Help. Was Pink Floyd prog rock?

ICBM

Did they ever play in a time signature other than 4/4 or at a push, 3/4?

Exhibit A: Money. The bulk of the song is in 7/4, with some parts in 4/4.

No further submission required.

rlw

If PF aren't prog, who is? 

Grumpyrocker

ICBM said:

Did they ever play in a time signature other than 4/4 or at a push, 3/4?

Exhibit A: Money. The bulk of the song is in 7/4, with some parts in 4/4.

No further submission required.

Did they also play in a deserted Roman amphitheatre?

Did the bassist hit a massive gong back-lit by the sun?

Did the guitarist sit on his arse playing the guitar by rubbing stuff up and down the strings.

Did the drummer want a piece of pie but not the crust?

M'lord no further submissions.

maharg101

Are any of their tracks in excess of 7 minutes ??

I rest my case.

Philly_Q

I would look at it from the opposite side and say if they're not prog rock, then what kind of rock are they?

Funkfingers

One of the components of Prog is that some of the band members have at least a smattering of Classical music education.

Within PF, that would mostly be Richard Wright. Waters could play woodwind. 

fretmeister

Does it matter?

Prog or not they are awful.

artiebear

When Pink Floyd were being Pink Floyd, prog rock did not exist, ergo they were not prog rock. Speaking as an older barsteward, I get so pissed off with the post formative era attempts to box what was a cornucopia of trad meets contemporary / electric meets acoustic / blues meets art college splatter, into specific genres, never mentioned at the time. It does seem too be a creation of the ill informed rock journal and the awful BBC four talking heads documentary ( often synonymous ).

viz

artiebear said:

When Pink Floyd were being Pink Floyd, prog rock did not exist, ergo they were not prog rock. Speaking as an older barsteward, I get so pissed off with the post formative era attempts to box what was a cornucopia of trad meets contemporary / electric meets acoustic / blues meets art college splatter, into specific genres, never mentioned at the time. It does seem too be a creation of the ill informed rock journal and the awful BBC four talking heads documentary ( often synonymous ).

I do like what you’re saying but couldn’t the same argument be used against the first saucepan? Like, language only comes into being to describe things. Maybe people thought that what PF (and Genesis etc) were doing was a particularly progressive kind of rock that distinguished it from the psychedelic stuff that came before, and hey presto the term was formed?

artiebear

viz said:

artiebear said:

When Pink Floyd were being Pink Floyd, prog rock did not exist, ergo they were not prog rock. Speaking as an older barsteward, I get so pissed off with the post formative era attempts to box what was a cornucopia of trad meets contemporary / electric meets acoustic / blues meets art college splatter, into specific genres, never mentioned at the time. It does seem too be a creation of the ill informed rock journal and the awful BBC four talking heads documentary ( often synonymous ).

I do like what you’re saying but couldn’t the same argument be used against the first saucepan? Like, language only comes into being to describe things. Maybe people thought that what PF (and Genesis etc) were doing was a particularly progressive kind of rock that distinguished it from the psychedelic stuff that came before, and hey presto the term was formed?

Have to agree. Such a messy concept. Still prefer the concept that there is no umbrella over any artistic discipline, These names are always applied by those who, while not there at the time, seek to define ,and sometimes, claim to have defined a genre.

EricTheWeary

The term progressive rock dates back to at least 1968 and the fledgling PF to 1964 so they aren’t that far off each other. 

blobb

"The Moody Blues and The Wilde Flowers – the latter a loose collective of like-minded musicians from Canterbury which included, among others, Kevin Ayers, Robert Wyatt and Pye Hastings – formed in 1964, the latter giving rise to Caravan and the Soft Machine. Pink Floyd arrived a year later in 1965, along with Barclay James Harvest, who was another forerunner, forming in 1966. In 1967, as the Summer Of Love exploded, so The Nice (a forerunner of ELP), Genesis, Gong, Jethro Tull, Procol Harum and Van der Graaf Generator all arrived on the scene in a wave of originality."

Article Here

From my own reading, I get the feeling VdGG were the trailblazers really. Softs and Floyd played together in the early years, Deavid Allen coming to the UK was a big turning point, where he hooked up with Wyatt and Wilde Flowers became Soft Machine. Wilde flowers was originally Wyatt / Hopper bros. / Rich Sinclair / Coughlan. Pye joined when the members of Soft went to London to join up with Floyd and Hendrix. The remnants of Wilde Flowers became Caravan who followed Softs up to London (and lived/rehearsed in a church for the interim.) 

SO, in the early years I would say PF were part of a growing progressive movement in the UK (fueled by Allen's desire to set up a progressive sub culture to rally the youth against big business). Later on, they went stadium rock, but then so did most of the early prog bands, apart from Softs who went more jazz fusion route.

Daevid Allen Trio was operating in '62/63, I think Floyd started out in '64? Barrett was the inspiration behind Daevid's glissando guitar technique.

The connection between them (and the 'Father' of British Prog) was Terry Riley (Echoes was a homage to TR).

