Alan Parsons had acted as Assistant Engineer on The Beatles’ albums Abbey Road (1969) and Let It Be (1970), engineered Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side…
Browsing: Prog rock
This English prog rock trio formed in 1966. Led by John Du Cann (who was also still a member of psychedelic pop band The Attack) they recorded…
Atomic Rooster was a British prog-rock group formed in 1969 with an initial line-up of Vincent Crane (real name Vincent Cheesman) and Carl Palmer -…
From softly focused pastoral passages at the end of the ’60s to more muscular rock-outs two decades later, Barclay James Harvest was never a band…
One of the seminal British ‘head’ bands of the 70s, Caravan hailed from the Kent cathedral town of Canterbury and would eventually clock up a…
Sonja Kristina started out by wanting to be a folk singer. She learned guitar at her convent school in Brentwood, Essex, around the same time Hank…
By the end of the 1960s, many artists were swept up in the wake of The Beatles and their aggressive exploration of pop and rock’s possibilities. For many…
Focus began in 1969 as a trio formed by Thijs van Leer, a singer, flautist and keyboard player who had studied classical music at the…
Frank Zappa was one of the most accomplished composers of the rock era. His music had an understanding of and appreciation for such figures as…
In July 1970, a callow 19-year-old, who had a brief career as a child actor in TV commercials and used to help out at the…
Gentle Giant were formed from the remnants of late 60s psychedelic beat group Simon Dupree and the Big Sound, who scored a 1967 UK Top…
When Soft Machine toured France in 1967, Australian guitarist Daevid Allen (pictured below left) was refused re-entry to the UK due to a visa complication. Staying in…
Originally perceived as a “people’s band”, regularly playing free concerts and festivals, Hawkwind were the first outfit to commit themselves completely and permanently to science-fiction…
Iron Butterfly formed in San Diego, California, in 1966 but soon moved to Los Angeles where they were spotted at the Whiskey A-Go-Go and signed…
Ian Anderson (vocals, flute) formed Jethro Tull in 1967 along with two grammar school mates in his adopted home town of Blackpool. He was born…
Kansas started out as a bar band playing cover versions of contemporary songs and soul oldies in the American state which gave them their name.…
Formed in 1969 and led by charismatic guitarist Robert Fripp, King Crimson quickly earned an underground reputation which led to a record deal with Island,…
In the early 1980s, while Yes and Genesis were having pop hits and Pink Floyd were coming unglued, a new band emerged as standard-bearers for…
Under their own steam Pendragon released half a dozen albums between 1985 (The Jewel) and 2001 (Not Of This World). Their first two albums offered…
Pink Floyd (named after two obscure American bluesmen, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council) formed in Cambridge in 1964 as a six-piece group of Syd Barrett,…