A Day in the Life is prog.

In the last month my bandmates have debating whether this song is proto prog or progressive rock.  I class A Day in the Life as progressive rock. The others in debate is Interstellar Overdrive, Astronomy Domine, I Am The Walrus, Tomorrow Never Knows and The End as very early canditates. Frank Zappa Monster Magnet on the other hand to me is random chaos not progressive to me.

Edited by Revolver - October 15 2007 at 16:44

A day in the life is more pshye/ experimental than prog, but I understand why you would call it that.

I wish I had people in class to debate this kind of topic with

I really think  A  Day in the Life is prog  it has all the elements  for what i call progressive rock. Either it is an early example symphonic prog or experimental rock in my opinion.  How about Within You Wihout You or Strawberry Fields Forever. I agree with Mr Kite and Instellar Overdrive. I once heard Phil Collins said when Sgt Pepper came out it helped open the doors for the music he wanted to do. I have this list of songs in my music class from 1966 and  1967. The songs are on four different lists, Indian influence, Experimental/ Avant Garde,  Art Rock  and Psychedelic  Prog and the Beatles have songs on all of the lists as for influencing progressive rock.

In my opinion THE END has absolutely nothing to do with progressive music, because it's more like anti-progressive. Okay, the song is over ten minutes long, so what? Does that make it progressive? In my opinion a prog song begins with somekind of thing and eventually evolves into something completely different, logically of course. The best example of this is The Trees by Rush. It's only 5 minutes long but it keeps on progressing until the end with some totally different sections. The End is nothing like this. It's nearly 12 minutes long, but there is no progressivity. It's just the same thing repeated again and again with different lyrics. For the same reason I don't even consider most of the songs on In The Court Of The Crimson King very progressive. After all, I Talk To The Wind is actually quite typical psychedelic pop/rock song with some flute solos here and there. Epitaph is a sad ballad with lots of mellotron, but does mellotron make it prog? Moonchild  is another psychedelic song with 10 minutes of weird  psychedelic improvisation, and the title track is a long work of art. Yes, it's definitely artistic, I would say it's "art rock" but because of the typical song structure I wouldn't say it's progressive. Now the only song left is 21st Century Schizoid Man, which is the highlight of this album (in my opinion) and clearly the most progressive song. It's a great album, but what makes it more progressive than A Day In The Life?

A Day In The Life is definitely progressive rock, as well as A Quick One, While He's Away by The Who.
Zappa's Freak Out is not a prog album, but it's probably the most influential album to the genre because it's more experimental than anything else from 1966.

Being  a Pink Floyd fan, I would say A Day in the Life is progressive rock to its core.  Strawberry Fields Forever is even earlier and I would say  that is progressive rock. Zappa is avant. The Who A Quick One is not prog it just a suite of songs. Pink Floyd was a full out prog band. The Beatles prog was just a only part of there song catalogue.