1968-1977: ten years of suites

In the long and never-ending wave of rock music, one of the most ambitious moments was undoubtedly marked by the birth of the rock suite, the culmination of a winding journey that started from the blues of its origins and from rock'n'roll, which by the end of the 1960s ended up exploding like a big bang in the following decade. This evolution stemmed from musicians gaining an ever-growing awareness of their own abilities: greater ambition and, consequently, a greater urge to take risks and push further, testing new influences (avant-garde, classical, jazz) with increasingly sophisticated technique. These factors led to the writing of tracks that were, on average, more complex and elaborate, longer and split into different, overlapping sections.

The word "suite" had always been the preserve of classical composers, but young rock musicians appropriated it at a moment of intense hunger for change and minimal reverential fear toward the compositional complexities of classical music. It's the second half of the 1960s, an era in which psychedelia opens up new frontiers, expanding the song format into long lysergic trips (Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service), opening up to the avant-garde (Red Krayola, Velvet Underground), and eventually challenging their own ambition with new song formats stretching past twenty minutes, held back only by the technical limit of a single vinyl side. Twenty minutes that became a great melting pot of influences and compositional freedom, soon giving rise to a stimulating long-distance rivalry among musicians trying to outdo one another, and marking, in some ways, the absolute peak of progressive music. This long season found its golden age in the decade from 1968 to 1977, producing compositions destined to remain forever etched in memory.

This long list clearly reveals the great diversity of British progressive rock of the period, since each band interprets prog music (and thus the idea of the suite) in a radically different way from all the others, according to its own ideas and instincts. The list that follows cannot therefore be exhaustive of the entire decade, but it is nonetheless very extensive and fairly representative. The suites are listed in chronological order precisely to convey the sense of an evolutionary journey that involved an entire generation of musicians and left behind a legacy of ideas and imagination that is probably unrepeatable. A generational movement, then, not one created by just one or two bands in particular. Just as the Latin proverb taken up by the Nice tells us, art is long and life is short.

"In Held 'Twas in I" – Procol Harum (September 1968) running time 17:31

Even before the word "progressive" enters the vocabulary of rock music, and before bands like King Crimson or Yes write its fundamental rulebook, Procol Harum become the champions of baroque rock with their 1967 debut. A year later they release the seventeen-minute, five-movement suite "In Held 'Twas in I" on the album "Shine On Brightly". Building on their trademark romantic, baroque sound, Procol Harum are the first to show the courage to experiment with the suite format, even if they never quite shake the sense that we're listening to five different songs rather than five movements of a single suite. The catchy pop melodies, the brief psychedelic raga touches, and the two closing movements already come very close to what would become progressive rock. History seems to have forgotten this suite, which nonetheless holds the historical merit of being the first bold attempt to move beyond pop conventions and experiment with new spaces of freedom. From this moment on, the floodgates would open.

"Ars Longa Vita Brevis" – Nice (November 1968) running time 19:26

The baton is immediately picked up from Procol Harum by the Nice, led by Keith Emerson, with their second LP "Ars Longa Vita Brevis", named after the famous Latin proverb. The nineteen minutes of the title suite, split into six movements, in some respects feel like a step backward, clearly coming across as technical showing-off for its own sake by the individual musicians taking turns in the spotlight (drums first, then piano); from other angles, though, they represent a positive step forward, given the boldness of moving so overtly toward classical music. Pretentious at times (the nods to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos), "Ars Longa Vita Brevis" is, in a sense, a training ground for Keith Emerson, who would soon reach far greater heights with the suites of Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

"Valentyne Suite" – Colosseum (November 1969) running time 16:52

If 1968 can be considered a trial year, with two attempts that still weren't quite fully realised, 1969 is the year the floodgates truly open. Colosseum are the first to arrive at a fully-formed suite format, offering a new take on the suite as a small, cohesive concept, one that allows the musician maximum freedom while still maintaining a connecting thread holding the movements together. "Valentyne Suite" genuinely opens up uncharted territory that would later become a meeting point — and a battleground — for all the prog bands attempting to record the most complex suites possible, as if locked in a constant duel with one another. The title track of "Valentyne Suite" (seventeen minutes split into three movements), closer to jazz than to classical music, opens with the movement "January's Search", featuring keyboard and vibraphone joined by two saxophones, moving through rhythms ranging from orchestral jazz to improvisation, gradually turning into a genuine instrumental tour de force that would only later come to be called progressive. The third and final movement, "The Grass Is Always Greener", closes with a triumphant instrumental finale that sounds like a joyous fanfare, unwittingly kicking off a decade of suites that would go down in history as the golden age of prog.

