Prefab Sprout

“I reject the whole typical BBC documentary cliché that prog was a wizard in a cape playing whizzy synthesisers. There was much more.”

“My relationship with prog is a complex thing, which has to do with my feelings about the 70s,” muses Paddy McAloon. “That period was very, very interesting. I reject the whole typical BBC documentary cliché that it was a wizard in a cape playing whizzy synthesisers. There was much more – you could go along and see something like Peter Gabriel and Genesis, which was highly theatrical. That in itself was terribly intriguing. I’m a big believer in what they call guilty pleasures, though I think that’s a silly phrase. Okay, some people mock that era, or genre, for other reasons – I get that, yes, sure, it sometimes went too far. But there is something there which… shows a purity of intention. And I find that admirable. They were young people, remember. Just like the Beatles, when young, were trying to do their own thing. Even Genesis themselves put it down now – ‘Oh,