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machineryelf wrote: PCs being problem was he was at the cutting edge of prog rock mutating into surbuban coffee table ooh lovely production values drivel,
True, he was but he wasn't the only one. He was just the easiest target. And the way the music press and media totally abandoned long-form rock music in 76/77 was a fairly scandalous exercise in collective amnesia. A lot of the music that was made between say 74 and 76 was terrible and the change in drugs-of-choice did bad things to people's egos but I think it took the best part of 15 years for English music to recover from the Flat Earthism of Punk. Punk just left the middle ground open to MTV and the greedheads and 100% focus on singles rather than 40 minute musical experiences. Baby. Bathwater.
If you set aside the Prog and Psych revivalists like Marillion it was a lonely empty road for original long-form English rock music between say "Awaken" and "Laughing Stock" or "Laser Guided Melodies".
You can maybe blame Phil Collins for opening the door to the likes of the Lighthouse Family but he didn't create an audience for that bilge. I blame Thatcher myself and the idea of "good taste" being something consistent that you can take off the shelf at Habitat. Used to be that people who took the fast track into middle age had Johnny Mathis, Bert Kampfert or Vicki Carr or whatever. Now even people who know they are uncool want to give the impression that they might be cool because everyone else does. Every *** in Tescos under 40 loooks like they might work for an ad agency or record company. What used to be hard-won and require imagination is now just off the peg. So there had to be off-the-peg rock music to go with it. This explains so much.
Anyway most rock artists only have five really good years. Some a lot less than that. People feel free to out on a limb and then once they have a bit of a success and start having kids and suchlike then the pressure to be more commercial gets pretty intense. They've suddenly got managers, accountants fees, lawyers bills etc etc digging into the money and pushing their agenda and then it stops being about four or five mates getting their music out there and living in each other's pockets. That's when bands start sacking core members and replacing them with hired hands. It's when lead singers start thinking about having 100% of the pot rather than 20%. Sad but true.
I think his good five years from say Selling England to And Then There Were Three were pretty great by pre Punk standards.
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