DANNY KELLY

The former Q and NME editor turned Football365 skipper and now talkSPORT staple plays keepie-uppie with myriad prog music styles, some loved at first sight, some he couldn’t stand. Time, however, is the great revelator…

As a teenager I was extraordinarily lucky. I was brought up in Islington so I was within walking distance of venues like the Rainbow and the Hope & Anchor or we could get the bus to the Marquee… from the age of 13 I was always at gigs. The first time I came across music that was a bit alternative was when I went to see Chris Spedding’s band, Sharks, at an all-dayer at Camden Roundhouse. I was a meek teenager amid these funky folk, and then Principal Edwards Magic Theatre came on. I was a black music and blues rock nut, so rock music came at me from funny angles. I thought, ‘This is different!’ I had a Friday and Saturday job but I was always castigated by my mother for spending my wages on records. We had a new council house with a special cupboard at the front for the dustbins. I’d come home, put my records in with the bins, then when my mother went to work in the evening, bring them into the house. She must have noticed the collection growing. Prog would pop up at school, where the battle of the Sixth Form turntable would commence. I went to a very nice Catholic grammar school for working-class lads in Highgate. I liked Emerson, Lake & Palmer first and foremost. The stranger stuff of theirs I’d heard from a Friday night BBC radio show called The Sequence. It just played songs back-to-back. You had to find out from other people at school, or their older brothers, what the songs were and it would set you off on this great voyage of discovery.

My favourite ELP record is Pictures At An Exhibition. It’s the most prog thing of all time – 45 minutes of banging away at a classical piece. I love the titles and have had fun with the them, especially when Chelsea started signing players whose names were very similar. I worked backwards, not knowing about The Nice, then I heard them. In their own mad way they’re even more prog. Their version of America is astonishing.

ELP were also a source of great pain. Like all young men back then, I thought prog was a way to girls’ hearts. This was a huge mistake. I took my girlfriend at the time to see them at Wembley Empire Pool – that tour with the revolving drum kit. They played for two and half hours and it was stupendous – for me. Sylvana said, ‘Can we go now, they’ve done two encores, they won’t play any more.’ So we left. At my Saturday job the next day my colleague Julie says, ‘Weren’t they fantastic? What about Pictures?’ What?! They did the whole of Pictures after we’d gone.

I’ve never seen them do it! There’s my prog rock regret number one.

I pretended all my young life to hate classical music and jazz. I was afraid of the sheer volume of it, I had so much to listen to already. Prog rock regret number two is not getting into these sooner. I was friends with Richard Cook, Britain’s greatest ever jazz writer. He got me writing for NME. I would sit in his house and he would play me Albert Ayler and Anthony Braxton, things I’m now paying £100 for obscurities, I don’t care if there’s no Christmas dinner. Prog helped me grow those ears to get into jazz and classical. But I didn’t get into Yes at that point either, I could only hear the difficult guitar playing. Now I can hear what a brilliant harmony-based band they are; I really like Time And A Word.

Quite a few years after it was released, I heard King Crimson’s

In The Court Of The Crimson King. With due respect to The Clash and the Stone Roses, it might be the greatest British debut album. With due to respect to everyone else it might be the greatest debut album ever made. It virtually invents prog rock and also – sorry, Black Sabbath – invents heavy metal in an afternoon, which they reinvent a few years later with Red. I used to write the lyrics to Epitaph in my exercise books at school. My history teacher, Mr Smith, asked, ‘What’s that?’ He was fantastic; he couldn’t have been more square, but a more inquisitive man you couldn’t meet, and he insisted I brought the record in so he could look at it.

I’ve been on a weird journey with Crimson because I find them stumbly. I don’t like In The Wake Of Poseidon, too many discords. Then I come back to them for Starless And Bible Black. I love Nightwatch. I wish they’d done that at the extraordinary Palladium show recently. Court… is in my top 10 records ever made, how nice for it to nestle next the The Congos’ Heart Of The Congos and Ascension by John Coltrane. I never tire of hearing it.

Prog allowed me to loosen my musical corsets a bit; music didn’t have to be bass and drums and guitar, and it didn’t have to be Otis Redding. It took me to lovely places – and you shouldn’t underestimate what Richard Branson did. He made his money with Mike Oldfield, yes, but what fantastic records Tubular Bells, Ommadawn and Hergest Ridge are. He also put out Fred Frith records, and I remember buying Guitar Solos and hating it! Now I clutch it to my bosom, I’m glad I never got rid of it. The other place he took me to was Gong, where prog, psychedelia and the European Kunst movement all come together. I love Camembert Electrique. Prog rock regret number three: I just moved to Ireland and something had to get broken in transit. What was it? My Camembert Electrique cheese plate! I’ve still got the teapot, though.

Without prog I wouldn’t have listened to Back Door’s Back Door. A bass, a sax and whatever else they’ve got. It’s a mad record, powered by its own desire to be different and not make money. That makes me love these records.

I fell sideways into the Canterbury scene. Soft Machine,

Caravan, that’s all fine, but Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom is one of the finest records ever made, and it’s got Nick Mason producing. This record opened doors for me; the South African trumpeter and the drone on side two, I would never have allowed myself to listen to something as atonal as that until that record came along.

When everyone’s finished banging on about Genesis and Foxtrot – always a bit too clever for me – there’s Hawkwind! In Search Of Space is a classic, with a sleeve that could only come out of the 70s, a boom-time for album covers. That line of British bands playing what they imagine to be playing German music – Hawkwind, Spacemen 3, Spiritualized, Toy – I love all of those. Loop were as exciting to me as the Sex Pistols. It’s boys and girls with their foot to the floor, pushing the extremes of prog. I wonder if, when My Bloody Valentine come onstage and they’re using that flute sound [on Loveless], would they be doing that without The Moody Blues?”

Hear Danny Thursdays and Mondays at 7pm and Sundays at 9pm (for Trans-Europe Express) at www.talksport.com and find him on Twitter @dannykellywords.

“IN THE COURT OF

THE CRIMSON

KING… MIGHT BE THE GREATEST DEBUT ALBUM EVER MADE.”