"Moon In June" – Soft Machine (June 1970), running time 19.06

Not quite a suite in the strictest sense, but comparable in some respects, "Moon In June" – along with "Third", the album that contains it – kicks off a new phase for Soft Machine and, more broadly, for the Canterbury scene. Four long, ambitious tracks build up to the lengthy composition by Robert Wyatt, one of his greatest masterpieces. Nineteen minutes split into two parts: in the first, a solo Wyatt sings and plays keyboards before the band comes in, while the second delivers a majestic hymn to creativity that also stands as a manifesto for the utopia and dream of total music.

"Atom Heart Mother" – Pink Floyd (October 1970), running time 23.41

By 1970 Pink Floyd had already released three albums that stand as pillars of British psychedelia. In just a few years they'd already explored a wide range of sounds, across a three-year run that ranks among the most creative and adventurous in rock history. With "Atom Heart Mother" a new phase begins — one that could be described as progressive — running through to "Meddle", right before they became the biggest band in the world. The title track is, chronologically, one of the earliest and most ambitious attempts to fuse a classical symphony with the lysergic insights of their earlier work. The suite, split into six movements and performed with orchestra, choir and musique concrète, remains one of the boldest experiments in youth music of the early 1970s, opening up new possibilities but ultimately finding few true imitators among later progressive bands. Either way, from "Atom Heart Mother" through to at least "Animals", every Pink Floyd album would contain at least one suite (if we count side B of "The Dark Side Of The Moon" as a suite, which it really should be), showing just how pivotal the cow album was to the career of the frenemies Waters and Gilmour.

“The Three Fates” – Emerson, Lake & Palmer (novembre 1970) durata 7.44

The career of the most celebrated supergroup of all time kicks off with grand ambitions right from the start. Keith Emerson had left The Nice, while Greg Lake and Carl Palmer had walked away from King Crimson and Atomic Rooster respectively, eager to try their hand at a new, uncompromising and distinctive brand of prog-rock. Their debut doesn't disappoint in the least, and – aside from the tracks that have become classics ("The Barbarian" and "Lucky Man") – it contains at least two suites. The first is "Take A Pebble", twelve sublime minutes that combine technique and melody as rarely happened elsewhere in the trio's history. The seven minutes of "The Three Fates", split into three movements, are instead more emblematic of ELP's music, their ideas and their ambitions. This short suite, coming before the perfect synthesis of "Tarkus", fully showcases Emerson's abilities, particularly in the second movement, "Lachesis", worthy of a classical sonata by a 20th-century composer.

"Lizard" – King Crimson (December 1970), running time 23.19

After the first two King Crimson albums, veritable instruction manuals for anyone wanting to get into progressive rock, Fripp decided to close out that fairy-tale prog trilogy built around lyricist Peter Sinfield's words with "Lizard". "In The Court Of The Crimson King" and "In The Wake Of Poseidon" still didn't have a proper suite (except perhaps "The Devil's Triangle", eleven minutes in three movements), so Fripp decided to follow in Pink Floyd's footsteps and devoted the whole of side B to the twenty-three-minute title track "Lizard". With Jon Anderson of Yes on loan, Fripp's band's first suite still sits firmly within Sinfield-esque territory, but stands apart for its pronounced jazz and free-jazz improvisational content. The proggy interludes of the third movement, on the other hand, are typical of the band's original sound and could easily have fit on their earlier albums. Strangely enough, this slight shift gave no hint of the future in store for a band destined to keep constantly changing shape.

"Nine Feet Underground" – Caravan (April 1971), running time 22.44

If Canterbury was an alternative chapter to progressive rock, albeit a closely related one, that's certainly owed above all to Caravan and to all the bands that followed in that sonic lineage (Egg, Camel, Quiet Sun, etc). We've already included Soft Machine in this feature, but it's clear that Caravan approached the rock suite in a way much closer to what you'd expect from a classic prog band, especially when compared to the heretical "Moon In June". "Nine Feet Underground" (twenty-two minutes across eight movements), from their third album "In The Land Of Grey And Pink", is the pinnacle of romantic Canterbury-style progressive rock, managing to combine the typical elements of classic prog-rock suites with the addition of some stylistic quirks unique to that scene, and can generally be considered the manifesto of their music.

