Are Beatles Prog?

Peter wrote: No.  Prog owes them a debt, as James said (), but the Beatles aren't prog, just as early country and blues, which would lead to rock & roll, are not themselves rock and roll.

It became clear that as EMI/Capitol Records were making vast profits for Beatles album sales, then the boys could have more studio freedom and could be indulged (I believe Dylan was getting similar space before with Columbia Records, with popular success). However, by the mid 60's their mentor George Martin and producer would often suggest the inclusion of unusual session musicians to augment/make special some very good pop tunes.

In part it is the studio freedom, rather being forced within  a few hours of studio time to make 30 minutes of tunes for their first albums, that looked very attractive to other bands.

You look at the early prog bands and they either:

a) had mentors, who had faith enough to support a band, including paying for studio time - e.g. Touch, Genesis, Supertramp - correct me, but I guess Gentle Giant as well.

b) had to go through an apprenticeship by being on the road, and working damn hard in rehearsals (to be readily for the road), e.g. Yes, King Crimson, and had to go through a couple of albums before reaching a matured state - The Yes Album was the third yes album, ITCOCK followed on from The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp album - indeed the belatedly released album The Boomsbury Tapes album indicates a large repertoise being built up and worked upon in the year before  ITCOCK was released - ex Fairport singer Julie Dyble, tried out several songs, for which Greg Lake's voice is now more familar. Indeed, from Trespass to Selling England, Genesis also had to tread this path.

c) had been already successful, therefore assumedly gained some wealth and could afford to invest one's own money, e.g. Renaissance as the other Yardbirds spin-out band (LZ being the better known).

RoyalJelly wrote: Listen carefully to "Strawberry Fields", "I Am the Walrus", or "A Day in the Life", and tell me that was not much more progressive in its day then the stylistic recyclings of a Dream Theater. The classical structures in rock songs originated there (and in Zappa, & Beach Boy's "Pet Sounds"), there's mellotron, "All You Need is Love" is in 7/8, and "Abbey Road" is the first rockalbum with synthesizer, listen to the epic song cycle of side 2 of that one! Prog are not, there'd be no progarchives without them, and we'd be chatting on www.skifflearchives.com or something.

All the tunes listen here were part of the Beatle's psychedelic catalogue  - btw you left out Baby Your'e A Rich Man and most of the tune on the double ep Magical Mystery Tour. And how much  had this progressed from West Coast psychedelia, one of the sources of Beatles' inspiration? Remembering many people believe the Beatles were the greatest absorbers of other's  music, having the ability to reconstruct it with a particular British/Liverpudlian sound - listen how they reinvented Tamla Motown in the early day, then Dylan in  Rubber Soul? Zappa in his autobiography expresses his anger (true or false, I can't be sure)  it took a British band, i.e the Beatles, to show American youth what American music was about, i.e. pop and rock. as to synthesisers - bloody hell they were a rich band, EMI studios too were rich because of Beatle profit, so why shouldn't they indulge in a Moog - but too often you have to think 'is that a Moog or some other early electronic keyboard playing' on a Beatles' track, it was a bit too gimmicky, a piano substitute. It took the likes of Wendy Carlos to demonstrate the full potential,  colours and range of the Moog. Moog playing on later Beartles albums is as limited as you hear on Lothar and Hand People's first album.

When The Beatles are regarded as Progressive rock artists, all those endless arguments and complaints about Prog bands making pop after their 7th album will loose all sense. Also, Prog will become much more undefined than it is already.

I think that if the Beatles had ever made something relatively similar to prog back in the 60´s, they would have made at least one true progressive rock song as single artists. But neither did one. Instead, they kept writing simplistic massive music like "Imagine".

RoyalJelly wrote: eduardossc wrote: When The Beatles are regarded as Progressive rock artists, all those endless arguments and complaints about Prog bands making pop after their 7th album will loose all sense. Also, Prog will become much more undefined than it is already. I think that if the Beatles had ever made something relatively similar to prog back in the 60´s, they would have made at least one true progressive rock song as single artists. But neither did one. Instead, they kept writing simplistic massive music like "Imagine". Did everyone forget "Revolution no.9"?...want to tell us THAT is pop music, from a pop band? An 8'20 dreamscape soundcollage? Of course, some label-slinging critic will come along and say, "No, but that's 'avant-garde'"! Some of the stuff on the White Album sounds like punk ("Helter Skelter"). The point is that the Beatles were not thinking in terms of labels, but drawing from various influences and creating distinctly new MUSIC, which even Leonard Bernstein would cite as proof that pop music has to be taken seriously - before the Beatles, it wasn't. They were all about expanding possibilities and destroying limits in popular music. "Progressive" didn't always exist, it emerged out of pop music, Yes and Genesis and ELP were million sellers in their day, "Roundabout" was a no. 1 AM radio hit. When critics started to define "progressive" as being a specific style, turning it into a marketing category, that's when the original progressive impulse died, the bands lost their explorative spirit and worried more about record sales (the same way that the hippie/psychedelia movement died when the media caught onto it and marketed it, same with punk). The other argument doesn't hold water...the later Genesis can't be called anything but commercial pop music, we won't even go into some of the unspeakable tripe produced by a solo Tony Banks, et al. Does that in any way invalidate "Supper's Ready"? In a nutshell: A) The Beatles were not prog, but B) there wouldn't be prog without them.

Oh yes, well said sir!

chopper wrote: gdub411 wrote: Of course the Beatles are prog. They invented the whole thing. King Crimson just ripped them off is all. I mean c'mon...Bill Bruford couldn't hold a candle to Ringo's dynamic drumming and Robert Fripp is an amateur compared to the late great George Harrison. I mean listen to Love Me Do and tell me how a song with such storyline lyrics, its constant tempo changes with all the strange time signatures couldn't be prog. The best part of it is their non repetiveness in their complex lyrics... I mean....Love Love Me DO You Know I Love You I'll Always Be True So please.....Love Me DO......absolute geniuses at work here fellows.   and the Rolling Stones are of course heavy metal...Under My Thumb proves it all. I mean they may as well be saying ...We're Heavy Metal, We're Heavy Metal.....Yeeeaahhhhh!!(thats a scream by the by) Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.

Oh...another overly stuffy elitist Brit.......how surprising...sink back into the decadent mire you crawled out of Clapper.