In a 2018 interview republished by Louder, author and musician Joanne Harris — best known for the novel Chocolat and later awarded an OBE for services to literature — reflects on her early musical life and the progressive rock that shaped her. Long before her writing career, Harris played flute in a prog band she formed at school, drawing on the influence of acts such as Genesis, Pink Floyd and Rick Wakeman.

Harris describes how prog music transports her back to Barnsley in the 1980s, recalling a musical upbringing that blended her French mother's love of chansonniers such as Jacques Brel with her classically minded grandfather's influence, which led her to train as a classical flautist. Without a radio or turntable but armed with a cassette player, she discovered music on her own terms, and it was her first boyfriend who introduced her to Pink Floyd's The Wall — "the only interesting thing about him" — an album she says she played for six months before meeting like-minded musicians at sixth-form college.