His most famous work was done with King Crimson for whom he came up with the name and wrote most of the lyrics for the first four albums though he didn’t play on them.
I have featured his work before since he wrote the English language lyrics for Italian group Premiata, Forneria, Marconi (PFM.) The World Became the World is a prime example of Sinfield’s art.
I saw in the Guardian yesterday that guitarist Wilko Johnson has died.
I do remember reading during the 1970s about the most famous band he was in, Dr Feelgood. This was in music papers that had a London bias.
In many ways the band’s sound was against the times – of the early to mid-70s at any rate, being guitar and drum based and eschewing any Prog Rock or Glam Rock tendencies. They did, however, point to the revolution that was punk.
They did manage to have a top ten hit in 1978 with Milk and Alcohol but the first time I saw them (on television) was, I think, many years later (though it is possible I witnessed the original Old Grey Whistle Test appearance) in one of those retrospective shows the BBC is so fond of performing this song.
Wilko certainly had a stage presence.
Dr Feelgood: Roxette
John Peter Wilkinson (Wilko Johnson:) 12/7/1947-21/11/22. So it goes.
In 1989 a by now Fishless Marillion got themselves a new lead singer, Steve Hogarth, and a much less Prog-Rocky sound. This was the first single and the first sight of Hogarth on Top of the Pops. No sign of Prog at all.
I saw in the Guardian that Gary Brooker, the voice (and more besides) of Procol Harum has died.
His voice was certainly distinctive, as was Procol Harum’s output: a rock band, yes, but more. And of course one of the progenitors of Prog Rock.
This was Procol Harum’s fourth hit, if that description can be applied to a song that reached no 44. Despite its downbeat sound and slow pace I’ve always thought it one of their best.
Procol Harum: A Salty Dog
This video contains a very good live version – with accompaniment – and an added bonus of An Old English Dream. (On this occasion I’ll ignore his comment about the Euro.)
Procol Harum and the Danish National Concert Orchestra and Choir: A Salty Dog and An Old English Dream
I suppose this track really ought to have been much higher up this list. However, I didn’t want the category to contain any obvious songs from the 60s (hence no Beatles, no Rolling Stones) nor – certainly after a few weeks – repeats of the same artist. When I posted the band’s Shine on Brightly I thought I had already featured Homburg here. (I had, but before I started the Friday on my Mind category.)
A Whiter Shade of Pale is so quintessentially 60s that it’s a bit clichéd as an exemplar from the decade.
But this still sounds so fresh, possibly because of its source material, Bach’s Air on the G String.
The original video/film was surely in black and white. That’s certainly how I remember it. This one must have been colourised.
Anyway here’s where Prog Rock might be said to have begun – at least in the public’s mind.
Tull in their pomp. An acknowledgement of their bluesy origins in the intro leading into a complete rock-out and then one of Ian Anderson’s trademark flute solos. The mix of blues and rock also pointed to Prog Rock leanings but Tull always denied they ever purveyed Prog.
Edited to add. This video has the LP track overdubbed onto concert footage.
A small hit in the UK (no 36) but a no 8 in Germany. The track has echoes of The Troggs and The Who of I’m a Boy and prefigures the Roy Wood era Electric Light Orchestra. The video features “guitarist” Eddie Phillips playing his instrument with a violin bow – reputedly the first to do so – a major contributor to the record’s sound. Another antecedent of Prog Rock?
Phillips had also used this technique on their previous single, Making Time.
Tuesday Afternoon was followed as a single by Voices in the Sky (with its flute flourishes and distinctive vocal from Justin Hayward) which, like its follow-up, the hard-driving perennial favourite Ride My See-Saw, featured on the next LP, the even more pretentious concept album, In Search of the Lost Chord. That was the first Moody Blues LP I bought – possibly my first ever and there’s barely a dud on it – with the possible exception of the spoken passages and the final track Om. Its standout is the Ray Thomas song Legend of a Mind embedded within the House of Four Doors sequence with its classical pretensions placing the group’s output firmly in Prog territory.
By this time the Moodies were firmly established as my favourite band.
Then we had this song – later to feature on On The Threshold of a Dream – which I remember in its review of the single the NME referred to as “beautifully constructed.” Here the group plays it live.
I didn’t buy the Moodies’ next single, Tuesday Afternoon, a song which – like Nights In White Satin – appeared also on the LP Days of Future Passed but I remember hearing it on the radio and thinking it was almost as good. It seems the single version was edited down to a ludicrous 2 minutes 16 seconds – missing out the repeat of the opening riff and “Tuesday Afternoon” chorus.
This is how it appeared on the LP and so contains the orchestral afterpiece tagged on by conductor Peter Knight. Knight’s “classical music” interludes linked all the songs on the LP – supposedly to demonstrate the record label Deram’s new “Deramic Sound System.” The story that the band were asked to record an album based on Dvorak’s New World symphony but instead recorded their own songs without the label’s knowledge has been disputed.
The Moody Blues: Tuesday Afternoon
Edited (7/6/14) to add:- Those orchestral interludes and the fact that it was a concept album probably make Days of Future Passed one of the first prog rock albums.
