Progressive Rock, “Close to the Edge,” and the Boundaries of Style

Abstract

Abstract “Progressive rock;’ “classical rock;’ “art rock;’ “symphonic rock”—these labels have been used over the last twenty-five years by various authors to designate a style of popular music developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, primarily by British rock musicians.I During this time groups such as King Crimson, the Moody Blues, Proco Harum, the Nice (and later Emerson, Lake, and Palmer), Gentle Giant, Genesis, Yes, Jethro Tull, Van der Graaf Generator, and Deep Purple attempted to blend late-’60s and early-’70s rock and pop with elements drawn from the Western art-music tradition. This attempt to develop a kind of”concert-hall rock”—which was nevertheless still often performed in stadiums and arenas—was the result of a tendency on the part of some rockers and their fans to view rock as “listening music” (as opposed to dance music), an aesthetic trend that Wilfrid Mellers attributes to the influence of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band of 1967.