"Tarkus" – Emerson, Lake & Palmer (June 1971) running time 20.43

Having already tried and not quite succeeded with a suite in the Nice, Keith Emerson tries again with his celebrated supergroup, following a solid debut album and an excellent first suite ("The Three Fates"): this time, with "Tarkus", the result is spot on. The "Tarkus" suite (twenty minutes split into seven movements) represents the summit of Emerson-style progressive rock, a strand of prog quite unlike any other - in many ways the most uncompromising, and consequently the most authentic and the most reviled. Among the seven movements, the three instrumentals stand out ("Eruption", "Manticore" and "Aquatarkus"), acrobatic and grandiloquent from start to finish, exactly as Emerson's hyper-technical prog demands. Two years later, with "Karn Evil 9" (almost thirty minutes split into two parts) from the LP "Brain Salad Surgery", the super-trio would try to repeat the feat.

"Echoes" – Pink Floyd (October 1971) running time 23.33

A single note, the note you'd recognize among a thousand, the perfect note. That's how the second Pink Floyd suite begins, unmistakably, closing the second phase of a career that had begun the year before. This closing of the circle - before the worldwide success of "The Dark Side Of The Moon" - comes with the ultra-psychedelic suite "Echoes", probably the masterpiece of Wright, who wrote the opening section, and of Gilmour, who delivers one of his most memorable solos: an absolute example of the purest British psychedelia and proof of a perfect balance between the band's various souls, a balance destined to last only a few more years.

“A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers” – Van Der Graaf Generator (ottobre 1971) durata 23.12

If there has ever been a black prog, a dark prog, it was undoubtedly embodied by the music of Van Der Graaf Generator. The music of Peter Hammill and co. is a decisive farewell to the fairy tales of the early King Crimson. Now it's the turn of worlds of darkness worthy of Poe or Lovecraft, and in this respect the monumental suite "A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers" (twenty-three minutes in ten movements) is an unreachable high-water mark. As proof of just how vast and varied the British progressive scene was, here we find ourselves facing anguished, claustrophobic symphonic music, something like a musical interpretation of Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym", with a lighthouse keeper as its protagonist. There's so much packed into these twenty-three minutes that at times it leaves you stunned, to the point of hearing premonitions of new wave and sensing how prog was turning into tragedy: in some ways, the end of innocence for rock as a whole.

“Close To The Edge” – Yes (settembre 1972) durata 18.41

In the artistic "duel" between Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman, the two most iconic keyboardists of symphonic rock, "Tarkus" represented the peak of the former's vision of prog, while "Close To The Edge" (perhaps alongside "And You And I") represented the moment of greatest inspiration for Wakeman and his whole band. An extraordinary album (ranked first in OndaRock's own prog chart) that takes the British band's conception of progressive rock and brings it to its ultimate fulfillment. The "Close To The Edge" suite is the moment when the English band achieves an absolute balance between technique, melody and emotion, with echoes of Crimson-esque fairy tales, extreme virtuosity paired with moments of pure religious ecstasy (the most sublime organ ever heard in prog). From this point on, the suite would become a rule, almost an obsession, for Yes. Just a year later they would release "Tales From Topographic Oceans", the famous LP made up of four suites, before continuing with "The Gates Of Delirium" and "Machine Messiah", ahead of losing their way in the new decade.

"Thick As A Brick Part 1" – Jethro Tull (March 1972) running time 22.40

Further proof of the enormous creativity that progressive rock inspired in young musicians of the '70s can be found in Jethro Tull, led by Ian Anderson, champions of an alternative strain of prog, utterly different from everything mentioned so far. Reworked folk, flutes, hard rock and a minstrel's look: all this made the story of Anderson's band unique and instantly recognizable. After early albums steeped in blues and folk that gradually leaned more and more towards progressive rock, and after the huge success of "Aqualung", they cemented the suite format in 1972 with one of their finest albums, "Thick As A Brick". The opening suite (twenty-two minutes split into four movements) achieves a remarkable balance among all the British band's historical influences, which constantly alternate in a stream of ideas and melodies, crowning one of the noblest chapters in all of progressive rock.

