The year 1976 was a big one for prog, even if the punk revolution was fully underway. Several records released in those 12 months became maintays of the genre and often appear in best-ever-album lists to this day.
But if you had to pick the best of them all, which would it be?
Rush’s epic concept release 2112 is no bad place to start. The trio suspected it might be the last thing they’d be allowed to release, so they gave it everything they had. “We were in a lot of debt,” Geddy Lee told Prog in 2018. “We figured, if we’re going to go out, let’s go out doing exactly what we want to do: a 20-minute song about priests!”
The success of their fourth record took everyone by surprise. “It was so weird that nobody knew what to do with it at the record company,” Lee recalled, “and because it was successful they just left us alone for the rest of our careers.”
Later in 1976 Rush also released their first live album, All the World’s A Stage.
Genesis launched two studio titles that year. A Trick Of The Tail was their first with Phil Collins taking lead vocals, following Peter Gabriel’s departure. They’d initially attempted to continue as an instrumental group; then, after auditioning several vocalists, Collins gave it a go. “Everybody was a little sceptical,” he told Prog in 2019. “But we started recording and we just knocked one song off after another.”
The band followed Trick with Wind & Wuthering, regarded by many as their final fully prog album. They struggled to establish a new working method without Gabriel, but keyboardist Tony Banks argued: “It was the time when Steve Hackett emerged as being more of an equal contributor to the group than he had been prior to that.”
Van der Graaf Generator also released two records in 1976 – Still Life and World Record. Keyboardist Hugh Banton, who left after the second title to focus on electronics and building organs, told Prog the band had struggled in the 70s, but added: “ I think my favourite of the albums we did then was Still Life. My Room, Childlike Faith In Childhood’s End and Still Life itself. They’re all great songs.”
Yes icon Jon Anderson’s first solo album arrived that year too – Olias of Sunhillow was everything a fan could have hoped for, and more. “I was in a state of madness making that album,” he told Prog in 2016. “But whenever I listen to it, I thank the gods.”
He also addressed the long-circulating rumour that future collaborator Vangelis contributed to the record. “I had been spending time with Vangelis and I’d learned a lot,” he said. “But I wanted no one else on the album. Vangelis never heard the record until it was finished.”
And that’s nowhere near everything 1976 had to offer. The Alan Parsons Project’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination; Camel’s Moonmadness; Kansas’ Leftoverture; Gentle Giant’s Interview; Soft Machine’s Softs; Caravan’s Blind Dog at St. Dunstans and Gong’s Shamal all came out that year.
All you have to do is pick your favourite – whether we’ve mentioned it or not – and tell us why you love it in the comment section below.
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