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First Keith Emerson - Now Greg Lake - ELP

Discussion in 'The Watercooler' started by MojaveDesertPghFan, Mar 12, 2016.

  1. MojaveDesertPghFan

    MojaveDesertPghFan

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    Oct 19, 2011
    RIP Keith. Many of you may not know this guy or the group but he was quite the keyboardist. Saw them about 15 years ago with Jethro Tull and live at this point in their respective tenures, Tull was by far the better act. I was more a fan of Greg Lake of ELP and King Crimson fame and his great vocals but he had lost his voice by time I saw them around 2000.


    Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake and Palmer dies at 71
    March 12, 2016 2:07 AM EST
    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Keith Emerson, founder and keyboardist of the progressive-rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer, has died. He was 71.

    Emerson's longtime partner, Mari Kawaguchi, called police to his condominium in Santa Monica, California, at about 1:30 a.m. on Friday.

    Emerson had an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, and authorities are investigating his death as a possible suicide. Kawaguchi told police that Emerson could have died anywhere between Thursday evening and Friday morning.

    Emerson, drummer Carl Palmer and vocalist/guitarist Greg Lake were giants of progressive rock in the 1970s, recording six platinum-selling albums. They and other hit groups such as Pink Floyd, the Moody Blues and Genesis stepped away from rock's emphasis on short songs with dance beats, instead creating albums with ornate pieces full of complicated rhythms, intricate chords and time signature changes. The orchestrations drew on classical and jazz styles and sometimes wedded traditional rock instruments with full orchestras.

    Emerson, Lake and Palmer's 1973 album "Brain Salad Surgery" included a nearly 30-minute composition called "Karn Evil 9" that featured a Moog synthesizer and the eerie, carnival-like lyric: "Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends."

    A musical prodigy, Emerson was born in Todmorden, Yorkshire in England. By his late teens, he was playing in blues and jazz clubs in London. He helped form one of the first progressive rock groups, the Nice, before hooking up with Lake and Palmer in 1970 and debuting with them at the Isle of Wight Festival, shows that also featured Jimi Hendrix and the Who.

    Although it filled stadiums, ELP also was ridiculed as the embodiment of the pomposity and self-indulgence that rock supposedly stood against. When the punk movement took off in the mid-'70s, the band was a special target, openly loathed by the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten among others.

    Years later, Rotten (then calling himself John Lydon) and Emerson became friends, Lydon told News of the World in 2007.

    "He's a great bloke," Lydon said. "I've told Keith in no uncertain terms that what put me off his band were those 20-minute organ solos and that film of their convoy of trucks crossing America."

    ELP broke up in 1979, reunited in 1991, later disbanded again and reunited one last time for a 2010 tour.

    Throughout, Emerson continued to compose and perform, sometimes solo and other times with various musicians, including Lake.

    Palmer said in a statement that Emerson "was a pioneer and an innovator whose musical genius touched all of us in the worlds of rock, classical and jazz."

    Despite his influence, Emerson never considered himself a rock or pop icon and his true musical devotion lay elsewhere.

    "At home, he either listened to either classical or jazz. We never listened to rock," Kawaguchi said.

    "He hated being called rock star or prog-rock star...he wanted to be known as composer," she said. "He never succumbed to being commercially successful. He had no interest. He always said: 'I'm not a rock star. I've never been a rock star. All I want is to play music.'"

    Kawaguchi said Emerson was able to compose without any instrument.

    "He was just natural. The music was always in his head, always," she said. "Even when he was sleeping, you know, I could tell he was always thinking about music. Sometimes he would wake up and compose music. And it was all so, so beautiful."

    Emerson had been composing and working with internationally known symphonies, including two in Germany and Japan, and was about to embark on a short tour in Japan starting on April 14 with his band, Kawaguchi said. His work included a classical piano concerto.

    "All these people from the classical world were playing his music," she said. "When he was young, he was using classical music for rock and now the wheel has turned and now the classical world is using his compositions."

    ___
     
  2. santeesteel

    santeesteel

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    Oct 17, 2011
    "What a lucky man he was"
     
  3. MojaveDesertPghFan

    MojaveDesertPghFan

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    Oct 19, 2011
    Yes indeed - Those may have been the lowest notes ever recorded from a Moog - man those notes could bounce furniture around a living room in the old days. Common place emanating from many urban Honda Accord trunks these days.
     
