Editing Art rock (section)

====Proponents====
[[File:Phil Spector with MFQ 1965.png|thumb|right|[[Phil Spector]] (center) in the studio with [[folk rock]] band [[Modern Folk Quartet]], 1966]]

The earliest figure of art rock has been assumed to be record producer and songwriter [[Phil Spector]], who became known as an [[auteur]] for his [[Wall of Sound]] productions that aspired to a "classical grandiosity".{{sfn|Bannister|2007|p=48}} According to biographer [[Richard Williams (journalist)|Richard Williams]]: "[Spector] created a new concept: the producer as the overall director of the creative process, from beginning to end. He took control of everything, he picked the artists, wrote or chose the material, supervised the arrangements, told the singers how to phrase, masterminded all phases of the recording process with the most painful attention to detail, and released the result on his own label."{{sfn|Williams|2003|pp=15–16}} Williams also says that Spector transformed rock music from a performing art into an art that could only exist in the recording studio, which "paved the way for art rock".{{sfn|Williams|2003|p=38}}
[[File:Brian Wilson Pet Sounds 2.jpg|left|thumb|[[Brian Wilson]] in the studio, 1966]]
[[The Beach Boys]]' leader [[Brian Wilson]] is also cited as one of the first examples of the auteur music producer.{{sfn|Edmondson|2013|p=890}}{{refn|group=nb|For an early example of the rock album format being used to make a cohesive artistic statement, author Scott Schinder refers to the album ''[[The Beach Boys Today!]]'' (1965) and its "[[suite (music)|suite-like structure]]", consisting of one side of uptempo songs and the other of [[ballad]]s.{{sfn|Schinder|2007|p=111}}}} Like Spector, Wilson was known as a reclusive studio obsessive who laboriously produced fantastical soundscapes through his mastery of recording technology.{{sfn|Bannister|2007|p=39}} Biographer [[Peter Ames Carlin]] wrote that Wilson was the forerunner of "a new kind of art-rock that would combine the transcendent possibilities of art with the mainstream accessibility of pop music".<ref>{{cite news |last1=Carlin |first1=Peter Ames |author-link=Peter Ames Carlin|title=MUSIC; A Rock Utopian Still Chasing An American Dream|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/25/arts/music-a-rock-utopian-still-chasing-an-american-dream.html|date=25 March 2001|work=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref> Drawing from the influence of Wilson's work and the work of [[the Beatles]]' producer [[George Martin]], music producers after the mid 1960s began to view the recording studio as a musical instrument used to aid the process of composition.{{sfn|Edmondson|2013|p=890}} Critic [[Stephen Holden]] says that mid-1960s recordings by the Beatles, Spector and Wilson are often identified as marking the start of art pop, which preceded the "bombastic, classically inflected" art rock that started in the late 1960s.<ref name="Holden"/>

Many of the top British groups during the 1960s – including members of the Beatles, [[the Rolling Stones]], [[the Kinks]], [[the Who]], [[10cc]], [[the Move]], [[the Yardbirds]] and Pink Floyd – came to music via [[art school]].{{sfn|MacDonald|1998|p=xiv}}{{sfn|Frith|1989|p=208}} This institution differed from its US counterpart in terms of having a less industry-applicable syllabus and in its focus on furthering eccentric talent.{{sfn|MacDonald|1998|pp=xiii–xiv}} By the mid-1960s, several of these acts espoused an approach based on art and originality, where previously they had been absorbed solely in authentic interpretation of US-derived musical styles, such as [[Rock and roll|rock 'n' roll]] and [[Rhythm and blues|R&B]].{{sfn|Lindberg et al.|2005|pp=104–06}}

According to journalist [[Richard Goldstein (writer born 1944)|Richard Goldstein]], many popular musicians from California (like Wilson) desired to be acknowledged as artists, and struggled with this aspiration. Goldstein says that the line between violating musical conventions and making "truly popular music" caused those who did not have "strong enough egos" (in contrast to [[Bob Dylan]] and the Beatles) to be "doomed to a respectful rejection, and a few albums with disappointing sales usually meant silence. ... They yearned for fame, as only needy people can, but they also wanted to make art, and when both of those impulses couldn't be achieved they recoiled in a ball of frantic confusion."<ref name=GoldsteinSalon>{{cite web|last1=Goldstein|first1=Richard|author-link=Richard Goldstein (writer born 1944)|title=I got high with the Beach Boys: "If I survive this I promise never to do drugs again"|url=http://www.salon.com/2015/04/26/i_got_high_with_the_beach_boys_if_i_survive_this_i_promise_never_to_do_drugs_again/|work=[[salon (website)|Salon]]|date=26 April 2015}}</ref>

Author Matthew Bannister traces "the more self-conscious, camp aesthetic of art rock" to pop artist [[Andy Warhol]] and the Velvet Underground, who emulated Warhol's art/pop synthesis.{{sfn|Bannister|2007|pp=26, 45}} Accordingly: "Warhol took Spector's combination of the disembodiment, 'distance' and refinement of high culture with the 'immediacy' of mass cultural forms like rock and roll several stages further ... But Warhol's aesthetic was more thoroughly worked out than Spector's, which represented a transitional phase between old-fashioned auteurism and the thoroughly postmodern, detached tenets of pop art. ... Warhol's approach reverberates throughout art rock, most obviously in his stance of distance and disengagement."{{sfn|Bannister|2007|pp=40, 44}}