenable 10 minute ode to New York and London that breezes by before you know it. THE CAMERA EYE.
Jethro Tull, aka Ian Anderson, the best lyricist in Prog, thought the whole idea of a Concept Album was bunk, he couldn't hear any "concept" in these albums. He said they mostly seemed influenced by the drugs the band was taking at the time, "which means we make Löwenbräu albums.
Being fans of Monty Python and the Goon Show, Anderson decided to take the piss out of the whole thing, and wrote THICK AS A BRICK as a joke, poking fun at the seriousness of prog. It was a smash hit and everyone thought it was serious.
Flush with unexpected success, TULL was now one of the biggest bands in the world, maybe THE top touring act for a year or two in the 70s. Taking themselves very seriously, they write A PASSION PLAY, another album-long song with no breaks and at LEAST five good minutes in there.
Like Yes, they had talent, but not discipline. These were more epics "stitched together" from unfinished bits of unrelated music. YEARS LATER focusing much more on acoustic material, TULL produced their best, tightest, most thoughtful, epic. BAKER ST. MUSE
ELP, the Prog Supergroup, wrote 30 minute epics about starships run by apocalyptic computers. Fêted as soon as they formed, they defined the prog epic early. But like everyone else, their most famous epics are full of filler and written to fill album sides rather than make music.
Toward the end of their golden period though, they produced a 13 minute epic tighter, more dramatic, and more sheer FUN than anything they'd ever done before. PIRATES! We wouldn't get a better pirate movie until Johnny Depp.
The pattern; Prog band noodles around for 20-30 minutes, gets famous and burns out. Later produces a tighter (10-15 minute) long song synthesizing everything they'd done before. The exception to the rule: GENESIS.
Genesis follows the formula backwards. First track on their first album (with their new drummer Phil Collins) with their definitive lineup, they give us at atmospheric, haunting ROCKER about girl and a ghost...and a MUSICAL BOX.
These bands have deeeep catalogs and several phases and some of the best stuff never got any airplay (how could it?!) But long after the music press moved on, they took everything they'd learned in the studio and on the road, and made remarkable music.
Here endeth the lesson.
Here endeth the lesson.
