The five biggest lies people tell you about prog rock
Prog rock is a strange genre. It’s one where those who love it, love it, and those who hate it, hate it; there doesn’t seem to be much of an in between
Well, here I am, a proud in between. I love prog rock, as the talent and creativity involved within the genre top basically any other style of music out there. However, given it’s not all I listen to, I have a pretty firm grasp on why those removed from this iconic form of music tend to turn their nose up at it as well.
For a lot of people, they just don’t like it, which is fine. I can sit down and play as much Jethro Tull, Rush and Cream as possible in a bid to change their minds, but all they do is ask to skip to the next track, or stop the music altogether. I disagree with these people, naturally, but also respect their opinions. After all, the beauty of music lies in its subjective nature, right?
That being said, there are other people who don’t listen to prog because their judgment is clouded by common misconceptions that seem to surround the genre. There are a lot of lies passed on about prog rock, which I can understand the origins of, but that are realistically just complete falsehoods. I’m here to put these rumours to rest, and hopefully, in the meantime, win over a few more prog lovers.
The most common misconceptions about prog rock
It lacks emotion
This is an idea that stems back to the birth of Romanticism in art. There was a period when the musical world was split into two camps: those who wanted to impress you, and those who wanted to make you feel something. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote about the importance of Romanticism and is often considered one of the first musicians to truly champion it.
“A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved… In languishing, sad passages, the performer must languish and grow sad,” he wrote in his Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, “Similarly, in lively, joyous passages, the executant must again put himself into the appropriate mood.”
Who’s to say what the right approach is, but because of this divide between technical and romantic music history, people still feel the need to subscribe to it. They hear something as complex as prog rock and believe that it must be lacking in all emotion by its very nature; however, this is not the case. Prog rock can be emotive like any other genre, as musicians will often write songs which are a reflection of their real feelings that can tug on your heartstrings just as much as the blues.
It’s only for middle- / upper-class people
There is a common misconception about prog rock that it’s a style of music only for the middle and upper working class, but this is incorrect. The longevity of the genre exists because of the fact that people from a range of different walks of life are able to effectively connect with everything that they’re listening to. You get a huge variety of people, both listening to and making prog rock. For instance, Jon Anderson from Yes was a farmhand before he started in music. And his namesake, Ian Anderson, wrote one of Jethro Tull’s biggest hits, ‘Aqualung’, by addressing the issues surrounding homelessness.
“I believe the sentiments of the song are as obvious now as they were in 1971 because the issue of homeless people hasn’t gone away,” he said, “You still see them everywhere. In the 1950s and ’60s, we called them tramps, but they were harmless. Now, as so many are on the streets due to drug problems or sexual exploitation, it has become, if anything, more worrying. All of which makes ‘Aqualung’ so relevant.”
It’s pretentious
There were a number of different factors that led to the creation of the punk movement, but two of the major contributors were issues within society and overly complex music. As a lot of people didn’t feel like the government or anyone in the world around them had their back, they grew frustrated at the musicians they used to listen to, equally so, as sound was becoming more complex and, for some, inaccessible. This, in turn, gave genres like psychedelic rock and prog rock an image of being pretentious.
There’s a reason why punk rock songs only tend to be made up of three or four chords, and that’s because they wanted to move away from this pretentious image as much as they possibly could. Because of the way the punk movement came about, prog rock was inadvertently labelled as too high-brow, but this is more a representation of wrong place, wrong time rather than being an accurate assessment of the genre.
It’s a scene
We have a tendency to label the majority of genres and musical movements as a scene, but prog rock may be one of the very few that simply doesn’t subscribe to such a term. The thing is, prog rock is one of the most complex types of music to describe because of how limitless it is by its very nature. It’s basically rock music but with added elements, which can cover so many different bands. With so much range, it’s pretty impossible to call the whole thing a scene, because it covers too many artists.
Frank Zappa put it best when he tried to define the genre and left the majority of people with more questions than answers. “I would presume that people would accept this definition,” he said, “Progressive rock is anything that doesn’t sound like regular rock. Regular rock is everything that sounds like itself. All songs which sound the same, everything on MTV, everything on the radio, that’s rock. Progressive rock is stuff that doesn’t sound like that.”
All of the songs are about goblins
This one is a bit of fun, as in all fairness, you would be surprised just how many prog rock songs are about goblins, sci-fi, fantasy or anything that can lead to a bizarre narrative. A lot of musicians within prog, while they craft these complex songs and records, do so before thinking about any kind of theme that can run through them. When you have such expansive music and are looking for lyrics to attach, then it makes sense to tell a story which is equally as fantastical and bizarre as the music.
The result? Well, quite a lot of songs about goblins. If you like your albums to be concept-heavy and play like novels, then prog rock is a good genre you can turn to for as much; however, rest assured, if this doesn’t sound like your sort of thing, there is a lot more to it than that as well.
