Prog

RECORD COL­LEC­TION

“I didn’t choose prog, prog chose me,” says The Times’ the­atre and com­edy critic as his record choices – from Steely Dan to Ste­vie Won­der to Big Big Train – leave him shaken and stirred.

Do­minic Maxwell spends most of his time re­view­ing plays for The Times. But when he’s not, he’s lis­ten­ing to his prog rock record col­lec­tion.

The things I like in mu­sic now come from James Bond themes – in­ter­est­ing chords, good vo­cals, a slightly sen­sual feel – which I liked be­fore I liked pop­u­lar mu­sic. I was ob­sessed with On Her Majesty’s Se­cret Ser­vice and it’s only later when I was lis­ten­ing to one of my favourite pieces of mu­sic, Star­less by King Crim­son, that I no­ticed the end of it is quite like that. John Barry is a good guid­ing in­flu­ence to have.

Grow­ing up in cen­tral Lon­don,

I was a bit of late starter. I be­gan buy­ing records in 1983, aged 15. Chart mu­sic was quite good then, and, hav­ing been brought up a Catholic, I stopped go­ing to mass that year, and within a cou­ple of months I’d bought my first al­bums. Was I fill­ing a God-shaped hole? Here was a new re­li­gion – Heaven 17’s The Lux­ury Gap and Tears For Fears’ The Hurt­ing. Tears For Fears was my gate­way drug to prog. They were al­ways cit­ing Peter Gabriel as an in­flu­ence and cer­tain songs like The Pris­oner tried to sound like Gabriel’s

3 [Melt]. I was drawn to the drama – there was a sense of some­thing grown-up and so­phis­ti­cated, and that was al­lur­ing.

I liked the idea of this Peter Gabriel guy so I went to see the film Birdy and adored it. I saw it four or five times. I then got his other al­bums which I knew with­out know­ing be­cause he re­cy­cled his stuff for Birdy. I got quite ob­ses­sive about him, par­tic­u­larly the third and fourth records. I lis­tened to him ev­ery night. With 3, it now sounds amaz­ingly omi­nous or a lit­tle bit silly. But I loved the se­ri­ous­ness of it. It was prog and new wave and it fit on the ra­dio.

Gabriel in­evitably led to Ge­n­e­sis. I didn’t have much pocket money so I was quite con­ser­va­tive. I bought Ge­n­e­sis Live, an odd one to start with, but it was £2 at Record & Tape Ex­change. I slowly got the whole cat­a­logue and found I liked the

70s Gabriel stuff the best. The Cin­ema Show is one of my favourite songs; dis­cov­er­ing that was so ex­cit­ing. I thought, ‘If I found this at 17, imag­ine what else there is!’ So I kept search­ing.

I was at a boys’ school, Eton, from 13, and I got into stuff that con­veyed that I was alone and no-one un­der­stood me [laughs]! We’d swap tapes and I found Mar­il­lion. I love Mis­placed Child­hood and Fugazi. I iden­ti­fied with them, then Ge­n­e­sis and Pink Floyd.

If you’d been men­aced for pocket money by punks you weren’t go­ing in that mu­si­cal di­rec­tion. I bor­rowed a cas­sette of An­i­mals and when I heard the cho­rus of Dogs I thought, ‘Oh, is this pos­si­ble? This is amaz­ing.’ It drew me in with its slightly sin­is­ter way.

Does Ste­vie Won­der count as prog? His four mid-70s al­bums are prog soul of the high­est or­der, push­ing the form yet al­ways heart­felt, am­bi­tious and lis­ten­able. Songs In The Key Of Life is my favourite: a dou­ble al­bum that never runs out of ideas, that sounds op­u­lent yet al­ways has a spring in its step. Imag­ine be­ing so con­fi­dent in what you had that you kept back songs as good An­other Star and As un­til side four. A con­stant joy.

