the “role of music in society,” and therefore I offer an extended historical and cultural perspective on progressive rock, especially in the second and third chapters. But, even more, I am interested in the way that the “aesthetic” is a crucial and essential dimension of human life—and not just as entertainment, but as “world disclosure” and as dream of another world. Great art engages in “poiesis,” the creation of worlds. It seems clear to me that progressive rock aspires to this and, at least in the best work, contributes to such creation. This is where the division between “politics” and “art” breaks down, for it is obviously a “political” act to imagine a world—even if that world contains little of, or even seems to negate, what counts as “politics” in our world. These themes are explored in the first chapter.
This is, then, a book of arguments. I would be happy if it could be placed alongside books such as Macan’s Rocking the Classics and Theodore Gracyk’s Rhythm and Noise (which I take up in the second and third chapters), books that attempt to deal with rock music in a systematic way, dealing with the music and its ideas and culture, rather than primarily with personalities and biographies. Go to your local bookstore and look at the section on rock music, and you will find that such books are few and far between. It may be that most rock music cannot really sustain such argumentation (and I am not saying that there is something necessarily wrong with rock biographies); but some rock music clearly can, and progressive rock is in that category.
The arguments found here are sometimes a tangled weave, often quite polemical, sometimes defensive, often presented with the idea of going on the offensive. (Certainly the latter is seen well enough in the title of the first chapter.) Indeed, the arguments here are often sprawling and sometimes seem to go far afield of the subject of progressive rock. The tangle and sprawl might even be seen as mimicking much progressive rock. My aim is not to excuse flabby argumentation or thinking that is too diffuse; however, I hope that the reader will see that it is a strength of progressive rock that it can be part of a wide-ranging discussion of philosophy, culture, and society. In our present period of fragmentation and overspecialization, it is difficult to find much that could really be called a “culture”—which is why one trend in recent political thought is geared toward a revival of “tradition” (not only in art, but in “family values,” etc.). As far as the West is concerned, it seems to me a fact of great significance that the last “culture” we have seen where ideas freely circulated between art, politics, and theory, was the sixties counterculture—and progressive rock was a part of that scene. Since then, unless one goes in for neotraditionalism (the political basis of which is highly suspect), it has been a difficult uphill battle to find a way to keep trends in art, politics, and philosophy from simply carving out their own little niches and staying there.
Perhaps another way of stating this theme, and of showing readers my larger perspective, is to say that my largest interest in this music and its associated ideas and politics is indeed emancipatory and utopian. In other words, my interest and perspective is of a piece with the countercultural politics of the sixties. Although there are certain aspects of the more academic discussions that are useful in understanding progressive rock (or the sixties counterculture, for that matter), a purely academic discussion seems quite pointless to me.
There was a great deal of discussion between my editor, Kerri Mommer, and myself regarding the title of this book. In fact, this is the first of my books to have a title that I did not come up with entirely on my own. My original proposal, speaking of academic perspectives, had been what is now the book’s subtitle. I think that what we ultimately chose for the title captures very well what progressive rock has tried to do; yet the title also provides a different, perhaps complementary, perspective to Edward Macan’s main title, Rocking the Classics. The question arises, however, whether the future that progressive rock musicians were listening to is in any sense still “the future”? In a BBC special on the music of Yes that was aired around 1971 (around the time that Fragile was released), Jon Anderson spoke somewhat dramatically to the possibilities that were being opened up by progressive rock. He said something to the effect that, as much as the music might seem advanced and adventurous, he was looking forward to seeing (hearing) how much further along music would be in another ten or twenty years. Quite clearly, Anderson was listening to the future. But it would be difficult to argue that the future he was listening to, or perhaps “for,” has come to pass.
Indeed, I would invite the reader to take a look, at the outset, at pages 245 and 246. These pages contain a partial list of the progressive rock albums dealt with here (primarily in chapter four) and also other important rock (and a few jazz) albums that were released in the years 1968 to 1978. This is just a list, really, but looking at it can convey the sense of a certain rhythm and a certain movement (to use one of Jon Anderson’s favorite words). “Listening to the future,” the idea, not the book title, has to do with following out a certain rhythm and movement—but it seems that these have led somewhere else, to another “time.”
In other words, the world that progressive rock portended is not the world that we live in now. And this has important implications for how we listen to the music in this world, this world that the music was not listening to. I attempt to proceed in terms of both of these worlds, the world that I think the music was listening to, and the world that we have. This book hopes to be a bridge between the two.
Chicago, June 1, 1997
Introduction: Seize again the day
For a brief, shining moment, there was a time when the trend in music known as “progressive rock” captured the imaginations of millions of listeners. Although this book defines the “time” of progressive rock in terms of the years 1968 to 1978, the shining moment was a somewhat shorter period, perhaps from about 1971 to 1975. Writing on the eve of the fin-de-millennium, this brief period seems as though it was an eternity ago. And yet, no matter how brief the moment, and no matter how long ago it might seem now (and, from another perspective, 1972 was just yesterday), this was a significant period for music.
Indeed, the period of the late sixties and the years immediately following were significant for many reasons, not least of all for the fact that the world was being turned upside down by widespread, and global, social upheaval. This was a time of both protest and possibility, and even revolution—and some great music was inspired by what seemed to be the retreat, at least on the ideological front, of systems of exploitation and domination, and the emergence of a new world, or, at least, a new understanding.
This music took many forms, both within rock music and beyond. Indeed, there was a general opening of genres and a letting down of barriers. To a great extent, these barriers have yet to be fully erected again in their previous form, which is one of the lasting legacies of the sixties. (When I use the term, “the sixties,” I mean this more politically and culturally than in a strict chronological sense.) This was a time of both raw and harsh music of protest, and of visionary experimentation. (In some rare cases, there was even a combination of the two, for example in the “fire music” of Archie Shepp; another interesting example, from rock music, was the Blows Against the Empire album by Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship.) These musics of both radical negation and radical affirmation were certainly linked at the time—it was perfectly obvious to everyone that both came out of a more generally experimental social milieu. Progressive rock, to the extent that it is seen at all, is rarely seen in this context. This is not only a mistake made within the field of music history (a mistake that has been made, for example, in the Public Broadcasting System’s documentary series, Rock & Roll); even more, this is a mistake in cultural and even political history that has large cultural and political ramifications.
In its time, progressive rock represented something unique in the entire history of art: a “popular avant-garde.” For most aestheticians and social theoreticians, the very idea is oxymoronic. Supposedly, an avant-garde can only be appreciated by an elite; supposedly, this elite appreciation is part of the very definition of the concept of avant-garde. But we might take a page from Marx, and argue that “once the inner connections are grasped, theory