Is "The Wall" Progressive Rock

 

That they put a lot of thought and work into it is neither here nor there.

 

Someone put forth the proposition that DSotM was more "progressive" than The Wall, and additionally stated The Wall was "not very progressive." I have yet to see valid clarification of such statements. To be honest, I believe such statements to be subjective in the extreme and not very factual.

 

 

 

Agree. When I listen to Arena, IQ and Pendragon I feel I'm listening to very dated music. Doesn't mean it's not Prog rock. When I listen to David Bowie I feel I'm listening to an artist always ahead of the game, experimenting with new music forms and willing to collaborate with other artists to achieve his ends. I think more of David Bowie as a progressive Pop artist and influencer of Prog rock artists such as Marillion. Coming back to the original question I still don't see why an album such as Animals is more progressive than The Wall, apart from the obvious that Animals has longer songs! 

That last point is an important one, concept albums and Rock Opera, (or Rock Musicals as they should more accurately be called), didn't tell the whole story within the music, they required some-other means to convey the back story - an external narrative to unlock the meaning and to relate the concept - if someone needs to explain the concept then it doesn't really work as a concept. The Wall is one of the few concept albums that does not need CliffNotes to aid the listener in understanding the message or the idea being expressed - it's contained there in full within the lyrics. Of course Floyd were not the first or the only band to do this, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway doesn't need the narrative on the album sleeve, but it has it never-the-less, then that was Gabriel's method, on stage he would use short surreal stories to prelude each song (mainly to fill-in time while Rutherford, Hackett and Banks tuned and re-tuned between each song) so the narrative on the album sleeve is an extension of this. Waters didn't use such contrivances, his stage "presence" could not support that (the whole idea of Floyd was a band that hid behind "spectacle" on stage and that is reflected in the concept of the wall and the surrogate band), apart from a few iconic moments like Waters hitting the flaming gong or Gilmour's back-lit solo during Comfortably Numb, they did not engage in the stage theatrics; that happened around them and in front of them, or perhaps in spite of them - another point emphasised in the production of The Wall as an album; in the construction of the Wall itself on stage; and in Parker's cinematic version where Floyd do not appear at all, each are just another brick in the wall in the same way that Cousin Kevin, Uncle Ernie and the Gypsy are just bricks in the wall for Tommy.

 

Of course the whole of that last paragraph just concerns the story as portrayed by the lyric, so begs the question "can lyric be progressive?" - something that I feel is not exactly overlooked in Prog, but at least sidelined to secondary importance, an idea not helped by some of the more toe-curling lyrics that Prog is destined to throw up from time to time. My answer to this is "yes, of course" - Hammill is the past-master of the Progressive lyric and has few equals, Bowie for all his adoption of trends in music and pseudo-intellectual tangents is Progressive lyricist who can form seemingly simple songs from esoteric and erudite concepts and ideas that could at times leave Sinfield's oh so clever lyrics wallowing in a land of make believe. Anderson (Jon) is oft derided for his incomprehensible and baffling lyrics, but that in essence is what Prog is musically so those same ideas given voice should be accepted as being on par with the music - music and lyric being equal components of the whole, of equal weight and equal relevance. These lyricist show that the gulf between Prog lyric to Pop/Rock lyric is as wide as the gulf between Prog music and Pop/Rock music, something that we recognise in the definitions of Progressive Rock in the PA Guide to Prog Rock and something to be considered before nay-saying some of the additions to the archive.

 

Dark Side of the Moon was Waters first successful foray into this realm of progressive lyricism, and one of the few Floyd albums where the balance between Progressive Music and Progressive Lyric achieved equilibrium, (I could add that this numbers as one of the few Prog albums ever to achieve this). Wish You Were Here and Animals tips the balance back towards the music and the lyric, while important to Waters maybe, is less important to the listener. However, on The Wall and The Final Cut we see the emphasis shift away from the music, so the lyric (and Waters' influence) is more important than the music that carries it. Here the music is composed to fit within the time constrains imposed by the lyrics, without that restraint and the withholding of musical excess and extended soloing, the album's length would increase with furthering the concept one iota - and to that end a double album is long enough, a triple or quadruple album would become an endurance. That is not to say that the music is unimportant, or not progressive in itself - instrumental versions of those albums, should such a thing exist, would still be progressive - musically both albums are not a million miles away from Atom Heart Mother in the way themes and motifs replicate and repeat through each track and in the overall tone and feel of the music - the fact that we can recognise the similarities between these albums is more than just the observation that they were composed by the same person or played by the same musicians (substituting Kamen & Ezrin for Geesin & Smith where appropriate).

 

As Bob said early on in this thread, we need to regard The Wall as a whole and not as a compendium of individual songs, and with that we need to take into account the lyric content as vital component of the whole when assessing it as a work of Progressive Rock; that the elevation to the "high art"  that some appear to hold Prog Rock requires that acceptance of lyric as narrative prose taken as something "higher" than melodic rhyming couplets to sing along to in the shower or woo a prospective mate on dancefloor.