The 1970s: counterculture, music, peace & struggle

Let me try to make the concept clearer.

English prog was born as a neutral movement in relation to politics, it was not born out of youth protests, out of the hangouts of political militants. This means that English prog is not politically oriented. (But there may be some political prog songs).

In Italy, on the other hand, the situation is different. In Italy, in the 1970s, either you're right-wing or you're left-wing, either you're a fascist or you're a communist, there's little middle ground, and everything is pigeonholed into ‘either you're with me or you're against me’. So music, song lyrics, clothes, everything has political connotations.

Roxy Music are inevitably right-wing and loved by fascists just because of the way they dress and the cover art of their albums - their music or lyrics dont matter. 

So, in Italy, prog is ‘adopted’ by the left wing extra-parliamentary movement as anti-system music. But this does not mean that Italian prog songs are all political songs, or protest songs: only a few songs are explicitly political, and they are less so than the protest songs of folk songwriters. Furthermore, there are also Catholic ‘movementist’ groups in the seventies, which have their own following, for example the group Le Orme is loved by Catholics, it goes against the trend - I still have to talk about this: in the 1970s in Italy there were two epochal referendums, the one on divorce and the one on abortion, where Catholic and left-wing groups clashed, and prog music also made its contribution to the clash.

"Progressive rock in the English-speaking world had no political orientation: it could have functions of social commentary (Jethro Tull and King Crimson) or philosophical (Moody Blues) or existential (VdGG) or spiritual (Yes), or even more frequently invented fairy-tale scenarios of complete escapism from reality (Genesis, Gentle Giant). Rock In Opposition is practically a non-issue: it took shape when prog was in its decline and remained a marginal and completely underground phenomenon.

In Italy, the political neutrality of prog was not perceived, probably also due to the very poor knowledge of English that characterised our nation at the time. Instead, its ability to deconstruct the prevailing song form was perceived. Songs were shattered and lengthened, deprived of their typical structural barycentre composed of the precise alternation of verse and refrain, following unusual tempos and instrumental digressions hitherto unheard of. If one analyses the musical structure of prog records, its anarchic power - insofar as formally contrary to a recipe hitherto dominant in its own market - is evident, and to be perceived does not require an understanding of the lyrics. 

It is not difficult to guess the conclusion: if the music rails against the established order, it is obvious that it is the work as a whole that does so.

Which songs dominated the Italian charts in 1968?

One was this one: