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Why did prog rock never have mass popularity?

#581
MidnightRunner said:
There is nothing commercial about prog rock music.
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There were a number of 60's/70's prog rock bands that sold a lot of records and were on the radio regularly...so, I tend to think commercial is a pretty relative term. There is also lots of disagreement about what bands qualify as progressive rock so making a list is always asking for a hard time.
King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, ELP, Supertramp, Kansas, Rush all sold plenty of records and got plenty of airplay, so I think progressive rock can be very commercial in some cases and not in others (like Zappa).
 
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#583
FRoss6788 said:
^^^Love your avatar and the message :thumbsup: ^^^
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Thank you.
That was Loki...he's been gone two years now I think, still feels like it was six months ago.
He was the most stable, patient, tolerant, and chill dog I've ever had since I was five (60 years time).
He was the reason I was able to take a number of other Pitbull dogs in trouble and make them ready for their forever homes.
He could "teach" other dogs how to be... by providing a safe, stable example for them to follow and they all quickly learned how to get over the bad things and pick up his good habits. I don't know what he told them but it always worked.
I am forever in debt to that dog, he came along at a time I needed a friend to make me feel like I had something to give.

I've got a new boy now (Momo) and he needed somebody to make him feel safe and to teach him to try things that scare him.
He has come a long way in the months we've had him and gets to have fun every day, his world is much larger now than it used to be.
 
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#585
58kites said:
There were a number of 60's/70's prog rock bands that sold a lot of records and were on the radio regularly...so, I tend to think commercial is a pretty relative term. There is also lots of disagreement about what bands qualify as progressive rock so making a list is always asking for a hard time.
King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, ELP, Supertramp, Kansas, Rush all sold plenty of records and got plenty of airplay, so I think progressive rock can be very commercial in some cases and not in others (like Zappa).
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King Crimson and 70's Genesis were barely successful.
 
#587
MidnightRunner said:
King Crimson and 70's Genesis were barely successful.
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Well, Genesis weren't the powerhouse arena sellers of the 80s, and got into debt in the early 70s by spending lots of money on gear and their live show, but for just one example, on the 1976 Trick of the Tail tour, they played three nights at the Apollo Theatre in Glasgow. The capacity is 3500 people. It only got bigger in the later 70s. Yes, the 70s was a different era from now, for defining success, but that is still not what I would call barely successful.
 
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#589
Neil Folkard said:
Well, Genesis weren't the powerhouse arena sellers of the 80s, and got into debt in the early 70s by spending lots of money on gear and their live show, but for just one example, on the 1976 Trick of the Tail tour, they played three nights at the Apollo Theatre in Glasgow. The capacity is 3500 people. It only got bigger in the later 70s. Yes, the 70s was a different era from now, for defining success, but that is still not what I would call barely successful.
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Agreed. I went to both nights of the Trick of the Tail tour when they were in town. Phil got me a back stage pass for the first night. The shows were at Music Hall that has a very sizable capacity and both nights were sold out.
 
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#590
Yes sold 30 million albums
Genesis sold 100 million+ albums and sold their catalog for $300m in 2022
ELP sold 48 million albums
Frank Zappa sold 3.2 million albums and died a multi-millionaire
Rush sold 40 million+ albums and have grossed $252 million since 1990
Jethro Tull sold 65 million albums and made Ian Anderson a multi-millionaire
Kansas sold 30 million albums
Pink Floyd sold 250 million albums and the band has a collective net worth of $800 million
Styx sold 30 million albums

this not fly-by-night, dinky money stuff. Who says Prog was not successful and did not achieve mass popularity ?
 
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#592
MidnightRunner said:
At least 90% of their sales are from the post-70s when they were pop and not prog.
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ok, one example out of 9. Fine. But while Prog did not persist for decades as a mass popularity genre, it was extremely popular for about as long as many other genre's that have come and gone over time. I have given a number of financial examples that reflect this ... even counting your statement about Genesis's pop vs prog success.
 
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#593
pfschim said:
ok, one example out of 9. Fine. But while Prog did not persist for decades as a mass popularity genre, it was extremely popular for about as long as many other genre's that have come and gone over time. I have given a number of financial examples that reflect this ... even counting your statement about Genesis's pop vs prog success.
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The band that put out the song as "Invisible touch" is vastly different than the band that put out "Dancing with moonlit knight". "Invisible touch" is a commercial pop chart-topper. I can never imagine DWMN being a top 10 hit on the charts. that song was not even released as a single for a reason.
 
#595
MidnightRunner said:
At least 90% of their sales are from the post-70s when they were pop and not prog.
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I agree they sold way more records as a three-piece Pop Pock group, the sources I checked do not agree with your at least 90% figure.
Genesis sold a lot of copies of Selling England by the Pound, Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and Trick of the Tail while they were still a popular Prog Rock group. They sold out the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway concert I attended in December 1974.

Yes filled the Buffalo hockey arena the year I saw them, forget what year that was but in the late 70's I would guess.
Jethro Tull filled the Rochester hockey arena every fall for four or five years in a row that I attended in the 70's.
 
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#596
Deleted member 394181 said:
You don't have to always dance.
Now that's all you see on TV, concerts, everywhere! Its dancing, dancing, dancing! Enough already with all the dancing. It has become more popular than musicians! I mean come on! Prog is great because there is no dancing.
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That was the point of rock and roll in the first place. “Prog Rock”, as it trickled down from the psychedelic era, was an aberration. Psychedelia was an aberration as it included the outside influences of jazz/folk/world, etc., and drifted away from being dance music…the soundtrack to the teenage mating ritual. Not necessarily a bad thing in itself, it just was a thing. But it doesn’t rock like a band such as the Stones rock. Very similar to when bop took over jazz; the swing bands died off due to WW2, then jump blues/boogie woogie took over as party music, and that evolved into R’n’R, with the white boys adding their country flavor, but with a hopped up beat.
The real roots of prog can be traced back to when Brubeck played around with time signatures/European motifs, and then Gunther Schuller’s “Third Stream Music”, but that appealed to boring college students, beatniks, and adult types.
 
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#597
What do you mean "mass popularity"?

Is it really any mystery that simple chords and 120 BPM Thump-Whack songs sold more than more complex stuff?

But I don't really think you can consider outfits like Yes, Genesis, Tull, Rush, ELP, etc. as "unpopular". I mean, it's not like the Betty Fowler Four that sold all of 177 records and the rest of the 200 piece run stayed in Betty's basement for the next 40 years.
 
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#598
MidnightRunner said:
Your thoughts?
Why was prog rock less successful than other styles/subgenres of rock music?n
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Well...
Just as a guess? Probably for all the same reasons that Free Form Jazz, and most Modern- and Post-Modern Art aren't at the top of most people's "really like" list. For me? Pretty much for the reason's that kids on shows like American Bandstand used to criticize some of the latest tunes; "It doesn't have a Beat - and you can't dance to it"... :whistle:
 
#600
MidnightRunner said:
At least 90% of their sales are from the post-70s when they were pop and not prog.
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Pre-trio Genesis wasn't the biggest prog band -- but did have multiple gold albums. They were much bigger in the UK than the US.

Meanwhile, numerous other prog bands he mentioned and a few others did have big sales and mass appeal in the late 60s and early 70s, and a handful in the 80s:

Moody Blues
Yes
Rick Wakeman solo (huge success in UK; he was big enough to do a whole "King Arthur On Ice" at Wembly Stadium....)
Asia
Pink Floyd
ELP
Alan Parsons Project
Camel
ELO
Peter Gabriel solo (e.g. "Solisbury Hill" was a huge UK hit)
Iron Butterfly
Jethro Tull
Kansas
Roxy Music
Rush
Styx
Uriah Heep

Lots of #1 records from these bands.

I'd also say that David Bowie and Lou Reed in the early 70s -- and a lot of glam acts, really -- explored similar territory as prog.

In its heyday, prog was very popular. The problem is that with the advent of metal, hip-hop, and especially punk (which was a backlash against the bombastic pomposity of prog), it got memory holed.
 

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