Before one can answer the question of whether or not Pink Floyd are a Progressive Rock band, one must first answer the question "What is Progressive Rock?"

This is not as easy a question to answer as one might think. The easy answer is that Progressive Rock attempts to push the envelope of Rock. The issue gets a little cloudy when one considers that Rock has itself been sort of progressive all along. For example, Good Charlotte bear little resemblance to Chuck Berry, and yet both acts are still considered "rock." This demonstrates that the genre of Rock has itself progressed over the last fifty years, though many of the constituent elements remain the same.

Rock, on the simplest level, is a sub-genre of Popular Music. Both genres use similar song structures, they're just applied differently. It could be said that Rock is itself a progression from Pop. Over the course of its existence, artists such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Everlast have all pushed the boundaries of Popular Music and by extension, that of Rock itself.

But are these artists "Progressive" in the same sense that bands such as Yes, King Crimson, and Peter Gabriel-era Genesis (to name but a few) are? No, they are not. And why is that?

The Beatles, Zeppelin, and Everlast all have at least one thing in common: a fairly rigid adherence to "Pop" song structures. The songs are melodic, abound with "hooks" and have structures that don't require massive amounts of attention to keep up with: verses lead into pre-choruses, which lead into choruses, which lead into bridges, and so on.

Yes, King Crimson, and early Genesis really don't stick with such formulas. Within the confine of a single piece, the music may change direction so sharply that it's almost as though a different song has slipped in.

The idea of Progressive Rock is to bring the musicianship of Classical and Jazz (among other forms) into the performance of Rock Music. In my opinion, Progressive Rock has much in common with modern Metal music; it's all really a boring display of hubris to me. Speed, agility, and complexity take precedence over melody. The epic-length song structures are a barefaced display of endurance. It becomes more about the math than about the heart.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a lot of Progressive Rock. I've been a fan of Rush for as long as I've been a fan of Pink Floyd. But make no mistake about it, Pink Floyd are not a Progressive Rock band.

Pink Floyd are not about flexing their musicians' muscles; David Gilmour freely admits to being one of the laziest musicians in the world. Richard Wright, Nick Mason, and Roger Waters certainly seem to share Gilmour's "relaxed" attitude towards their instruments. Mason doesn't perform complex polyrhythms, Waters doesn't take solos, Wright doesn't use dissonant chords on any sort of a regular basis, and Gilmour isn't into precisely picking 64th note runs for eighty-seven measures.

In a Pink Floyd song, it seems more like a change in a song is brought about only because the band have wrung every last drop of atmosphere out of one progression and it's simply time to move on toward the chorus.

Sure, Pink Floyd have some very "Progressive" type songs in their repertoire. But they also have some "Cock Rock" songs there, too. Are Pink Floyd a "Cock Rock" band? I think not.

Within the history of Pink Floyd (at least as far as I'm familiar with it), anytime they have tried to do something that no one else has done before, it's always had to do with the staging of the show... with the lights and the props. Puppets and lasers and walls, oh my. But the music behind the spectacle is still old blues riffs and pop song structures, and there's really nothing Progressive about that.

I suppose I should say up front that I'm not a big fan of the Prog Rock genre, in general. But when I think of mainstream Prog, I think of early Genesis, Yes, Rush, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Jethro Tull. And, to a certain extent, Pink Floyd.

To me, Prog Rock blends elements of classical music with rock instrumentation and rhythms. The songs tend to be long, and are often broken into multiple parts. There may be several disparate sections of music woven together into a single composition. Much Prog Rock experiments with complex rhythms and shifting meters, and often pushes the limits of the musicians' technical abilities--that is to say that Prog Rock is often fast and challenging to play, with a tendency toward lengthy instrumentals. Prog Rock lyrics tend to be intellectual and 'deep', and paying homage to literary influences (especially science fiction and and/or fantasy) is not uncommon. And it is also common to weave songs or albums into complex concept works.

So how well does Pink Floyd stack up against this admittedly broad definition? First, the Floyd have always sought to expand the horizons of rock by using elements of other styles of music, from the whimsical folk of "Scarecrow" and "The Gnome" to the deliberate classical/orchestral direction they pursued in "Atom Heart Mother".

That the Floyd is fond of lengthy songs in multiple 'movements' is fairly evident: "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" had nine parts; "Atom Heart Mother" had six, and "A Saucerful of Secrets" is occasionally listed as four distinct sections. ("Saucerful" had the distinction of being the longest--and most experimental--track on the album that bore its name; at just under 13 minutes it was certainly a departure for a band whose studio output was mainly 3-minute pop songs.) "Echoes" began as no fewer than 24 individual musical ideas which were deftly woven into a seamless whole. And that's not to mention songs like "Pigs on the Wing", "Another Brick in the Wall", "For the First Time Today", and others that appropriated the proggy conceit of the multi-part song as an excuse to recycle melodies, or "Perfect Sense", which is split into two parts for no apparent reason. Of the four solo sections on the Ummagumma studio LP, only Waters' compositions are not broken into 'movements'.

That the Floyds are fond of instrumentals (such as "Interstellar Overdrive", "Careful With That Axe, Eugene", "One of These Days", "Any Colour You Like", and "Marooned", to name but a few) almost goes without saying. And the Floyd (and Roger Waters in particular) are so fond of weighty lyrics and concept projects that when rock historians mention 'concept album', two or three Pink Floyd albums are held up as some of the finest examples.

The one area of Prog Rock that the Floyds have a hard time fulfilling is the technical prowess. David Gilmour is the closest thing the Floyd has to a 'virtuoso', and even he readily admits that he isn't interested in playing fast or technically, and Roger Waters has gone so far as to admit that he has very little interest in improving his bass skills. But even the 'non-musical' Waters wrote songs in odd meters, such as the 7/4 of "Money" or the repeated 5/8 bars in "Mother". And for a time the Floyds were particularly enamored of a 12/8 triplet rhythm (heard in "One of These Days", part of "Echoes", "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part VI)", "Sheep"), which is certainly a long way from Bo Diddley or "Blue Suede Shoes".

As a fine example of Pink Floyd's prog ambitions, have a listen to "Dogs". For starters, it clocks in at just over 17 minutes in length--not as long as "Atom Heart Mother" or "Echoes", which each took an entire LP side--and while it isn't divided into distinct movements, it clearly combines several different musical ideas in distinct 'feels'. Rather than a straightforward four-on-the-floor rock rhythm, it employs a highly-syncopated rhythm guitar figure that is more than a little mystifying to the average rock fan. If you can't hear the Prog influences in "Dogs", then maybe you can't recognize 'Prog Rock' in the first place.