"Supper's Ready" – Genesis (October 1972) running time 23.05

Genesis were the prog band that achieved the greatest success in our country and had the biggest influence on Italian progressive rock. Showing a great ability to find engaging melodies and refined, classically-tinged arrangements, Peter Gabriel and co. brushed up against the suite format several times on long tracks such as "The Musical Box", "Firth Of Fifth" or "The Battle Of Epping Forest", but their true suite remains "Supper's Ready" (twenty-three minutes across seven movements). In this great fairy-tale cauldron, classical passages alternate with the literary references typical of prog's bourgeois streak, along with playful sketches that culminate in a tragic, epic finale.

"Tubular Bells Side Two" – Mike Oldfield (May 1973), running time 23:17

Mike Oldfield built his entire long career on the suite format. From his iconic debut "Tubular Bells" (1973) onward, the English composer never abandoned the twenty-minute-long tracks that established him as a young musical prodigy. The two suites of "Tubular Bells" have become a small legend in rock history, magnified by the amateurish nature of the recordings and the musician's tender age. If the first track is Oldfield's most celebrated suite, full of flashes of inspiration and shifting rhythms, it's perhaps the second, more pastoral and folk-leaning one, that lays the groundwork for his entire future career. Long guitar arpeggios wander, sketching out elusive melodies and conjuring new-age landscapes drawn from worlds very different from classic progressive rock and the sound of Canterbury, the city that for years was Oldfield's second home. In this enchanted landscape, the childlike finale reveals the still-forming personality of the British musician, but it doesn't hide his extraordinary potential.

"Karn Evil 9" – Emerson, Lake & Palmer (November 1973), running time 29:36

The most hardline trio in prog, in some ways the most consistent and in others the most irreverent, two years after "Tarkus" tried the suite format again and – given the band's usual eccentricity – could hardly have gone anywhere but further out. "Karn Evil 9" is certainly more pretentious than "Tarkus", but at least in its breathless first thirteen minutes (essentially a rock'n'roll workout with keyboards possessed by demons) it manages to stay at a very high level, combining extreme technique with a healthy dose of irony. The remaining sixteen minutes are a display of virtuosity by Keith Emerson, who tries to outdo himself minute after minute: a joy for the ears of fans of the band and of the most acrobatic strain of prog, less thrilling for other kinds of listeners. Either way, "Karn Evil 9" is an Emersonian anthem to prog at its purest, taken to its most excessive extreme, as only Keith could allow himself to do.

"Lady Fantasy" – Camel (March 1974), running time 12:43

It opens right away with an intro that recalls Terry Riley, before arriving at one of the most enjoyable suites in melodic progressive rock. A London band but deeply Canterbury-flavored in sound, Camel found an enviable synthesis between the sounds of Caravan and Canterbury quirkiness, making for an easier, more immediate listen. "Lady Fantasy", a twelve-minute suite, is their perfect track, with long keyboard solos recalling those of the Doors, joined by sudden accelerations and a hyperbolic finale. Pure magic for the ears of prog-rock fans from the very first hour.

"Starless" – King Crimson (October 1974), running time 12:24

"Red" is the album that closes out King Crimson's second life. Barely after releasing it, Fripp's band broke up, bringing to an end the dark trilogy that had begun in 1973 with "Larks' Tongues In Aspic". A pivotal record, one that to some also seems to close out the historic era of British progressive rock. "Starless" is the final act of an extraordinary album: one of Fripp's most ambitious works, in some respects an absolute summation not just of King Crimson's music but of an entire musical age (that is, of everything rock had managed to create from its origins up to that point), all packed into twelve unforgettable minutes of poetic lyrics, synths, distorted guitars, acrobatic drumming and, above all, a bass sound more powerful than ever before.

“The Gates Of Delirium” – Yes (novembre 1974) durata 21.49

After the double concept album "Tales From Topographic Oceans" with its four suites, Yes returned to a more traditional album format: a roughly twenty-minute suite on the first side and two tracks of around 9-10 minutes on the second (much like "Close To The Edge"). "The Gates Of Delirium" is another prog masterpiece, perhaps the last of their career. Less cold and detached than the icy suites of the previous record, "Relayer" presents itself as a clone of "Close To The Edge" and – while never quite reaching that level of perfection – achieves a balance between ecstasy and compositional complexity that could only be attained in a magical spell of inspiration, never to be repeated again.

