I've been listening to a bit of Jeff Wayne, ELP, Yes and King Crimson recently and found similarities between them and Queen's earlier work.
I know Brian played a gig with Rick Wakeman, but in general, I found very little about the connection between Queen and progressive bands.
Does anybody know more about the connection between Queen and prog rock?
Brian May and David Gilmour (Pink Floyd):
-Smoke On The Water (Rock Aid Armenia - also featuring Roger on drums and Paul Rodgers, the latter on the '90 version - FIRST Q+PR RECORDING yo!)
-The Stonk (Hale and Pace, also with Roger on drums)
-Stay With Me (live, encore, with Paul Rodgers, Ronnie Wood and other artists, Stratocaster Anniversary show, available on DVD as The Strat Pack)
I friend of mine who is a huge prog rock fan (Rush, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd etc.) went crazy when I played him Queen II. According to him it would definitely qualify as prog.
Queen never experimented much with strange meters, but if you look at the textured sounds, the theme's and styles you can defenitely say albums like Queen and Queen II are Progressive Rock.
You can easily put them in the same list that has Trespass (Genesis) and In the Court of the Crimson King (King Crimson)
i think that queen 1+2 are a bit to late for prog rock which came up in 69/70. also the main and new ingredience of prog rock, the sythesizer, was not played on the first albums. maybe "and nobody played sythesizer" was also pointed out because queen wanted to seperate from the prog scene. listening to it nowadays queen 1+2 might sound a bit prog but for me it is more glam/hard rock or even not fitting in any genre at all.
There is a website called Progarchives (probably the best prog rock resource on the planet), where almost all bands, that had anything to do with prog are listed and Queen is among them. And "Queen II" and "A Night At The Opera" and even "Innuendo" are very highly rated there (the first two were in the Top 100 for some time). I even remember that when I sorted the best albums by year it turned out, that "Innuendo" was THE BEST PROGRESSIVE ROCK ALBUM OF 1991, based on the average rating!
Of course they din't have many odd time signatures in their songs, but that's not all that counts in prog rock. Technically, all Pink Floyd members were quite average, and Nick Mason was trully a terrible drummer, but still they are one of the genuine prog rock bands of all time!
inu-liger wrote: Brian May and David Gilmour (Pink Floyd):
-Smoke On The Water (Rock Aid Armenia - also featuring Roger on drums and Paul Rodgers, the latter on the '90 version - FIRST Q+PR RECORDING yo!)
-The Stonk (Hale and Pace, also with Roger on drums)
-Stay With Me (live, encore, with Paul Rodgers, Ronnie Wood and other artists, Stratocaster Anniversary show, available on DVD as The Strat Pack)
This is not really Brian May + David Gilmour, but it's related with Pink Floyd... Brian May covering "Have a Cigar" w/ the Foo Fighters ;)