If you are choosing a present for prog rock fans, the hard part is not the wall space. It is working out which of these eight maps says the most to the particular person you are buying for.
I research and draw these discography maps myself, album by album and credit by credit, and the Prog Rock and Classic Rock collection is the one where the research gets strangest. These bands swapped players constantly, and the same handful of session names keep turning up on maps that have nothing else in common.
This guide is about picking between them. If you already know which band you want, the individual posts go deeper into each one. This one answers the question that comes before that.
Ian Paice Has Not Missed a Deep Purple Album Since 1968
Deep Purple have twenty-four studio albums on the map, from Shades of Deep Purple in 1968 to SPLAT! in 2026. Ian Paice is on every single one of them. Nobody else in the band comes close.
Everything else moves. Rod Evans and Nick Simper appear on the first three records and then vanish. Ritchie Blackmore runs from 1968 to Stormbringer, misses Come Taste the Band entirely, comes back for four albums between 1984 and 1993, then goes for good.
Tommy Bolin is the man who filled that one-album gap, and his credit on Come Taste the Band reads electric guitar, bass guitar and backing vocals on track one, lead vocals on track four. One album, four jobs. On the map, he is a line that starts and stops at the same station.
The Deep Purple map is the right present for the fan who argues about line-ups. Mark I, Mark II, Mark III, Mark IV: it is all there as geometry rather than as a list they have to remember.
On Stormwatch, Ian Anderson Plays the Bass His Bass Player Could Not
Jethro Tull is twenty-three studio albums, and Ian Anderson is the only name on all of them. Martin Barre is on twenty of the twenty-three, joining at Stand Up in 1969 and running all the way to the Christmas album in 2003, then absent from the two most recent records.
The credit that stopped me was Stormwatch, from 1979. John Glascock is credited on bass only for tracks 2, 9, 10, 12 and 13. Ian Anderson is credited on bass for tracks 1, 3 to 8 and 11.
Glascock was seriously ill during those sessions and died later that year. You can see it in the credits before you read a word about it, which is the sort of thing that only shows up when you put the whole discography side by side.
The Jethro Tull map suits the fan who reads sleeve notes. There are a lot of small details on it, and they will find things I did not point out.
Six Names That Appear on Two Different Maps in This Collection
This is the part that surprises people. Buy two maps from this collection and you are not buying two separate objects, because several of the same musicians run through both.
Every row below comes from the credit sheets I built for each band, cross-checked against the other. These are not near misses or the same person playing live with two bands. These are studio credits on both maps.
| Musician | Role | On one map | And also on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nicky Hopkins | Piano, organ | The Who: Who's Next, Tommy (1975), The Who by Numbers | Rolling Stones: a long run of albums from 1967 to 1981 |
| Kenney Jones | Drums | The Who: drummer from Face Dances onward | Rolling Stones: Black and Blue, 1976 |
| Al Kooper | Keyboards, French horn | The Who: The Who Sell Out, Who's Next | Rolling Stones: Let It Bleed, 1969 |
| Ronnie Wood | Guitar | The Who: Tommy soundtrack, 1975 | Rolling Stones: every album from Black and Blue on |
| Arthur Brown | Vocals | The Who: Tommy soundtrack, 1975 | Hawkwind: Take Me to Your Leader and Take Me to Your Future |
| Pete Townshend | Backing vocals | The Who: all of it | Rolling Stones: Tattoo You, 1981 |
Arthur Brown is my favourite of those. He sings on the Tommy film soundtrack in 1975 and then turns up on two Hawkwind albums thirty years later, which means the same voice connects the most famous rock opera in the collection to its most determinedly odd band.
If you are buying for a household rather than a person, a pair works well here. The Who map next to the Rolling Stones map gives you five shared names across the two frames.
Lemmy Leaves Hawkwind in 1975 and Comes Back Thirty Years Later
Hawkwind is the largest map in this collection, and the one people either love on sight or back away from slowly. Dave Brock is on every release (nearly forty of them), from 1970 to 2025.
