Watch the Nice live in 1968

Brian Davison was in at the birth of “prog rock” as the drummer with the Nice, a group that in many ways summed up the progressive genre and its philosophy of fusing rock music with elements of jazz and symphonic composition.

The classical influence was supplied by the keyboard virtuoso Keith Emerson. The jazz leanings came from Davison, whose style was influenced by drummers such as Max Roach and Art Blakey. He added a driving beat to Emerson’s arrangements of material by composers such as Sibelius, Bach and Tchaikovsky, as well as the group’s party piece, a melodramatic and political onslaught on Leonard Bernstein’s America from West Side Story.

After the Nice broke up in 1970 Davison’s career was dogged by bad luck and for a time he drifted out of music altogether, returning to the spotlight only when the Nice briefly but successfully reunited in 2002.

Brian Davison was born in 1942 in Leicester, where his mother had been evacuated from London during the Blitz. An uncle gave him his first drumkit, an older brother introduced him to jazz and by the mid-1950s he was playing in a youth club skiffle group. After a stint driving a van, in 1962 he joined his first professional group, the Mark Leeman Five. They were managed by Ken Pitt, whose other clients would later include David Bowie.

It was while playing in Leeman’s group that he earned the nickname Blinky, a corruption of the name of the jazz drummer Art Blakey, to whom his style was compared. Despite the flattering analogy, he had an intense dislike of the name.

The Mark Leeman Five released their debut single, Portland Town, produced by Manfred Mann in early 1965 but it proved to be their only recording because Leeman was tragically killed in a car crash a few months later. The group soldiered on for a time but broke up in 1966.

Davison went on to play with the Habits, the Mike Cotton Sound and the Attack, where he met the guitarist Davy O’List, who in 1967 left to form the Nice, with Emerson, the bassist and lead singer Lee Jackson and the drummer Ian Hague. On O’List’s recommendation Davison soon took over the drum stool.

Signed by Andrew Oldham to Immediate Records, the Nice briefly backed the British soul singer P. P. Arnold but swiftly struck out on their own as prog-rock pioneers. The group’s 1967 debut album, The Thoughts of EmerlistDavJack was steeped in the psychedelic pop of the day but memorably contained an extended eight-minute rock arrangement of Dave Brubeck’s jazz composition Blue Rondo à la Turk, which allowed Davison’s jazz influences full creative rein. Their second album, Ars Longa Vita Brevis (1968), was more experimental and featured rock transpositions of the intermezzo from Sibelius’s Karelia Suite and the third Brandenburg Concerto.

There was also the group’s extraordinary reinvention of Bernstein’s America, released as a single in 1968 and which became the centrepiece of the Nice’s live show, which notoriously involved burning a US flag and Emerson sticking knives into his keyboard. It earned the group a ban from the Albert Hall and at one gig, one of Emerson’s flying knives missed its target and grazed the drummer’s forehead. After that, Davison protected himself with a screen of gongs around his kit.

After O’List’s departure in 1968, the Nice continued as a trio and recorded the ambitious Five Bridges (1970), a suite for orchestra and rock band. However, the group broke up soon afterwards, when Emerson, frustrated by not having achieved greater commercial success, formed Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

Jackson put together the folk-rock band Jackson Heights, and Davison formed Every Which Way with the singer Graham Bell. Both were short-lived and in 1973 Jackson and Davison reunited as Refugee with the keyboardist Patrick Moraz. After one album, Moraz left to replace Rick Wakeman in Yes, and for the second time Davison was left high and dry by a virtuoso keyboardist departing for greater things.

He played briefly with Gong but fell into depression and alcoholism and for a while stopped playing. After recovering, he moved to live by the sea in North Devon, where he taught percussion at Bideford College and played in a local blues band.

In 2002 he reunited with Emerson and Jackson to tour as the Nice for the first time in 32 years, an event that was commemorated on the live CD, Vivacitas.

Davison is survived by his partner, Teri West.

Brian Davison, drummer, was born on May 25, 1942. He died on April 15, 2008, aged 65