Did the Beatles really Invent Prog? Or not?

Is some kind of sick joke Steve the Beatles? They never existed!

 I read it first here on PA's!

it never did.. it is just the figment of some record company executive's mind on how he can sell albums..  oh english..  songs longer than 3minutes 30.. people calling it progressive.. f**k it..  too long ..call it prog.

SteveG wrote: For the sake of argument, I will agree with Young, and further propose that Strawberry Fields was also the archetypal Prog Rock song and gave recording artists the expanded pallet to compose and record the Progressive Rock that flourished in the late sixties and took off in the early seventies.

The thing is, Strawberry Fields has almost nothing to do with what prog was or is.   There is no doubt Psych-rock was largely the predecessor of Prog, that's obvious.   But things like SFF were, in typical Beatles style, tailored, reduced, and distilled so that one could actually listen to and digest it; they were songcrafters, not art musicians.

There appears to have been a simultaneous revelation about what you could do with the rock format ~ George Martin, Brian Wilson, Kit Lambert, Cooper/Guercio, etc. ~ and what became prog essentially was what an artist and a good producer could accomplish.   Prog was invented by its time, not a band, certainly not a 3-minute Pop Vocal act like the Beatles.

The Fab Four probably had less influence on prog than many believe, but it has to be there. Mainly, it would have to be the general influence Sgt. Peppers had through its use of the modern studio and how that inspired others to go forward with their ideas, and Abbey Road building on that, plus with its particular focus on flow and, to a extent, cohesion. Of course with that latter album, though, The Beach Boys already pioneered that kind of pop cohesiveness with Pet Sounds.

I would not call Strawberry Fields an archetypal prog rock song.  Maybe by today's standards where we accept Radiohead as prog , but not by the 70s standards with long, complicated epics.  Strawberry fields seems to be a very sophisticated, 'weird' take on the classic verse-chorus format.  There is no instrumental interlude and certainly the linearity of a Tarkus is yet far away.  You could argue that CTTE too has a re-iterated verse chorus but even it has the "I Get Up, I Get Down" break.  

•Freak Out! was the first Prog, although with a tenuous historical connection with what occurred not long after in England.
•Strawberry fields was Proto-Prog at best, also with a tenuous historical connection with what occurred not long after or concurrently in England.
•Radiohead is not Prog.

The Beatles did invent prog, but were not alone. The other inventors were Procol Harum and The Moody Blues. All these three sort of grew inspirations and eventually came King Crimson with ITCOTCK. That's the captital album of prog that inspired many others, diffusing into more prog, and so on.

I've been saying the Strawberry Fields single was the birth of prog for years and no eloquently formed argument will change my mind because unlike most other "PA experts", I was there 

For what it's worth - I don't believe The Beatles were Prog per se, but they did introduce the 'thinking outside of the box' approach to composition and recording. Creative, for sure, but fairly average as musicians. As far as I'm concerned, Floyd's Piper was more Prog than Sgt. Pepper's. Even the Airplane's Baxter's album was more complex and diverse than Pepper's. Heck, even Magical Mystery Tour was more advanced than Pepper's. I can understand why many folks here at P.A. despise their inclusion.
Were they creative - Yes
Were they intelligent - Yes
Were they innovative - Yes
Were they complex - hmm, occasionally
Were they good - Yes
Were they Prog - No, I don't think so
......should they be a bona-fide inclusion here at P.A. ???? Well, they're here, and that won't change anytime soon, sooooo...........

Nope definitely not, but they paved the way for it. There's a big difference.