Led Zeppelin

[Adm.Kirk]

With Purple the self titled third album and Concerto for Group and Orchestra is probably as prog as they ever got. Uriah Heep got close on Salisbury and Demons & Wizards and Magician's Birthday.

Bill

[PeterG]

It has always felt wrong to me when albums from rock bands have been called progressive, when they bring in a 400 year old device like a symphony orchestra to play with them and then revert to a 300 year old format like the concerto. Very progressive! :-)

[Jubal]

But all that said, Uriah Heep, deep purple, Ufo, etc,. All of them had far more of a claim to the prog tag than LZ. Zeppelin did nothing that even remotely approached prog rock. They were a hard blues and hard rock band.

Never heard Ten Years Gone? Battle of Evermore? Kashmir?

[mogrooves]

I don't recall ever hearing/reading that bands like YES were called Prog in the early 70s. I always heard and read the term "Art-Rock."

+1. This was my experience as well.

Progressive Rock is a retroactive term that popped up either in the late seventies or early eighties (factions still argue over this and always will) and was definitely not around in the early seventies. Believe it or not, Floyd, Zep, Yes and Jefferson Airplane were all considered as Rock

The first statement affirms my recollection. The bands cited in the second statement were indeed "Rock" bands but descriptively labeled progressive, and sub-categorized as psych/space rock, blues rock, art rock, and psych, respectively.

[bob_32_116]

I find it funny that people are saying Led Zeppelin get a "free pass" on PE, because PE is probably the frist music forum I have been on where they DON'T get a free pass.

[bob_32_116]

Never heard Ten Years Gone? Battle of Evermore? Kashmir?

or No Quarter? Interesting, by the way, to hear that back to back with "My Ashes" by Porcupine Tree.

[spacefreak]

I don't recall ever hearing/reading that bands like YES were called Prog in the early 70s. I always heard and read the term "Art-Rock." Led Zeppelin were not Art-Rock. If anything, they may have been called Heavy Metal (even though I don't remembering hearing that term - Heavt Metal - until maybe 1976). Too me they were as "metal" as Sabbath and/or Purple. Led gets the prog label retroactively. They were progressive but the foundation was always heavy, overdriven, blues/rock.

True in all accounts. I remember reading an article in 1978 or 1979 on a british mag about Heavy Metal and they had Zeppelin, Heep, Purple and Nazareth listed among the likes of UFO, Scorpions, Priest, AC-DC, Kiss and the then emerging NWoBHM bands like Maiden, Sledgehammer, Quartz, Vardis and Saxon. I still regard them under that category, if not heavy metal at least heavy rock. And certainly not prog.

[JJ88]

They certainly had progressive rock elements to their sound on most of their albums, certainly from the 3rd one onwards.

[UnephenStephen]

never thought of them as prog but they certainly were original. from Friends to Black Dog to The Crunge to In my Time of Dying, they pushed boundaries way beyond most hard rock/metal bands did at the time. always one of my fave bands from the 70's along with Deep Purple.

[Jerjo]

No one ever mentions this one



or this one from the Who



a lovely orchestra arrangement here and some truly fine drumming

[Garden Dreamer]

A lot of non-prog bands have done at least one song or album with some element that could be called "prog-influenced"... i.e. a long song... odd time sig... a song in several parts as opposed to standard rock verse/chorus/solo arrangments... thematic album, "rock opera", etc.... orchestras, medieval instruments or other non-rock instrumentation... etc.

How about naming bands that have NEVER done anything that could be called "prog-influenced?" AC/DC... Aerosmith(? I don't know their entire catalog)...

[No Pride]

The album Houses of the Holy has all the markings of a prog-rock record except the weird time signatures. Yeah, prog is a stretch for them as a band, but they had their moments.

There are 'weird time sigs' in both "The Crunge" and "The Ocean"

And "Black Dog." I can figure out The Mahavishnu Orchestra's time signatures, but I can't tell what the hell's going on in that one. I'm not sure they can either. But it's pretty cool, whatever it is.

I'd say LZ was a reasonably creative hard rock band. If that qualifies them as prog for anybody, that's fine with me.

[Zeuhlmate]

The album Houses of the Holy has all the markings of a prog-rock record except the weird time signatures. Yeah, prog is a stretch for them as a band, but they had their moments.

The Ocean: The intro and chorus (the main riff) are in 15/8

[StevegSr]

I agree with your first statement about rock bands simply being rock bands, not prog rock bands. The only caveat I would add was there were rock bands, and then great rock bands, and in addition to Floyd, Zep and Yes, you could add Tull, Sabbath, The Allman Brothers, The Who etc. No one said "This is prog, that is not." King Crimson's first album was important in that it was a quintessential album to get stoned with.

As far as Genesis in the U.S. in the 70s, I can only go on what was being listened to in my high school at the time. The Lamb and Trick of the Tail were both huge and listened to a lot when they were released, as well as Peter Gabriel's first solo album. It took a while to backtrack to Foxtrot and Selling England.

Good God! The quintessential album to get stoned to was Days of Future Past by the Moody Blues! (still is )

[zravkapt]

How about naming bands that have NEVER done anything that could be called "prog-influenced?" AC/DC... Aerosmith(? I don't know their entire catalog)...

