Art rock

[12] The first is progressive rock, while the second usage refers to groups who rejected psychedelia and the hippie counterculture in favour of a modernist, avant-garde approach defined by the Velvet Underground.

Pepper; Frank Zappa's Freak Out ... the Who's rock opera Tommy; Pink Floyd's technologically advanced concept album Dark Side of the Moon; and Miles Davis's jazz/rock fusion.

[21] The earliest figure of art rock has been assumed to be record producer and songwriter Phil Spector, who became known as an auteur for his Wall of Sound productions that aspired to a "classical grandiosity".

He took control of everything, he picked the artists, wrote or chose the material, supervised the arrangements, told the singers how to phrase, masterminded all phases of the recording process with the most painful attention to detail, and released the result on his own label.

[27] Biographer Peter Ames Carlin wrote that Wilson was the forerunner of "a new kind of art-rock that would combine the transcendent possibilities of art with the mainstream accessibility of pop music".

[20] Many of the top British groups during the 1960s – including members of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, 10cc, the Move, the Yardbirds and Pink Floyd – came to music via art school.

[31] By the mid-1960s, several of these acts espoused an approach based on art and originality, where previously they had been absorbed solely in authentic interpretation of US-derived musical styles, such as rock 'n' roll and R&B.

[36] The December 1965 release of the Beatles' Rubber Soul signified a watershed for the pop album,[37] transforming it in scope from a collection of singles with lesser-quality tracks to a distinct art form, filled with high-quality original compositions.

[40] Writing in 1968, Gene Sculatti of Jazz & Pop recognised Rubber Soul as "the definitive 'rock as art' album" and "the necessary prototype" that major artists such as the Rolling Stones (with Aftermath) and the Beach Boys had felt compelled to follow.

[43][nb 3] In 1978, biographer David Leaf wrote that the album heralded art rock,[45] while according to The New York Observer, "Pet Sounds proved that a pop group could make an album-length piece comparable with the greatest long-form works of Bernstein, Copland, Ives, and Rodgers and Hammerstein.

[49] Jacqueline Edmondson's 2013 encyclopaedia Music in American Life states that, although it was preceded by earlier examples, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention's debut album Freak Out!

With Los Angeles as his base since the early 1960s, Zappa was able to work in an environment where student radicalism was closely aligned with an active avant-garde scene, a setting that placed the city ahead of other countercultural centres at the time and would continue to inform his music.

[18] Writer and pianist Michael Campbell comments that the album "contains a long noncategorical list of Zappa's influences, from classical avant-garde composers to obscure folk musicians".

[51] Led by the art-rock single "Eleanor Rigby",[52] it expanded the genre's scope in terms of the range of musical styles, which included Indian, avant-garde and classical, and the lyrical content of the album,[53] and also in its departure from previous notions of melody and structure in pop songwriting.

"[60] Their influence would recur from the 1970s onwards to various worldwide indie scenes,[60][nb 6] and in 2006, The Velvet Underground & Nico was inducted into the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry, who commented: "For decades [it] has cast a huge shadow over nearly every sub-variety of avant-garde rock, from 70s art-rock to no-wave, new-wave, and punk.

[1][nb 8] Many British groups flowered in the album's wake; those who are listed in Music in American Life include the Moody Blues, the Strawbs, Genesis, and "most notably", Pink Floyd.

This experiment with collaborator Ron Geesin yielded the longest unbroken Pink Floyd song on record, a suite divided into six parts, which required the band at times to utilise a choir and brass section on tour.

Journalist Roy Trakin said in 1981: "Of course, these stalwarts can still fill Madison Square Garden and sell a great many records, as they always have, but their days of adventurous risk-taking and musical innovation are long gone – replaced by the smug satisfaction of commercial success.

Notably, Roxy Music's use of synthesizers and visual aesthetics, influenced by art rock, became central to their identity and inspired later genres, including synth-pop and new wave.