“Song Of Scheherazade” – Renaissance (luglio 1975) durata 24.40

One of the least celebrated chapters of prog-rock was its more baroque and grandiloquent side, embodied by Renaissance, who needed as many as five albums to fully realize their ambitions. In 1975 they released their most elaborate suite (a full twenty-four minutes split into nine movements), pompous beyond belief, but destined to live on in memory and in history as a cornerstone of what youth music had managed to achieve in just a few years. Inspired by the work of Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the Renaissance suite is pure symphonic classical music from start to finish, an uncompromising piece born of a minority, hardline vision of prog-rock.

“Shine On You Crazy Diamond” – Pink Floyd (September 1975) running time 25.53

Psychedelic-progressive suites had by now become the norm in Pink Floyd's discography. After side B of “The Dark Side Of The Moon” – which can be considered a suite in every sense – the British band found itself in trouble, almost terrified by its own worldwide success. Once again, Wright's contribution proves essential. “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, twenty-six minutes split into two parts and nine movements, sounds like a British take on German cosmic music, a pop alternative to the long interstellar trips of Schulze or Tangerine Dream, transformed into a journey through psychology, masterfully rendered by Roger Waters's visionary lyrics.

“The Necromancer” – Rush (settembre 1975) durata 12.28

Canada's Rush managed like no one else to combine the hard rock sound of Led Zeppelin with a progressive attitude, laying the foundations of hard-prog album after album. After a debut that was typically Zeppelin-esque, they already raised the bar with “Fly By Night” (1975), which contains their first short suite, “By-Tor And The Snow Dog” (eight minutes in four movements). It wouldn't be long before, that same year, they released “Caress Of Steel”, a moment of absolute maturity for the band, who dared even further, this time with two suites, “The Necromancer” and “The Fountain Of Lamneth”. Of the two, the shorter one is the more convincing, a remarkable synthesis of hard rock at the peak of its maturity, with moments of Zeppelin-esque rawness and ecstatic passages close to Yes, not to mention one of the most gripping bass solos of all time.

“Ommadawn Part One” – Mike Oldfield (November 1975) running time 19.05

After the worldwide success of “Tubular Bells” and the film “The Exorcist”, Mike Oldfield didn't abandon the suite format – if anything, he doubled down on it. After “Hergest Ridge” (1974), which still featured one suite per side, the British composer achieved a perfect synthesis of his ideas with the celebrated opening piece on “Ommadawn”. Built around a guitar and banjo melody, the composition unfolds into an increasingly dizzying crescendo of percussion, harp and Celtic textures, closing with an electric guitar and female vocal finale that ranks among the most stirring moments of his career.

“2112” – Rush (March 1976) running time 20.33

Rush's breakthrough album on the world stage arrived in 1976, following three excellent but relatively overlooked LPs. “2112” is the apotheosis of the hard-prog suite, built around a powerful, gripping story, a strong concept executed step by step without a single misstep. A dystopian suite lasting twenty minutes, split into seven movements, tracing a journey through a future world where music is banned by a religious dictatorship that stifles every form of art. Never have hard rock and progressive rock found such a lofty and powerful common ground. An anthem to youthful freedom and artistic freedom that today sounds like a premonition.

“Dogs” – Pink Floyd (January 1977) running time 17.05

Ten years of suites come to a close with Pink Floyd in their most Waters-driven incarnation, on an album now enjoying a second youth thanks to the recent remix and the English composer's recent live shows. Not everyone may read "Dogs" as a suite, but its seventeen minutes stand as one of the absolute peaks of the band's third (or perhaps fourth) life, and its structure, split into several parts, can certainly be framed as such. The sound of the 1977 Pink Floyd has by then changed and moved with the times, yet it still manages to hold onto its usual power - if anything, to amplify it. It's the most political record in their catalogue; indeed, it's the moment when prog - which had been so many things - overcomes its last taboo, politics, a subject that, generally speaking, had never much interested the bands of that movement. "Dogs" stands as a peak of Waters's ability to convey complex ideas within a single track, and it marks a crucial evolutionary step for rock music, which shifts from being communal and collective (psychedelia and early prog) to individualist and solitary, a means of self-analysis of one's own paranoias more effective than any psychotherapy. In short, a total work of art. From its acoustic opening to Gilmour's symphonic sweep, through its psychedelic interlude and on to one of the most iconic endings in rock history, everything about "Dogs" is destined to go down in history and to close out an astonishing decade in style. Add to this some of Waters's most important lyrics (the figure of the dog who becomes servant to the powerful) and the fact that it distills an entire vision, a whole philosophy of the world, and we can say we're looking at one of the highest points in the entire history of rock.

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