I was buy­ing a hi-fi and Talk Talk’s Colour Of Spring had won al­bum of the year in What Hi-Fi? so I bought it. It was a com­bi­na­tion of the prog I’d started lis­ten­ing to and the synth pop I’d liked. Then Spirit Of Eden came out and it was an im­me­di­ate record for me. I can still re­mem­ber the first time I heard it; it was every­thing I wanted it to be. I felt Mark Hol­lis re­ally had some­thing to say and it had that cin­e­matic qual­ity I like, some­thing that I can still get lost in to­day.

I stud­ied Phi­los­o­phy at univer­sity in Brighton. When I left, I trav­elled around Amer­ica for three months with a friend. Ev­ery­where we went there was a clas­sic rock sta­tion. Here I heard Steely Dan. I was get­ting a train from San Fran­cisco to New York and I bought a five-dol­lar ra­dio from Ra­dio Shack. A sta­tion played the whole first side of Gau­cho and I thought it was the most amaz­ing thing, mu­si­cally and lyri­cally. With prog, I find my­self cham­pi­oning the un­der­dog. Aja is a bet­ter record and per­fect. Gau­cho is a bit over-smooth, it’s got drum ma­chines on it… and yet its heights are glo­ri­ous, and it’s a more in­ter­est­ing record. The prog en­deav­our is to carve out some­thing of your own; this takes that on board.

When I came back from Amer­ica, I was un­em­ployed, lonely, and Peter Ham­mill was wait­ing for me [laughs]. I was try­ing to write plays and not get­ting very far. A friend said, ‘You should get the Peter Ham­mill al­bum on the back of Fugazi.’ I thought he meant Over, he meant Fool’s Mate. But I read Over’s lyrics in the shop and thought, ‘This looks promis­ing.’ I took him home, this des­o­late young man sit­ting in a win­dowsill with his gui­tar. (On Tues­days She Used To Do) Yoga, the lyrics to that re­ally made sense to me. I got quite ob­ses­sive about him, then about Van der Graaf. Those mu­si­cians are amaz­ing. But some­times it’s a mind­set you don’t want to get into.

It’s nice when some­one does their best work, or some­thing as good as they can be, later in their ca­reer. In the 80s I’d thought to my­self, ‘I like prog rock, what is out there that’s prog rock,’ and

I’d found Pen­dragon be­cause you could see them for quite cheap at the Mar­quee. I joined their fan club briefly. Years later I lis­tened to a Pen­dragon playlist on Spo­tify and I ac­tu­ally re­ally liked the new stuff, par­tic­u­larly Men Who Climb Moun­tains. The metal style worked well. Sim­i­larly, when Aerial came out, I felt it was one of the best things Kate Bush had ever done, par­tic­u­larly Some­where In Be­tween. That’s a Bond theme! [Writer/di­rec­tor] David Hare said in his mem­oir, ‘You don’t get to choose what kind of play­wright you are, it chooses you.’ In­die and soul mu­sic might give me more so­cial ca­chet, but what I want to lis­ten to at home is Pen­dragon and prog.

Big Big Train crept up on me. My col­league John Bungey was re­view­ing an al­bum and he said, ‘You might like this.’ It was Grim­s­pound. I didn’t think it was the best thing I’d ever heard, but the first track re­minded me of Mar­il­lion. I found my­self go­ing back to it, and them. I’m not into songs about his­tor­i­cal things, or dock yards, or bridges; I’m a city boy. Yet I found my­self lis­ten­ing to the words and… I love it. The songs I’ve lis­tened to most the last few years have been The Tran­sit Of Venus Across The Sun (the key change at the end makes me cry) and Lon­don Plane. Folk­lore is my favourite al­bum. It’s deluxe and has soul; they sing about what mat­ters to them and they’ve reignited my in­ter­est in the genre, be­com­ing my favourite band of this decade. The mu­sic be­tween 1968 and 1977 is a genre in it­self, a source ma­te­rial that Big Big Train hon­our with­out re­hash­ing. It’s a rich pal­ette and they do it so well.”

“THE TRAN­SIT OF VENUS ACROSS

THE SUN MAKES ME CRY EV­ERY TIME IT GETS TO THE KEY CHANGE

AT THE END.”