Was YES the first prog-rock band?

Kushantaiidan

Kushantaiidan

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Sep 30, 2001
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Was YES the first prog rock band? They started in like 68 or something, and their prog sound grew through "time and a word" in 1970, and matured with "The Yes Album" in 1971.

I often wondered what influenced them. Were there any bands before them, or did they truly create the genre?
 
I would say yes, that they were the first real Prog band. Pink Floyd had been around a bit before Yes but didn't go off in the Prog direction until the Medle album.

This is going to sound corny as hell but I still firmly believe that The Beatles really laid the foundation for what would become Progressive Rock. 'Sgt. Pepper' is, in many respects, a concept album in loose form, and possibly the first of it's kind. Also, The Beatles were the first to experiment the kind of genre-hopping that goes on in Prog.
 
Originally posted by Analog_Kid
This is going to sound corny as hell but I still firmly believe that The Beatles really laid the foundation for what would become Progressive Rock.
Click to expand...

Not corny at all, I totally agree with you. They were an incredible band, and when you move past their more popular stuff you can really see the experimentation in their work. They were innovators in a lot of ways, more than most people give them credit for.
 
Originally posted by Analog_Kid
I would say yes, that they were the first real Prog band. Pink Floyd had been around a bit before Yes but didn't go off in the Prog direction until the Medle album.

This is going to sound corny as hell but I still firmly believe that The Beatles really laid the foundation for what would become Progressive Rock. 'Sgt. Pepper' is, in many respects, a concept album in loose form, and possibly the first of it's kind. Also, The Beatles were the first to experiment the kind of genre-hopping that goes on in Prog.
Click to expand...

Not corny at all, I assumed that anyway, that they kinda invented the prog idea first, but it seems that Yes were the first band to really turn it into a style of music.

Can anyone tell me what yes's first album was like? I've got everything from time and a word to drama and more.

It seems that they weren't prog straight away.
 
A few other bands in the 60's that could be considered are:

Jimi Hendrix
Deep Purple
Cream

I feel that Hendrix was the most progressive while Deep Purple, Cream and the Beatles were definately changing the music scene in the late 60's.
 
The first real British prog rock breakthrough was King Crimson's "In the Court of the Crimson King" from 1969.

Other British bands doing "art rock" at that time were the Nice, the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, and the Soft Machine, who put out an amazing album called "Volume One" in 1968. They are definitely worth checking out.

I think that British psychedelic rock of the mid to late 60s from bands like the Beatles, Stones, Byrds, Pink Floyd, Traffic, led to the experimentation with improvisation that eventually created early 70 prog rock. To say that Yes were the first prog band is ignoring the entire amazing catalogue of bands that were thriving in the years immediately prior to Yes's breakthrough, "The Yes Album", in 1971.

Looked at this way, the British rock scene from the mid-60s to early-70s was arguably the best time for rock music in that country's history.
 
I would have also said King Crimson and noted that psychedelic exploration evolved into progressive rock, along with a desire to incorporate jazz improvisation and classical grandeur in a rock context. What I am still unsure of is who coined the phrase, and what band(s) it was initially used to describe.
 
VERY early (australian) prog band.... Masters Apprentices.

Go to audiogalaxy, and download the song 'Michael'

PROG. total PROG. This is from the sixties too...

There later stuff is CRAP, but their early stuff is amazing. Good stuff.
 
...Like i just said: "There later stuff is CRAP, but their early stuff is amazing" :rolleyes:

Download Michael.... Totally awesome stuff. Good song... Starts off with almost Opeth-Like acoustic guitaring and singing, and then goes into a series of COOOOOL riffs and phrases...
 
Originally posted by Analog_Kid
This is going to sound corny as hell but I still firmly believe that The Beatles really laid the foundation for what would become Progressive Rock. 'Sgt. Pepper' is, in many respects, a concept album in loose form, and possibly the first of it's kind. Also, The Beatles were the first to experiment the kind of genre-hopping that goes on in Prog.
Click to expand...


I completely agree, I was going to say this actually. The Beatles were very cool and innovative.

Yes is beyond words, I think the first true prog rock band, the first band to actually put effort into being techinical and pushing the limits with it. Yes rule, I don't think a more talented group of musicians has been compiled since.

Satori
 
Originally posted by terrymx
how valuable is the Beatles's White record (big disc)?
Click to expand...
Absolutely essential, man, all the songs on it are great! Especially on the second disc!

And tintin's right: King Crimson and Soft Machine were in the progressive field before Yes figured themselves out. King Crimson deserve the "progressive" tag more than Yes, because while Yes were simply trying to do rock with vaguely classical arrangements (and were quite good at it), King Crimson were actually trying to reinvent rock overall, instead of classikizing it.

D Mullholand
 
Hello
I think it would be very hard to say what was the deffinate first progressive rock album ever, because there was hints and inspiration as far back as the early 60's. But i would say some of the first "traditional" prog-rock albums were King Crimson - Court of the Crimson King (1969), Moody Blues - Days of Future Passed (1967), Giles, Giles & Fripp - Cheerful Insanity of..... (1968). But if I would have to pick one of the first bands i would say King Crimson, because they experimented with the fusion of jazz and other instruments before Yes and were very original, especialy considering the late 60's/early 70's. Well, i guess thats about all. thanks.
-Derek
 
Although it wasn't a prog album (very post-modernist self-satirizing pop, I'd define it as), the first concept album ever is contested by some to be "Freak Out!" by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. According to several sources I've read, Paul McCartney apparently once said it was this album that inspired the Sgt. Pepper concept.

MY personal thought on the matter is that calling ALL of "Freak Out!" a concept is stretching it a bit, but it had some concept elements (Suzy Creamcheese), some definate experimentation ("The Return of the son of Monster Magnet"), and was the longest album of its time (the first 2-LP rock album ever). I think the Mothers' next album, "Absolutely Free" was far more undeniably a concept album, and I'm pretty sure it was recorded before Sgt. Pepper as well.

That being said, this takes nothing away from the Beatles, though. They influenced ALL music that came after them. I've used the analogy that the history of popular music via it's influences is an hourglass, and the Beatles ARE the center of that hourglass. EVERYBODY, whether they like it or not, was/is influenced by the Beatles.
 
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