What inspired first prog epic?

A previous thread established Procol Harum's 'In Held Twas In I' as the first prog epic and gave examples of other 10+ minutes songs. One of these could have been the main inspiration for 'In Held...' but please consider the other sources of main inspiration in the poll. What do you think? or perhaps you know from reliable data what actually inspired Procol Harum?

I personally believe that the (Beatles', Moody Blues'?) idea of interconnecting individual songs thus removing the usual short break provided the main inspiration to 'In Held...'

Classic Music (see Moody Blues, Procol Harum, The Nice).

 

For always yours, Mandrakeroot.

The liner notes to Repertoire Record's 1997 re-release of Procol Harum's 'Shine on Brightly' says that Matthew Fisher wanted to get involved in songwriting so they came up with the idea of doing an extended piece - the song length obviously increasing with the number of composers!

It was written and recorded in bits and they just kept on going with absolutely no idea where they were heading until they finally got the end. Engineer Glyn Johns did a marvellous job of sticking it all together and making it sound as if they'd done it all in one take!

I interpret this as support of option 2 (bonding together of shorter songs) being closest to the source of inspiration  although it was more the process than the actual goal.

earlyprog wrote: A previous thread established Procol Harum's 'In Held Twas In I' as the first prog epic and gave examples of other 10+ minutes songs. One of these could have been the main inspiration for 'In Held...' but please consider the other sources of main inspiration in the poll. What do you think? or perhaps you know from reliable data what actually inspired Procol Harum? I personally believe that the (Beatles', Moody Blues'?) idea of interconnecting individual songs thus removing the usual short break provided the main inspiration to 'In Held...'

Little do many realise that interconnected tunes back then, i.e. no track breaks, were intended to keep the LSD freaks tune in to one transcendental hallucination, presumably to avoid bad trips breaking in the good. And read the liner notes of the CD version of Sgt Pepper and you'll discover the statement:"The sequence of songs on Pepper is famous in itself, being - on the vinyl version - two continuous sides of music, without pauses between songs, or 'banding', to use the recording parlance. But the line-up of side one, as first conceived, was different to how it finally evolved, and was as follows:
Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
With A Little Help From My Friends
Being For The Bebfit Of Mr Kite
Fixing A Hole
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Getting Better
She's Leaing Home.

By suitable programming your CD hardware you'll be able to hear the album as it was originally intended".

I think that the epic was largely inspired by the writer's egos and there is certainly something Oedipal about the whole thing.

In conclusion,  a majority of 35% believe the concept album is responsible for the first prog epic, Procol Harum’s ‘In Held Twas In I’. 24% incline to long psychedelic jams and 18% to interconnected songs (no track breaks) while 12% chose the classical symphony as the source of inspiration and the remaining 11% various other sources.

 

A possible common feature of these forms of music is the desire to enhance the effect of drugs - the classical symphony excepted, supposedly. Consequently, drugs appear to have played a major role in the development of the prog epic.

 

However, one question remains to puzzle me: how does the prog epic logically follow from the concept album? “I heard this concept album, therefore lets go make a prog epic”! I cannot find the logic in this unless the inspiration came from a concept album without pauses between songs like Moody Blues’ DoFP. This would leave the prog epic as a short version concept album. Another thread on this subject is underway shortly.

Edited by earlyprog - May 05 2006 at 05:29