Lin Bensley

Lin Bensley has been working as a freelance journalist for a decade, contributing to a number of magazines on a variety of topics, including music, natural history, English literature, biography, folklore, social history, family history, comics and comic art. Lin has contributed to Prog magazine, Best of British,The Countryman, Suffolk and Norfolk Life, Evergreen, This England, Jazz Journal Blues magazine, Record Collector, Shindig and many more. 

Latest articles by Lin Bensley

Cover art for Pierre Henry and Spooky Tooth’s 1969 album Ceremony
“We said, ‘It will ruin our career.’ That’s what happened”: The rock + electronica experiment that failed

By Lin Bensley Published

A rising British band’s reputation was trashed by their collaboration with a French musique concrète artist. But they’d opened the door for rock’s marriage to electronic sounds

Albums
Photo of 10 CC Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
“Our amazingly different ideas sadly tore us apart”: Why 10cc’s original line-up couldn’t last

By Lin Bensley Published

Their unique blend of prog and pop brought them acclaim from all quarters – but after four albums the quartet broke in half. Was it inevitable?

Bands & Artists
New Musik
The band who brought George Orwell, Casio calculators and a pop producer into the realm of prog

By Lin Bensley Published

Inspired by King Crimson and T. Rex, and led by a quickly-disillusioned synth pioneer, this band didn’t want your name – just your number

Albums
Talking Heads – Remain In Light
“It silenced their harshest critics, even within the band”: Talking Heads’ Remain In Light

By Lin Bensley Published

With input from Brian Eno and Adrian Belew, the creatively explosive 1980 album was a turning point for the American band – and many other artists

Albums
The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp
“This is just another single from one of the countless groups who have come to London in the vain hope of making good”: When the roots of King Crimson were planted by Giles, Giles & Fripp

By Lin Bensley Published

In 1968, three eccentric friends put together a collection of songs bursting with complex arrangements and village-green whimsy… was it the very birth of prog?

Albums
Kevin Godley (right) and Lol Creme of British rock duo Godley & Creme, photographed on 23rd November, 1987.
Shagged-out chic and avant-garde pop: How Godley & Creme became Britain's weirdest popstars

By Lin Bensley last updated

Cannibalism, concept albums with Peter Cook and reinventing the pop video: What Godley & Creme did after 10cc.

Interviews
VIVIAN STANSHALL SIR HENRY AT RAWLINSON END cover art
"Brutally neutered and drunkenly skunked he rides bare-back the fur-tongued hounds of Hades." The innate charms of Sir Henry At Rawlinson End

By Lin Bensley Published

Making the case for Vivian Stanshall's classic album Sir Henry At Rawlinson End and its place within the prog canon

Albums
Blossom Toes
Blossom Toes' If Only For A Moment was prog - just maybe not as we know it

By Lin Bensley Published

Blossom Toes' If Only For A Moment (Marmalade, 1969) ditched 60s psychedelia for heavyweight riffs and tightly honed songwriting

Bands & Artists