Lin Bensley

Lin Bensley has been working as a freelance journalist for a decade, contributing to a number of magazines on a variety of topics, including music, natural history, English literature, biography, folklore, social history, family history, comics and comic art. Lin has contributed to Prog magazine, Best of British,The Countryman, Suffolk and Norfolk Life, Evergreen, This England, Jazz Journal Blues magazine, Record Collector, Shindig and many more. 

Articles by: Lin Bensley

Spooky Tooth - Ceremony

“Gary Wright split from Spooky Tooth, declaring the album ‘an utter failure’… but he was wrong”: Ceremony did more for prog than anybody realised at the time (except the French)

By Lin Bensley published

Their 1970 collaboration with avant-garde composer Pierre Henry bombed almost everywhere, but pioneered an approach that later became its own sub-genre

The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp

“This is just another single from one of the countless groups who have come to London in the vain hope of making good”: When the roots of King Crimson were planted by Giles, Giles & Fripp

By Lin Bensley published

In 1968, three eccentric friends put together a collection of songs bursting with complex arrangements and village-green whimsy… was it the very birth of prog?

Kevin Godley (right) and Lol Creme of British rock duo Godley & Creme, photographed on 23rd November, 1987.

Shagged-out chic and avant-garde pop: How Godley & Creme became Britain's weirdest popstars

By Lin Bensley last updated

Cannibalism, concept albums with Peter Cook and reinventing the pop video: What Godley & Creme did after 10cc.

10cc

“When they make documentaries about the 70s, they talk about glam and prog rock. 10cc weren't either so we don’t get a mention..." The rise and fall of 10cc's original line-up

By Lin Bensley published

Four great musicians and songwriters, known for their pioneering studio techniques, 10cc ruled the charts and straddled a line between prog and pop. But was their genre-defying talent their undoing?

VIVIAN STANSHALL SIR HENRY AT RAWLINSON END cover art

"Brutally neutered and drunkenly skunked he rides bare-back the fur-tongued hounds of Hades." The innate charms of Sir Henry At Rawlinson End

By Lin Bensley published

Making the case for Vivian Stanshall's classic album Sir Henry At Rawlinson End and its place within the prog canon

Blossom Toes

Blossom Toes' If Only For A Moment was prog - just maybe not as we know it

By Lin Bensley published

Blossom Toes' If Only For A Moment (Marmalade, 1969) ditched 60s psychedelia for heavyweight riffs and tightly honed songwriting