Lemmy is credited on bass and vocals from In Search of Space in 1971 through Warrior on the Edge of Time in 1975. Then nothing. Then he reappears on Take Me to Your Leader in 2005 and again in 2006.
Ginger Baker is on exactly one Hawkwind album, Levitation, in 1980. Michael Moorcock, the novelist, is credited with vocals on Warrior on the Edge of Time and turns up again in the early eighties. Huw Lloyd-Langton plays in the 1970 debut, disappears for the rest of that decade, and walks back in on Levitation.
The Hawkwind map is a present for the fan who thinks nobody has properly mapped their band. Nobody had.
Why Bob Ezrin and Jimmy Miller Get a Line and Most Producers Do Not
I have one rule that decides a surprising number of these lines. A producer only gets drawn as a musician if they are also credited playing or singing something. Otherwise they are not on the map, however famous they are.
Bob Ezrin has produced Deep Purple since 2013. He earns his line because on every one of those records he is credited on backing vocals and percussion, and on Turning to Crime he sings lead on track nine. He is not there because he produced it. He is there because he played.
Jimmy Miller passes the same test on the Rolling Stones map. He produced them from 1968 to 1973 and he is separately credited on percussion, tambourine and drums, including drumming on Happy and Shine a Light.
It keeps the maps honest. It also means the lines you see are records of who was actually in the room making a noise, which is the whole point.
The Right Present for Prog Rock Fans Who Own Everything Already
This is the situation most people are in when they land here. The person has the box sets, the remasters and the tour shirt from 1987 that no longer fits.
What they do not have is their discography drawn as one connected object. That is the gap these maps fill, and it is why they work as a present for prog rock fans who are otherwise impossible to buy for.
Two sizes. A2 is 420 x 594mm and suits a hallway, a landing or a space beside a record shelf. A1 is 594 x 841mm and is the one to pick if they will stand and read it, which with Hawkwind or the Stones they absolutely will.
All prints are Giclée, from £42, and a black wood frame is available if you would rather it arrived ready to hang. If the person is a details reader, go A1. The credit text is the content, and bigger means they can actually read it.
Which Map for Which Kind of Fan
For the line-up obsessive, Deep Purple. Twenty-four albums and one man who never missed a session give them something to point at.
For the sleeve-notes reader, Jethro Tull or Queen. Dense, detailed, rewards a long look.
For someone whose fandom is really about a single record rather than a career, the Goats Head Soup map maps the album track by track. It is a good answer when a whole discography would be too much.
For the fan whose taste runs to two eras of the same band, Fleetwood Mac covers the blues years and the Rumours years on one sheet, which settles a lot of arguments.
Questions People Ask Me Before They Order
The person I am buying for likes several of these bands. Is one map better than two? Two, if you have the wall for it, and pick two that share names. The Who and the Rolling Stones share five musicians in my research, so the pair reads as one story rather than two posters.
Does the Deep Purple map include the 2026 album? Yes. SPLAT! is on there, with Keith Urban credited on guitar for one track, which is not a sentence I expected to write about Deep Purple.
Are live albums included? It depends on the band. The Who map includes the live and soundtrack releases because so much of that band's story sits in them, whereas the Deep Purple and Jethro Tull maps are studio albums.
Will they understand what they are looking at? Within about ten seconds. It reads like a transit map: albums are stations, musicians are lines, and a line that runs the whole way across is someone who never left.
Is there a safe option if I cannot decide? A gift card. It is in this collection for exactly that reason and it means they pick the band and the size themselves.
Where to Go Next
Start with the full Prog Rock and Classic Rock collection to see all eight side by side.
If you have narrowed it down, these go deeper on the research behind each map: Deep Purple, Jethro Tull, The Who, Hawkwind, Queen, Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones and Goats Head Soup.
And if the person you are buying for has drifted outside this era entirely, the wider Music Wall Art Prints collection covers everything I have mapped.
