ABSTRACT
Commentaries on ‘progressive rock’ are generally framed in terms of becoming. ‘Rock became progressive’,1 ‘Underground music’ became ‘progressive music’.2 The mid-sixties letters page of Melody Maker highlights the ‘emergence’ of rock in which progress is measured in terms of musical ideas and techniques: ‘Hendrix: Progressive and beautiful in his ideas’; ‘Clapton: Progressing with ideas and techniques’.3 Musicians such as Cream, Pink Floyd, Hendrix and the Beatles are credited with liberating rock from pop4 in terms of qualities of ‘art’ and ‘genius’. Equally there is a focus on ‘relevant sounds’ which, in the summer of 1967, were tied to the psychedelic,5 thus raising the question of whether rock, acid rock and progressive rock are interchangeable terms.
