Argent – A Great English Classic Rock Band

Argent was a great English classic rock bound which was founded in 1969 in London, United Kingdom by Rod Argent, ex-keyboardist for The Zombies, another great classic rock band from England. They were musically active from 1969 to 1976. Subsequently, they reunited during the early 2010s, more specifically in 2010 (the original line-up of the band reunited during the respective year, once in July at the High Voltage Festival in Victoria Park, London and then once more in December of that year for a brief five-concert tour in Frome, Southampton, Wolverhampton, Leamington Spa, and London), 2012 (from January to February, on another brief 5-concert tour), and 2013 (performing their last live show at the Waterside Theatre in Aylesbury, part of a benefit concert on 2 June of that year, as a supporting act for The Zombies alongside Marillion members Steve Hogarth and Steve Rothery). Their music was a mixture of progressive rock, hard rock, art rock, instrumental rock, and pop rock. Argent enjoyed moderate commercial success on the UK Top 40 singles chart with three of their singles, namely ‘Hold Your Head Up’, ‘Tragedy’, and (my personal favourite here) ‘God Gave Rock and Roll to You’. In addition, they also had two moderately-successful studio albums, namely All Together Now (which was released in April 1972) and In Deep (which features my personal favourite song from their discography, ‘God Gave Rock and Roll to You’; a studio album which was released by Epic Records in October 1973).

Aside from keyboards, the band’s founder, Rod Argent, also provided both backing and lead vocals on the band’s records. My personal favourite song from their discography, the touching musical gem ‘God Gave Rock and Roll to You’, was composed by lead vocalist and guitarist Russ Ballard and eventually got covered by Kiss in 1991 under the changed name ‘God Gave Rock and Roll to You II’.

Throughout their relatively short career together, the English rock group managed to release a total number of 6 studio albums together as follows:

• Argent (their self-titled debut studio album) in 1970;
• Ring of Hands (inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and his legendarium) in 1971;
• All Together Now in 1972;
• In Deep in 1973;
• Nexus in 1974;
• Circus in 1975;
• Counterpoints in 1975.

All of their studio albums from 1970 to 1975 (except for Counterpoints), were released by Epic Records. Counterpoints, their last LP, was released by RCA. Argent, though lesser known than other British or American rock bands of the 1970s, proved quite influential in their time and beyond, so much so that some of their songs were covered by Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow for example (more specifically ‘Since You Been Gone’ and ‘I Surrender’, two staple songs of Rainbow come to really think of it). The band’s songs (written by Russ Ballard) were also covered by Christian rock band Petra, hard rock American band Kiss, English glam rock band Hello, or even legendary guitarist Santana.

Below you can listen to my most favourite songs from their discography embedded via YouTube. Have a great listen! All the best and rock on!

P.S. The only thing that I disagree with regarding their music is part of a certain verse from the second stanza of ‘God Gave Rock and Roll to You’, namely the last part from: ‘[…] Don’t step on snails, don’t climb in trees‘. On a personal note, I really enjoyed climbing in trees when I was an early teenager. So long as you do it responsible and up to a certain height (without breaking the branches of a tree), I think that this can be a very nice personal experience, re-connecting you with nature while we are at it as well.

Documentation sources and external links:

• Argent on www.wikipedia.org (in English)
• The band’s biography on www.last.fm
• The band’s profile on www.discogs.com
• The band’s profile on www.progarchives.com
• The band’s Facebook page on www.facebook.com