  4. vasteeler

    vasteeler Well-Known Member

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    Mar 29, 2016
    how is it that i had not heard of his death until now?

    R.I.P.
     
  5. MojaveDesertPghFan

    MojaveDesertPghFan

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    Oct 19, 2011
    May not be many here who remember this guy and the groups he was in - but I was a huge fan back in the 60's-70's (19 hundreds not 18 hundreds). RIP Greg - may you find peace as you officially enter "The Court of the Crimson King".

    Guitarist/singer Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake and Palmer dies
    [​IMG]
    FILE - This is a Sept. 30, 1972 file photo of the members of the rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer,Greg Lake, left Keith Emerson, centre, and Carl Palmer after an award ceremony in London . Greg Lake, the prog-rock pioneer who co-founded King Crimson and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, has died. He was 69. Lake died Wednesday Dec, 7, 2016 after "a long and stubborn battle with cancer," according to his manager. (PA File via AP)

    By JILL LAWLESS
    From Associated Press
    December 08, 2016 10:57 AM EST

    LONDON (AP) — Musician Greg Lake co-founded both King Crimson and Emerson, Lake and Palmer — bands that helped define the sprawling, influential but often-maligned genre known as progressive rock.

    Lake, who died of cancer at 69, was instrumental in bringing classical influences, epic length, mythic scope and 1970s excess into rock 'n' roll, winning millions of fans before punk swept in and spoiled the party.

    Manager Stewart Young said in a statement that Lake died Wednesday after "a long and stubborn battle with cancer."

    Born in the southern English seaside town of Poole in 1947, Lake founded King Crimson with guitarist Robert Fripp in the late 1960s. The band pioneered the ambitious genre that came to be known as progressive rock.

    He went on to form ELP with keyboardist Keith Emerson and drummer Carl Palmer. With Lake as vocalist and guitarist, ELP impressed crowds at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, in a lineup that also featured Jimi Hendrix and The Who.

    The band released six platinum-selling albums characterized by songs of epic length, classical influence and ornate imagery, and toured with elaborate light shows and theatrical staging.

    One album was a live interpretation of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." It reached the top 10 in both Britain and the United States, a feat that seems astonishing now. Another, "Tarkus," contains a 20-minute track telling the story of the titular creature, a mythic armadillo-tank.

    Emerson, Lake and Palmer's 1973 album "Brain Salad Surgery" included a nearly 30-minute composition called "Karn Evil 9" that featured a Moog synthesizer and the eerie, carnival-like lyric: "Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends."

    They filled stadiums and sold records by the millions, but ELP and other prog-rock bands such as Yes and the Moody Blues suffered a backlash with the arrival of punk in the mid-to-late 1970s. They were ridiculed as the embodiment of pomposity and self-indulgence that rock supposedly eschewed.

    ELP broke up in 1979, reunited in 1991, later disbanded again and reunited for a 2010 tour.

    Emerson died in March from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Santa Monica, California.

    Palmer, the group's sole survivor, said "Greg's soaring voice and skill as a musician will be remembered by all who knew his music."

    "Having lost Keith this year as well has made this particularly hard for all of us," Palmer said. "As Greg sang at the end of 'Pictures At An Exhibition', 'death is life.' His music can now live forever in the hearts of all who loved him."

    Lake's songs as a solo artist include "I Believe in Father Christmas," an enduring seasonal staple first released in 1975.

    In 2005, he answered a reader query to The Guardian about songwriting royalties, saying it was "lovely" to get a royalty check for his Christmas hit each year but that the money "isn't quite enough to buy my own island in the Caribbean."

    He urged readers to request the song from their local radio stations each year — and promised to invite everyone to his island if he was ever able to get one.

    He is survived by his wife Regina and daughter Natasha.
     
  6. santeesteel

    santeesteel

    11,713
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    Oct 17, 2011
    I still love listening to ELP! I didn't realize until I read today's article that Lake played with Asia, another album I still love listening to!
     
  7. MojaveDesertPghFan

    MojaveDesertPghFan

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    Oct 19, 2011
    I followed him back with his King Crimson days with remarkable tunes such as In the Court of the Crimson King and In the Wake of Poseidon. I got tickets to see King Crimson in concert at the Santa Monica Civic back in '71 or so not realizing that Greg had already split for ELP right around then when Lucky Man was getting FM airtime - I was so bummed he wasn't singing with King Crimson and walked out of the concert - only time ever.
     

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