[nosebone]

Uriah Heep and the Grateful Dead have been argued as well.

I see the early '70s as a time when progressive rock was the zeitgeist in which many bands took part. Some epitomized the zeitgeist, others only partially so. Much of the zeitgeist was following what The Beatles did: write your own material, go high-concept when you want, reinvent your sound perennially, blaze a trail, try and deliver the highest quality product you can in the studio.

Exactly!

Also, Moogs were still a novel new sound that were everywhere in the 70s.

For example:

[PeterG]

Never heard Ten Years Gone? Battle of Evermore? Kashmir?

You clearly haven't read all my posts on the thread, because if you had you wouldn't have asked the question.

[PeterG]

As regards the term progressive rock, i don't know when it came into use.But I do know i never heard it in use at my school in Cheleas in the 70s, not from our very hip music teachers nor in the playground. Nor did I ever hear it from my friends and neighbours in Notting Hill, nor in the original Virgin Records shop on Notting Hill Gate. No, the first time I encountered the term was in the 80s.

[bob_32_116]

As regards the term progressive rock, i don't know when it came into use.But I do know i never heard it in use at my school in Cheleas in the 70s, not from our very hip music teachers nor in the playground. Nor did I ever hear it from my friends and neighbours in Notting Hill, nor in the original Virgin Records shop on Notting Hill Gate. No, the first time I encountered the term was in the 80s.

I heard it in the early 70's, but it was used more as a way of describing certain music to the uninitiated, rather than a name for a genre in itself.

In 1971 a work colleague had just bought Meddle, and when someone asked him what sort of music it was, he said "semi-classical". A couple of years later he would probably have said "progressive rock".

[Rufus]

With Purple the self titled third album and Concerto for Group and Orchestra is probably as prog as they ever got. Uriah Heep got close on Salisbury and Demons & Wizards and Magician's Birthday.

Bill

^^^ Certainly closer to Prog than Hard Rock that's for sure!

[Supersonic Scientist]

Not "Prog," imo, but certainly progressive, given what they did within the fairly limited constraints of "blues rock."

For me, this sums it up perfectly.

[mogrooves]

I heard it in the early 70's, but it was used more as a way of describing certain music to the uninitiated, rather than a name for a genre in itself.

Precisely. The term progressive rock was used originally as an adjective to describe an approach to rock music-making--a kind of ideology, actually--rather than as a noun naming a specific genre of rock music.

The first time I came across the word progressive rock in its original meaning was in a review of Paul Butterfield's album East West in '66, after which it became ubiquitous. It didn't become a noun until the mid-ish 70s when it supplanted "art rock" as the term of choice naming the music we now call "Prog."

[Sputnik]

Precisely. The term progressive rock was used originally as an adjective to describe an approach to rock music-making--a kind of ideology, actually--rather than as a noun naming a specific genre of rock music.

The first time I came across the word progressive rock in its original meaning was in a review of Paul Butterfield's album East West in '66, after which it became ubiquitous. It didn't become a noun until the mid-ish 70s when it supplanted "art rock" as the term of choice naming the music we now call "Prog."

I agree with this.

But as I've said before, in-mid 1978 I approached an older friend of mine down the street to borrow some Yes albums, as I had tickets to see them in early 1979. He and I had listened to Led Zeppelin, ELO, Styx, Queen, BOC, Sabbath, Boston, and a host of other rock bands together, so he knew what I was into and what I knew at that time. His response to my request was, "Oh so you're getting into the Prog Rockers now?" To me his comment is interesting on a number of levels.

First, he clearly separated in his mind the "Prog Rockers" from the other bands we had listened to, and that Zeppelin was clearly to him not "Prog Rock." Second, he actually abbreviated "Progressive Rock" to "Prog," showing the use of that abbreviation pre-dates the 1980s, at least in some areas. Once I got into Yes and started discovering ELP, it became apparent that "Prog Rock" was a term a lot of kids at school used to differentiate these bands from other rock bands. Tull, KC, and Genesis fell into that category, as did Floyd and some of the then more recent Rush (though some didn't consider Floyd of Rush really Prog). Same old debate happening in 1978-79 that we have here today.

Clearly the term started out with a different meaning and applied to a wide range of bands at varying times. But by the late 1970s, and probably by he mid-70s as Mo says, the "specific genre" of Prog Rock was understood at some level, and even is today among the general public, among whom bands like Yes, Genesis, KC, and ELP are recognized as "Prog Rock," and bands like Zeppelin are simply not. That didn't stop any of us from listening to anything, but if you asked someone to recommend them some "Prog Rock," they wouldn't have recommended Zeppelin, but would have recommended Gentle Giant. That sort of differentiation was the value of the term, and what gets lost when everything becomes "Prog."

But, so it goes.

Bill

[JJ88]

With Led Zeppelin, I would say (off the top of my head) 'Friends', 'Stairway To Heaven', 'Four Sticks', 'The Song Remains The Same', 'The Rain Song', 'No Quarter', 'Kashmir', 'In The Light', 'Ten Years Gone', 'Achilles' Last Stand' and 'Carouselambra' spring to mind as tracks that wouldn't sound at all out of place among other 'prog' bands.

[Zeuhlmate]

In post 38 I prooved whith absolute certainty that LZ is prog. End of discussion.