Prog bands that influenced pop music

Just listening to Kraftwerk's 'The Man Machine' and it's influence on 80's disco music is evident, so it got me thinking which progressive bands have really influenced popular music.

Peter Hammill had a great influence on Sid Vicious.

Brian Eno fixed pop for a while. That was neato of him.

Outside of that, I'm not sure. I'm never any good at mining influences. =( Could it be argued that Floyd's later brand of guitar rock paved the way for bands like The Cure, etc etc?

laplace wrote: Brian Eno fixed pop for a while. That was neato of him. Outside of that, I'm not sure. I'm never any good at mining influences. =( Could it be argued that Floyd's later brand of guitar rock paved the way for bands like The Cure, etc etc?

Edited by tuxon - April 13 2008 at 08:50

On the other way around, some pop bands influenced prog bands : Police on KC and Rush in the eighties.

of course you can't seperate them entirely ... which is why Kraftwerk gets, deservedly the lionshare of the credit, being the first you mentioned.. the first I thought of once I saw your thread...  but Neu!.. spin-off or not was influential within pop. Thus.. deserves a mention I would believe hahah.

you can pretty much toss the whole Krautrock movement into this category...  that among anything prog ever did .. influenced pop music.. it was that TRULY progressive..  not taking 18 minute symphonic instrumental masturbations and running them into the ground.


Edited by micky - April 13 2008 at 09:13

That's a rather hard and a good question because once I got interested in prog I lost interest and pretty much quit paying attention to pop.  I did let it spin around in my head a little though. 

Tears For Fears credited Robert Wyatt for influencing I Believe off of Songs From The Big Chair.   I remember seeing this on the LP but it's not present on the CD copy of the album I have.  I think there are strong prog influences going on in both their first two albums.


Edited by Slartibartfast - April 13 2008 at 12:38

Philéas wrote: Magma was a huge influence on every pop band ever to exist post-1980.

Oh, hmm, I wouldn't call them an influence so much as a looming monolith, casting a shadow that suffuses all it envelopes with a feeling of profound and inevitable inferiority and transient unimportance.

I notice you're all discussing perfectly respectable bands, and it almost makes me feel foolish, but it still seems obvious that Rick W. influenced Richard Clayderman, who must have been more succesful (at least commercially), more 'pop' (like it or not), than the likes of Joy Division or Tears for Fears: his "Ballade pour Adeline" (Ballade for Adeline) has sold (according to Wikipedia) 22 million copies in 38 countries!

Another unique phenomenon: Mike Oldfield's (almost) one-man symphonies in imaginary languages (such as OMMADAWN and AMAROK) obviously influenced the "classical pops" albums by Karl Jenkins (an ex prog musician!) and Adiemus, which still sell by the bucketload, at least in the U.K. - now THERE's "pop music" for you! Or are we talking about prog?

Easy Money wrote: Lately I have been noticing the use of psuedo-progressive rock in car commercials, for better or for worse it seems progressive rock may be entering a popular phase again.