ArchtopDave

viz said:

artiebear said:

When Pink Floyd were being Pink Floyd, prog rock did not exist, ergo they were not prog rock. Speaking as an older barsteward, I get so pissed off with the post formative era attempts to box what was a cornucopia of trad meets contemporary / electric meets acoustic / blues meets art college splatter, into specific genres, never mentioned at the time. It does seem too be a creation of the ill informed rock journal and the awful BBC four talking heads documentary ( often synonymous ).

I do like what you’re saying but couldn’t the same argument be used against the first saucepan? Like, language only comes into being to describe things. Maybe people thought that what PF (and Genesis etc) were doing was a particularly progressive kind of rock that distinguished it from the psychedelic stuff that came before, and hey presto the term was formed?

I'm with @artiebear. I suspect we may be of a similar age. It might be seen as splitting hairs, but, whilst Pink Floyd could be seen as progressive, I do not personally think that this puts them within the cannon of Prog Rock.

artiebear

ArchtopDave said:

viz said:

artiebear said:

When Pink Floyd were being Pink Floyd, prog rock did not exist, ergo they were not prog rock. Speaking as an older barsteward, I get so pissed off with the post formative era attempts to box what was a cornucopia of trad meets contemporary / electric meets acoustic / blues meets art college splatter, into specific genres, never mentioned at the time. It does seem too be a creation of the ill informed rock journal and the awful BBC four talking heads documentary ( often synonymous ).

I do like what you’re saying but couldn’t the same argument be used against the first saucepan? Like, language only comes into being to describe things. Maybe people thought that what PF (and Genesis etc) were doing was a particularly progressive kind of rock that distinguished it from the psychedelic stuff that came before, and hey presto the term was formed?

I'm with @artiebear. I suspect we may be of a similar age. It might be seen as splitting hairs, but, whilst Pink Floyd could be seen as progressive, I do not personally think that this puts them within the cannon of Prog Rock.

I totally agree. I am not sure what constitutes prog rock.Back then it was having a keyboard player who could read music 

prowla

Yes; their earlier stuff was hippy malarkey, but then they evolved into what evolved into Prog. 

The precise point at which Prog was identifiable isn’t precise, but probably Sergeant Peppers, Days Of Future Past, and one or two others set the scene.

Certainly Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here were Prog. 

Litterick

From a 1967 issue of Crawdaddy:  '"Progressive rock" is what the businessmen are calling the non-top 40 FM rock stations, and they're beginning to smell money.'

Billboard used the term with the same meaning, referring to radio stations that played album tracks, music we now call 'classic rock'.

EricTheWeary

Litterick said:

From a 1967 issue of Crawdaddy:  '"Progressive rock" is what the businessmen are calling the non-top 40 FM rock stations, and they're beginning to smell money.'

Billboard used the term with the same meaning, referring to radio stations that played album tracks, music we now call 'classic rock'.

The early reference I found online was a 1968 Caravan ( mentioned above somewhere) album where they are described as a progressive rock on the liner notes. 

Slightly surprises me that people were using the term as early as 67/68 when it’s something I’d associate with the early 1970s. The terms progressive pop and art rock seem to have been around as well. I remember that The Creation had been described as art pop and they were around from the mid sixties. 

Stuckfast

There were elements of prog in Floyd but I don't think they were a full-on prog band. As others have said one of the key features of prog rock was the incorporation of ideas and structures from classical music (and perhaps other genres such as jazz and Eastern music). Floyd might have done that a little bit but nowhere near to the same extent as, say, Genesis. PF remained much more blues-based. In fact someone once told me that if you play Wish You Were Here at 45rpm it sounds like Chuck Berry.

viz

Yep but if you play a Chuck Berry single at 33rpm it sounds like prog rock. 

blobb

Stuckfast said:

There were elements of prog in Floyd but I don't think they were a full-on prog band. As others have said one of the key features of prog rock was the incorporation of ideas and structures from classical music (and perhaps other genres such as jazz and Eastern music). Floyd might have done that a little bit but nowhere near to the same extent as, say, Genesis. PF remained much more blues-based. In fact someone once told me that if you play Wish You Were Here at 45rpm it sounds like Chuck Berry.

just on that point, you are talking about symphonic prog. Look at the link to progarchives sub-genres. PF are Prog but not necessarily symphonic prog. That's the confusion here. The first UK prog scene was not symphonic. Genesis were bottom of the bill when VdGG were top of it.

It's all just names though really isn't it? Categories. Was the music PF made progressive? Yes. Was it Rock? Yes, of a sort. Not really rock 'n' roll rock or heavy rock but I'm sure if you ask the members of any of those early bands they would say the US rock n roll scene was an inspiration.

As you say, PF probably more Chuck Berry slowed down than Canterbury groups were. Wilde Flowers early recordings include a Bukka White song as well as Hugh Hoppers Memories - you know, the Whitney Houston track!

If the question here is "are PF symphonic prog, like ELP or Rick Wakeman? That stereotype Prog where the complicated time signatures suddenly change in a stop start way with fiddly Elizebethan keyboard solos over the top of it?" No. They were psychedelic prog, the original UK progression from r'n'r and morphed into a much bigger stadium prog band. Wyatt still turns up on stage with Gilmour though.