Scott Robinson

The Progressive Beatles Scott Robinson

If the Beatles hadn't written and recorded "A Day in the Life", "I Am the Walrus", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Blue Jay Way", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and other proto-progressive songs - if they'd never cobbled together "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite", applied Western tuning to a sitar on "Norwegian Wood", flipped George's guitar on "I'm Only Sleeping", or pieced together the Side Two medley on Abbey Road - then the trails of Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Kansas, ELP and so many others might never have been blazed - or, at least, would have taken far longer to discover. Progressive rock owes everything to the Beatles - everything that defines it began with the Fab Four. There is no Fragile, no Thick as a Brick, no Dark Side of the Moon in the Beatles canon, no "Tarkus", no "Heart of the Sunrise", no "Firth of Fifth" - but without the works described in this book, we'd never have had all those wonderful albums and songs...