EMERSON, LAKE AND PALMER
Emerson, Lake & Palmer were progressive rock’s first supergroup. Greeted by the rock press and the public as something akin to conquering heroes, they succeeded in broadening the audience for progressive rock from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of listeners.
They created a major radio phenomenon as well, penning classic rock radio staples like “Lucky Man” Still…You Turn Me On” and “Karn Evil 9 1st Impression, Pt. 2” and issuing hugely influential albums like Tarkus and Brain Salad Surgery.
Their flamboyance on record and in the studio echoed the best work of the heavy metal bands of the era, proving that classical rockers could compete for that arena-scale audience.
Over and above their own commercial success, the trio also paved the way for contemporaries such as Jethro Tull and Yes, the latter of whom would become their chief rivals for much of the 1970s.
When the band Nice shared a bill in late 1969 at the Fillmore West in LA with King Crimson, their keyboardist Keith Emerson planted the seeds of the group with Greg Lake, who was guitarist and singer with King Crimson.
After the Crimson line-up began disintegrating during their first U.S. tour, Lake opted to leave the group. Upon officially teaming in 1970, Emerson and Lake auditioned several drummers before they approached Carl Palmer, not yet 20 years old and already an overpowering talent, as well as a former member of the Crazy World of Arthur Brown and Atomic Rooster.
The trio’s first rehearsals mostly picked up from the Nice’s and King Crimson’s respective repertoires, including such well-known numbers as “Rondo” and “21st Century Schizoid Man”
In August of 1970, ELP played their first show at the Plymouth Guildhall, just ahead of the Isle of Wight Festival later that month , where they astonished more than half-a-million onlookers with their sound and instrumental prowess. (Click on the link below to watch them play ‘Rondo’)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXPjwyG7sQQ
One month later, the group finished their debut album, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, comprised of their strongest early originals and two dazzling classical adaptations filled with rippling piano and synthesiser playing by Emerson alongside the lightning-fast drumming of Palmer, anchored around Lake’s bass work.
That album was an instant success, rising to the Top Five in England and the Top 20 in America with considerable help from a last-minute addition. Pressed to fill out the running time of the album, the group settled on a composition that Lake had written as a boy, called “Lucky Man” which became their debut single and made the Top 50 in America.
The trio’s stage act rapidly became the stuff of legend, Emerson’s organ pyrotechnics, which dated from his days with the Nice, getting him compared to Jimi Hendrix.
The recording of the second album, Tarkus (1971), tested their cohesiveness while stretching their sound in new directions and dimensions, with a much more complex electronic keyboard sound and a running time on the title track that took up the entire first side.
But “Tarkus” the composition, despite its difficult birth (at first, Lake didn’t resonate very well to the musical textures or time signature that Emerson and Palmer had begun with), ultimately defined the ELP sound as most people understood it: loud and bombastic, somewhat gloomy in its lyrical tone and boundlessly exultant in its instrumental power.
The Tarkus album reached number one in England and the Top Ten in America and it seemed at this point as though the trio could do little wrong. After a couple of abortive attempts, they captured a new feature of their concerts, a rock adaptation of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, at a 1971 concert at Newcastle City Hall and it, in turn, became another major hit. Indeed, as a result of the release of that album, several million teenagers of high-school age suddenly had Mussorgsky’s name and music, after a fashion, in their consciousness, to the delight or chagrin of music educators (depending on their outlook) everywhere.
In this book, author Laura Shenton MA LLCM DipRSL offers an in depth perspective on ELP’s Pictures At An Exhibition from a range of angles including how the album came to be, how it was presented and received at the time, how it compares to Mussorgsky’s original piece and what it means in terms of ELP’s legacy.
It was eight months before ELP’s next record, Trilogy, was released in July of 1972. Meanwhile they toured extensively and made it their business to cultivate the college audience that took most naturally to their work.
