The prog-rock album Ian Anderson said no one else equalled: “Unique and new”
There was a healthy sense of competition in prog rock when Ian Anderson first began making his masterpieces.
Jethro Tull wasn’t in the music industry to make the same kind of top 40 music everyone else was, and going through their entire discography, each record was another opportunity for them to toy with the conventions of what a rock and roll tune could be. But even if Anderson didn’t identify with the term ‘prog’ every single time he performed, he knew when an artist was playing well above what any of their contemporaries were doing.
But, really, does Tull actually fit into the prog mould? They have a lot of intricate parts in their tunes and tell expansive stories, but it’s not like they were the same kind of band that a group like Yes was. As great as Jon Anderson and co are at making jaw-dropping feats of musical brilliance, there are often times when tunes can get swallowed up by the solos, often feeling more like scale exercises than actual compositions.
That was never the kind of tone that Anderson was going for. Even when they decided to call everyone’s bluff by releasing Thick as a Brick, you can see the tongue firmly planted in the band’s cheeks. They never wanted to be classified as that flavour of prog rock, but if the world insisted on putting them under that banner, they figured they’d create the mother of all concept albums that would take the listener on a ride.
When Anderson was starting to become a musician, though, prog rock was still coming into formation. There had been bands like The Beatles starting to toy with what could be done with the genre, and even King Crimson beginning to turn their songs into progressive exercises on their debut record, but when Syd Barrett started making his first steps into the rock world with Pink Floyd, rock’s resident flautist heard something different.
All of Barrett’s songs had the standard length of a pop song half the time, but listening to any track on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, it was all about trying to find the most unconventional chords imaginable. The harmony that he was using on many of those tracks was beyond anything fans had heard before, and while Anderson was shellshocked, he knew that nothing else would compare to it.
Although there have been countless prog rock bands that have come afterwards, Anderson still felt that this record was the benchmark for that sound, saying, “Sure, there were definitely things back then that were really groundbreaking. It’s amazing when you listen to the first Pink Floyd album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. It was a unique and new experience to listen to that album. It was the beginning of progressive music. But I don’t think I’ve heard anything that’s an equivalent in terms of the music that I hear from other so-called progressive rock bands that are out there today.”
Then again, how was anyone supposed to capture that sense of imagination on one of their records? Dream Theater might not be looking to have the same kind of psychedelic adventure that Barrett was used to doing on any one of their albums, but that’s only because they were so idiosyncratic to his voice, which probably explains why the band elected to stop performing any of his songs when he had to leave the group.
Because as much as people like to throw in a bit of whimsy into their art every now and again, it’s nearly impossible to separate Barrett’s personality from his tunes half the time. ‘Arnold Layne’ and ‘See Emily Play’ are decently catchy songs, but even when David Bowie performed a few Barrett tunes alongside David Gilmour, not even rock’s resident alien could sing them exactly like the Floyd frontman.
