Exiled geographically and spiritually from prog rock’s heartland, Nektar have struggled to gain not just the seat at the high table they deserve but presence in the room. A band that sold extremely well, that was one of the very few British acts to crack America, and that made two of prog’s pinnacle albums during the genre’s golden age can’t even warrant a mention in most books on the subject. Even though Nektar are the epitome of what prog is supposed to represent – including widescreen, multi-textured structures, side-length suites, narrative concept albums, instrumental dexterity, even lyrical depth – they somehow don’t fit the template. This book is an attempt not just to celebrate one of Britain’s most underrated bands but to set the record straight.
The deeper you dive into Nektar, the more singular a band you uncover, and the more of those uneasy prog conventions you realise they bucked or transcended, which may go some way to understanding their ostracism.
For example, Nektar doesn’t fit into the cliché of prog as the music of an upper class or intellectual elite. None of its members used an ability in classical music as their hook, like Keith Emerson or Rick Wakeman. They didn’t claim roots in a prestigious university town or develop art school pretensions – both of which apply to the band they most resemble, Pink Floyd. They didn’t even have the good grace to come from the south. In fact, their origins in the country’s industrial centres of Sheffield, Coventry, and Rotherham place them closer to their two major and acknowledged influences – The Beatles and The Moody Blues – both of which grew fruitful music from barren soil.
Nor did they lord it over the rabble beneath, to use one of the music industry’s gripes against prog. Nektar weren’t funded by a rich patron and they didn’t make much money of their own. The uncomfortable truth about the band, like so many in the genre that we now revere, is that they were all but penniless throughout the golden age.
British they may be, but the fact that Nektar soon abandoned their home country to seek greater reward in continental Europe is also a strike against them for a genre that always found it hard to accommodate artists from outside the home counties. This places them in the same boat as Frank Zappa, say, a man who toured with and admired the band. Zappa’s every musical breath ought to place him at the very heart of the genre. He was earlier, more radical, more establishment, and more transgressive than almost all his British equivalents, but he also struggles to gain space in its texts.
I use ‘texts’ here pointedly. Prog’s fans, among whom I proudly count myself, have the most liberal taste of any musical genre. We don’t just fill our heads with reggae or rap or jazz or folk to the exclusion of all other styles. We listen to and assimilate everything from Opeth to Pauline Oliveros. We’ll switch at a beat from wailing guitars to wailing Bulgarian throat singers. We relish Nektar among all the other flavours in our collections. It’s the rock journalism that grew up in the same golden age that is the problem. Even as prog burgeoned in Britain, its weekly music papers became squalid, self- centred, and cruelly opinionated. It was the press that sidelined ba