Lake never sang better, nor did the group ever sound more comfortable and laid-back on that album, and among the eight very solid numbers in a classical-rock vein, there was tucked a track that became virtually the band’s signature tune, a version of Aaron Copland’s “Hoedown”
The group also enjoyed its most successful pop single off of that album in the Lake-authored ballad “From the Beginning”
Such was the group’s credibility that when it came time to record a version of the first movement of Alberto Ginastera’s “Piano Concerto №1” and the publisher denied them permission, they approached the composer himself, who fully approved of the track that became “Tocatta” on Brain Salad Surgery, released in 1973.
The most popular album in their history, Brain Salad Surgery dominated the charts and the airwaves upon its release, it was also their boldest group effort, offering the “Karn Evil 9” epic that filled more than the side of an LP, as well as the best playing and production in their history, and some of the most elaborate packaging of the fairly daunting progressive rock boom.
By this time, the band had formed its own label, Manticore Records (named for one of the mythological creatures portrayed in “Tarkus”). Through Manticore, ELP also released material by ex-King Crimson lyricist Pete Sinfield and the Italian progressive rock band PFM.
Sinfield’s presence as a composer with Lake on Brain Salad Surgery also helped strengthen one of the group’s lingering weaknesses, its lyrics, where Lake’s use of language had always tended toward the pleasant but simplistic, Sinfield, a veteran of King Crimson, provided lyrical complexity nearly as daunting as the best of the group’s music.
In the wake of this string of successes, ELP released a triple-live album, Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends, in August of 1974, which was their last new release for over three years. It was also at this point that the band members began chafing at the restrictions that the trio put on their individual ambitions. Emerson’s boldest compositions were pure classical music, requiring orchestral accompaniment; Lake’s songs didn’t necessarily have much for Emerson or Palmer to contribute; similarly, Palmer’s music was going in directions that would have left the others as little more than side men.
A trio of solo albums would have been the answer, but they’d also seen how solo releases by members of such top acts as Yes and the Moody Blues had failed to sell in numbers resembling those of their respective groups.
The result was Works, Vol. 1, a double-LP that was essentially three one-sided solo albums by each member and a fourth group side. Released in March of 1977, the record fared relatively poorly, both commercially and critically. Additionally, following the release, the group was never the same. Works destroyed ELP’s unity, and their remaining motivation for recording seemed only to be their contractual obligations. Worse still, they had squandered valuable time over the hiatus between Brain Salad Surgery and Works, during which the public’s taste was changing.
By 1977, the notion of extended suites, conceptual rock albums and classical-rock fusion that were trademarks of ELP’s sound seemed hopelessly ponderous and pretentious, as the rise of punk rock and disco combined to undermine any notion of intellectualism in rock.
Works, Vol. 2, released in November of 1977, was nothing more than a collection of obscure B-sides and odd tracks dating back four years. though it received more positive reviews in some quarters than did its more ambitious predecessor.
Their next album of new material, Love Beach, was later described by the band members themselves as nothing more than a matter of going through the motions.
ELP disbanded in 1979. Keyboardist Keith Emerson and bassist/guitarist/vocalist Greg Lake passed away in 2016, leaving drummer Carl Palmer as the sole remaining member.
DISCOGRAPHY
Studio Albums — 7
1970 — Emerson, Lake & Palmer
1971 — Tarkus
1972 — Trilogy
1973 — Brain Salad Surgery
1977 — Works Volume 1
1977 — Works Volume 2
1978 — Love Beach
Live Albums — 3
1971 — Pictures at an Exhibition
1974 — Welcome Back My Friends -
1979 — In Concert
Singles — 13
1970 — Lucky Man
1971 — Stones of Years (released in US/Canada/Japan/NZ)
1972 — Nut Rocker (live)
1972 — From the Beginning
1972 — Hoedown (released in France)
1973 — Jerusalem
1977 — Fanfare for the Common Man
1977 — Chest la Vie (A-side credit as ‘Greg Lake’)
1977 — Tiger in a Spotlight )released in Germany)
1977 — Maple Leaf Rag (released in Italy. A-side credited as ‘Keith Emerson’)
1978 — Watching Over You (A-side credit as ‘Greg Lake’)
1978 — All I Want is You ( In Germany, ‘Canario’ was the A-Side, ‘All I Want is You was the B-Side)
1979 — Peter Gunn (live)
