Five artists who had a surprising impact on prog-rock
Prog-rock is one of the most limitless genres on the planet, given that it’s essentially rock music, but with extra bits added.
A lot of the time, those extra bits involve bands taking what would previously be recognised as classic rock music but adding various styles of music. You’ll hear a lot of prog bands who add jazz to their sound, or who draw from different countries and cultures and inject their influences. It all makes for an incredibly exciting listen, and means that bands can be inspired by artists who aren’t themselves considered prog.
Granted, when you listen to the genre, artists are influenced by one another, as the likes of Rush, Tool, Frank Zappa, Yes, Jethro Tull and many more all add to this unique style of music and allow it to grow. However, given the ambitious nature of prog, other artists who are in no way connected to the sound have also helped it evolve.
Here are five artists who you wouldn’t have expected to have had an impact on the genre, but who have rocked the prog world.
Five artists who surprisingly impacted prog-rock:
Maynard James Keenan
Maynard James Keenan’s impact on prog-rock isn’t exactly surprising; it’s inevitable, given he fronts one of the best prog-rock bands on the planet in Tool. The way that his band put together tracks and their limitless approach to creativity mean that they are constantly setting the bar for other prog rock bands.
Keenan mainly influences the genre by writing with strange time signatures, but what’s surprising is how he discovered his ability to do this. While a lot of people work out what kind of musician they are by playing, Keenan was already aware before he had even started making music professionally; he stumbled upon his gift while he was running at school.
“I remember running cross country in high school, and everyone has their own breathing rhythms. It’s just supposed to be in out, right?” he said, “But I found myself running when I was in high school, and I had odd rhythms, it wasn’t just in-out-in-out rhythm, I was actually running to the steps. So if you’re going over hill or downhill, in chuckholes or whatever, my breath would follow those rhythms, which is weird.”
Joni Mitchell
Of course, it wasn’t just Maynard James Keenan who influenced the genre by introducing strange time signatures. There are plenty of artists who write outside of the standard 4/4 time signature, but one who had a profound effect on the Tool frontman, and who subsequently has impacted the genre as a whole, was Joni Mitchell.
Despite working predominantly within folk music, Mitchell has never been afraid to experiment with melody and timing, so much so that she has impacted genres other than her own. “Odd time signature stuff. There’s some Joni Mitchell stuff that has crazy time signatures,” said Keenan, “She’s singing on the up, she’s singing on the down, and that was kind of like the running.”
Eric Clapton
Steve Van Zandt once said that Eric Clapton was one of the most important guitarists on the planet because of how effortlessly he blended the styles of the guitar players who came before him. He has always been considered a rock guitarist; however, the way his playing technique merged blues, R&B and pop gave his rock style layers which would eventually be incorporated into prog.
Ian Anderson said that Clapton, along with his fellow Cream bandmates, were some of the first people to truly influence prog. “A more progressive approach, which had been the latter part of ’66, listening to people like Graham Bond, who had at that point in his band Jack Bruce on bass and Ginger Baker on drums. In many ways, Graham Bond was kind of a precursor of that thing that became progressive rock,” he said.
Adding, “And, of course, Cream, in its way, when those two guys left Graham Bond and set out as Cream, that became something that moved Eric Clapton along from just being a blues guitarist.”
Paul McCartney
When Graham Nash was talking about the song ‘A Day In The Life’, he said it was one of the most adventurous songs he’s ever heard, remarking, “It’s one of the greatest songs ever written. It’s one of the most adventurous songs ever written and recorded. I don’t think there’ll ever be another Beatles; I think that the universe put those four kids in the right place at the right time and gave them the right talent to be able to move the hearts, minds and spirits of billions of people, and continue to this day.”
Of course, it wasn’t just that one song which was adventurous, but the whole album of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band completely changed the way people saw music, as McCartney weaved a story throughout his record, and adding narrative to music is something that a lot of prog bands took and ran with. This is an element of the genre we may not have seen without Paul McCartney creating such clear parameters as to what a concept album was.
Iceberg Slim
Throughout the world of prog, bands are constantly trying to use their music to tell stories through vocals and spoken word, and one of the best artists who was able to well and truly intertwine a narrative throughout an album was Iceberg Slim, who released his album Reflections in 1976.
The record was a book read over jazz music, with the words and the sound linking up depending on what was being said, such that it’s great to listen to, and it also sets a great standard which many a prog band have since tried to match with their own use of narrative and music.
