DID PUNK KILL PROG?
In all the interminable books, memoirs, articles and TV documentaries contemplating punk, there’s one thing they all seem to agree upon: punk rock killed progressive rock. “Almost overnight, after the Sex Pistols, prog rock came to a halt,” declaimed one pundit in a BBC documentary. Very well phrased - but factually totally untrue.
The fact that Johnny Rotten once wore a Pink Floyd T-shirt with the words ‘I hate’ scrawled in felt-tip above the band’s name is always held up as evidence that punk was some kind of reaction to prog. Yet Rotten (as John Lydon) was a huge fan of Hawkwind, Van der Graaf Generator, Can and various other bands whose progness was never in doubt. The idea that punk ‘had to happen’ because a whole generation was idly fuming away at the complexity of King Crimson or the overblown theatricality of Rick Wakeman’s staging of The Myths And Legends Of King Arthur And The Knights Of The Round Table on ice is just absurd.