Indulge Us: Concept Albums of the 1960s and 1970s Quiz

Answer: Days of Future Passed

"Days of Future Passed" was a bold change of direction for the Moody Blues, who had started their career as a British R&B band and somehow ended up inventing symphonic prog. Released in 1967, the album chronicles a day in the life, from dawn to night, combining rock instrumentation with performances by the London Festival Orchestra. It wasn't just about the music; between tracks, you'd hear actor and drummer Graeme Edge reading solemn poetry with all the gravity of Zeus delivering a TED Talk.

Initially conceived as a stereo demonstration record for the record label Decca, the project took a creative turn when the band was given orchestral backing and essentially told to go wild. And they did.

Answer: Tommy

"Tommy" is The Who's landmark 1969 rock opera and arguably the first of its kind. It follows the life of young Tommy Walker, who becomes "deaf, dumb, and blind" after witnessing a traumatic event and being told he "didn't see it." What follows is an insane adventure of psychological abuse, spiritual searching, pinball wizardry, and the kind of fame that eventually curdles into fanaticism. It's equal parts concept album, Greek tragedy, and bad trip.

"Tommy" helped solidify the concept album as a medium and opened the floodgates for a decade of audacious storytelling in rock music, because nothing inspires quite like a deaf, dumb, and blind messiah-child with PTSD and serious pinball skills.

Answer: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

In "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars", David Bowie didn't just write an album. He beamed down an entire persona. Ziggy Stardust, the glitter-clad, flame-haired alien messiah, arrives on a dying planet (Earth, naturally) to deliver salvation through rock music.

Instead, he gets chewed up by his own legend, overwhelmed by decadence, drugs, and screaming fans: your basic rockstar trajectory, but with a little more space dust, alien spiders, and of course eyeliner.

Answer: Thick as a Brick

Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" began as a joke, a cheeky response to critics who had labeled their previous album "Aqualung" a concept album (a label Ian Anderson detested). So Anderson thought, "Fine. You want a concept album? We'll give you the mother of all concept albums." The result was a 43-minute song sprawled across both sides of a vinyl record, complete with recurring musical motifs, sudden shifts in time signatures, and lyrics supposedly penned by a precocious 8-year-old poet named Gerald Bostock, who doesn't and never has existed.

The album was packaged in a full 12-page mock newspaper, The "St. Cleve Chronicle & Linwell Advertiser", which members of the band has said took more time than the album itself. This blend of satire, musicianship, and ambition struck a chord, and "Thick as a Brick" hit number one on the US Billboard chart, which is a pretty cool feat for a band whose lead singer played flute while standing on one leg.

Answer: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

"The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" is Genesis's magnum opus of the Peter Gabriel era: a double album packed with myth, madness, metaphysics, and just a soupcon of Freudian weirdness. The story centers on Rael, a Puerto Rican street punk in New York City who embarks on an otherworldly quest for identity. Along the way, he's attacked by various bizarre entities--Slippermen, ravenous ravens, and the seductive Lamia-all while contending with his own fractured psyche.

The narrative, largely written by Gabriel, is famously opaque. Is it a dream? A metaphor? A metaphor inside a dream inside a concept album? Sure, why not? Musically, the band weaves a mix of progressive complexity, ambient interludes, and straight-ahead rock, all anchored by Tony Banks' keyboards and Phil Collins's often underrated drumming.

Answer: The Power and the Glory

"The Power and the Glory" marked Gentle Giant's first foray into the full-blown concept album, and in true Gentle Giant fashion, they didn't make it easy on us. Inspired in part by the political drama surrounding Richard Nixon, this 1974 album explores the corruption of power and the moral compromises made in its pursuit. Not a literally retelling, it's more of an allegorical narrative about a man who rises to political power with good intentions and ultimately succumbs to the very corruption he sought to fight.

Musically, it will make your head explode. The band, always eschewing the ordinary, piles on harpsichord, vibraphone, clavinet, violin, and polyphonic vocal rounds that would stump a madrigal choir. Yet amid the complexity, there's definitely some groove, energy, and maybe sort of just perhaps an open door for the uninitiated. Songs like "Proclamation" and "Playing the Game" combine intricate time signatures with social commentary, making it one of the most cerebral albums you'll ever bop your head to.

Answer: Tales from Topographic Oceans

"Tales from Topographic Oceans" is Yes at their most indulgent, most mystical, and--depending on who you ask--most brilliant or most bewildering. Inspired by Paramahansa Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi", particularly a footnote referencing the four shastras (bodies of Hindu scripture: Shruti, Smriti, Puranas, and Tantras), Jon Anderson and Steve Howe crafted a sprawling concept where each side of the double album explores one of these spiritual paths. Naturally, it takes nearly 20 minutes to get through each.

Musically, the album is a smorgasbord of styles: pastoral acoustic passages, symphonic swells, abrupt tempo changes, and enough Mellotron to peel the paint off your car. Rick Wakeman famously hated it, so much so that he allegedly ate curry onstage during at least one performance. He left the band shortly afterward.

Answer: The Kinks Present a Soap Opera

By 1975, Ray Davies had fully leaned into theatrical storytelling, and "The Kinks Present a Soap Opera" may be the most delightfully weird result. This rock opera tells the story of Starmaker who decides to abandon the stage lights temporarily to become an average guy named Norman. The goal? To live the ordinary life, experience suburbia, and soak in enough drudgery to inspire a new album. What could go wrong?

Plenty, actually. With tongue firmly in cheek, "Soap Opera" lampoons both celebrity culture and middle-class life, with Davies delivering lines in half-song, half over-the-top theatrical monologue. The album was originally developed for a British TV special (yes, it actually aired), and features tracks like "Everybody's a Star (Starmaker)" and "You Can't Stop the Music", which blur the line between rock satire and sincere existential reflection. It was met with general confusion and a little dismay by critics and fans alike, but did gained a solid cult following.

Answer: Joe's Garage

"Joe's Garage" is one of Frank Zappa's most ambitious, absurd, and unapologetically filthy works. The story begins with an average teenager named Joe who forms a garage band, has a brief taste of musical fame, and then gets swept into a dystopian world where music is illegal, indescribable robots do unspeakable things, and government agents monitor moral behavior with Orwellian enthusiasm. It's presented as a cautionary tale narrated by the "Central Scrutinizer", a robotic, deadpan voice meant to embody joyless state control and relentless censorship.

Originally released as a two-part series (Act I followed by Acts II & III), the album parodies nearly every musical trend Zappa could cram in while lampooning organized religion, censorship, conformity, and, of course, the music industry itself. The result is hilarious, at times disturbing, and often deeply uncomfortable, which is exactly how Zappa liked it.

Answer: The Wall

"The Wall" is Pink Floyd's magnum opus of alienation, angst, and architectural metaphors. The album follows the descent of "Pink," a burned-out rock star whose life has been shaped by overbearing authority figures, the trauma of his father's death in war, failed relationships, and the soul-eating machinery of the music industry. In response, he constructs a psychological "wall" to shut out the world, only to find himself imprisoned behind it.

Inspired by Roger Waters' own disillusionment with fame and his growing distance from audiences (notably after an infamous 1977 incident where he spat on a fan), the album moves from introspective tracks like "Mother" and "Hey You" to chilling, theatrical sequences where Pink imagines himself as a totalitarian demagogue barking orders at a crowd. The narrative peaks in "In the Flesh" and "Run Like Hell," where rock concert and fascist political rally become uncomfortably interchangeable.