Stuff you might not know about The Heroes and Heroines of Prog Rock, Part II

We’ll bring our set of essential prog rock to the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre in Arlington Heights on Sunday afternoon, January 11th. We can’t fit in all of the songs we wanted to do…or all of the stories. But here are some of them.

GENESIS

In 1972, Genesis released the album Foxtrot, a record that at the time was considered their breakthrough…though by the end of the decade it had sold only 215,000 copies.

Compare that with fourteen years later.  In 1986, four of the members of that early band were enjoying considerable success.

Former guitarist Steve Hackett was part of the band GTR which had both a hit album and a hit single that year.

Guitarist and bass player Mike Rutherford saw two different singles from the debut Mike and the Mechanics album become hits.

Vocalist Peter Gabriel found major success with his album So and the MTV hit “Sledgehammer.”

While the current version of Genesis had released what would become the biggest album of the band’s career, Invisible Touch.

PHIL COLLINS

There are only three recording artists who have sold over 100 million records both as part of a band and as solo artists:  Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, and Phil Collins.

YES

The Yes Album was the album that saved the band’s career.  Their first two records had bombed, and the label was on the verge of dropping them.  But they leaned into their more “proggy” aspirations by bringing guitarist Steve Howe into the line up, and the record became their breakthrough helping establish what is considered the classic sound of Yes.

EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER

Keyboard player Keith Emerson made synthesizers a signature part of the band’s sound.  He was the first artist to tour with a Moog synthesizer.  In fact, he was so far on the cutting edge of synth technology that Moog often gave him prototypes for him to demo on the road and in the studio.