Being in ... prog acts was great because you could play in 15/8 time and still stay in good hotels.

Almost half a century on, 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' still resonates with echoes of that golden summer [1967]. In 2009, it was still Britain's most played record on the radio. The runner up was Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. The two songs both contain the unusual word 'fandango' in the lyrics.

It cannot be overstated that despite its difficult time signatures, fantastical sleeves and outlandish concepts and costumes, prog was enormously, insanely popular all over the world. Stadiums full of fans lapped up the difficulty of it all, relished the uncommerciality and thus paradoxically made it far more commercial than much pop of the day. Released in 1973, Rick Wakeman's purely instrumental solo album comprising quasi-classical pieces about long-dead English Tudor queens, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, sold 15 million albums. Bill Bruford captured this nice contradiction brilliantly, when we said that, as a creative musician, being in Yes, King Crimson and other prog acts was great because you could play in 15/8 time and still stay in good hotels.

S. Maconie, The People's songs (2013), 83 and 97-98