Emerson Llake & Palmer - Pictures at an Exhibition(Promenade & The Gnome)HD
- 11 years ago
Emerson, Lake & Palmer, also known as ELP, are a sporadically active English progressive rock supergroup.They found success in the 1970s and have sold over forty million albums and headlined large stadium concerts. The band consists of Keith Emerson (keyboards), Greg Lake (bass guitar, vocals, guitar) and Carl Palmer (drums, percussion). They are one of the most popular and commercially successful progressive rock bands.
The ELP sound is dominated by the Hammond organ and Moog synthesizer of the flamboyant Emerson. The band's compositions are heavily influenced by classical music in addition to jazz and – at least in their early years – hard rock. Many of their pieces are arrangements of, or contain quotations from, classical music, and they can be said to fit into the sub-genre of symphonic rock. However, Lake ensured that their albums contained a regular stream of simple, accessible acoustic ballads, many of which received heavy radio airplay. Lake, besides providing vocals, bass guitar, electric guitar and lyrics, also produced the band's first five albums.
Background and formation
Keith Emerson and Greg Lake, both exploring options outside of their existing bands, met at Fillmore West in San Francisco and on working together, found their styles to be compatible and complementary.[5] Keith described the first meeting (during a soundcheck) in an interview in 1972: "Greg was moving a bass line and I played the piano in back and Zap! It was there."They had actually shared the same venues in 1969 – Emerson in The Nice and Lake in King Crimson, first at the 9th Jazz and Blues Pop Festival in Plumpton, England,and at Fairfield Halls in Croydon, England.
Wanting to launch a keyboard/bass/drum band, Emerson and Lake sought a drummer. They initially approached drummer Mitch Mitchell, who was at a loose end following the breakup of The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Hendrix's departure to the Band of Gypsies. Mitchell subsequently suggested a jam session with himself, Lake, Emerson and Hendrix. Although this session never took place, it led to press rumours of a planned-but-abandoned supergroup named HELP (Hendrix-Emerson-Lake-Palmer) which survived for over forty years until Lake finally debunked them in 2012.Meanwhile, Robert Stigwood (manager of Cream) had suggested Carl Palmer, formerly of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and at that time a member of Atomic Rooster. Palmer was initially reluctant to leave Atomic Rooster (a band he had just helped form) but was persuaded by the "magic" he felt when playing with Emerson and Lake.
The name Emerson, Lake and Palmer came about for two reasons: to remove the focus on Emerson as the most famous of the three (and thereby recognise all three) and to ensure that they were not called the "new Nice"
Debut album and Pictures at an Exhibition
Their debut album was simply titled Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and was released in late 1970. It was mostly a collection of solo pieces. Keith Emerson contributed a series of treatments of classical pieces (such as Bach's French Suite No. 1 in D minor, BWV 812 and Bartok's 'Allegro Barbaro'), Carl Palmer provided a drum solo (called "Tank") and Greg Lake provided two ballads, beginning with the folky, extended work "Take a Pebble". It was the ballad, "Lucky Man", which was a song Lake wrote when he had his first guitar at the age of 12,[18] that brought the band to prominence. It received heavy radio play in the UK and Europe, and also became a surprise hit in America.The commercial success of "Lucky Man", combined with a strong performance at the Isle of Wight festival (released on CD in 1997 as Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970), brought ELP rapidly to prominence.
Keith Emerson
The band's March 1971 live recording, Pictures at an Exhibition, an interpretation of Modest Mussorgsky's work of the same name, was issued as a low-priced record, the success of which contributed to the band's overall popularity. Due to management conflicts, the recording was not released until after Tarkus, their second studio album. Fearing that this would lead to poor sales, ELP instead decided to shelve the work. After the success of their second album, however, the label agreed to release Pictures as a budget live album.
It was unprecedented for a rock band to devote an entire album to a treatment of a classical work, and Pictures remains the only complete classical suite that has hit the top 10 in either the US or the UK. The album mixed in a ballad by Greg Lake (The Sage), a Blues Variation section by Emerson and many instances of heavily electronic and synthesised interpretations of Mussorgsky's work (although the opening promenade was played faithfully on a Hammond organ).
The band's March 1971 live recording, Pictures at an Exhibition, an interpretation of Modest Mussorgsky's work of the same name, was issued as a low-priced record, the success of which contributed to the band's overall popularity.
The ELP sound is dominated by the Hammond organ and Moog synthesizer of the flamboyant Emerson. The band's compositions are heavily influenced by classical music in addition to jazz and – at least in their early years – hard rock. Many of their pieces are arrangements of, or contain quotations from, classical music, and they can be said to fit into the sub-genre of symphonic rock. However, Lake ensured that their albums contained a regular stream of simple, accessible acoustic ballads, many of which received heavy radio airplay. Lake, besides providing vocals, bass guitar, electric guitar and lyrics, also produced the band's first five albums.
Background and formation
Keith Emerson and Greg Lake, both exploring options outside of their existing bands, met at Fillmore West in San Francisco and on working together, found their styles to be compatible and complementary.[5] Keith described the first meeting (during a soundcheck) in an interview in 1972: "Greg was moving a bass line and I played the piano in back and Zap! It was there."They had actually shared the same venues in 1969 – Emerson in The Nice and Lake in King Crimson, first at the 9th Jazz and Blues Pop Festival in Plumpton, England,and at Fairfield Halls in Croydon, England.
Wanting to launch a keyboard/bass/drum band, Emerson and Lake sought a drummer. They initially approached drummer Mitch Mitchell, who was at a loose end following the breakup of The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Hendrix's departure to the Band of Gypsies. Mitchell subsequently suggested a jam session with himself, Lake, Emerson and Hendrix. Although this session never took place, it led to press rumours of a planned-but-abandoned supergroup named HELP (Hendrix-Emerson-Lake-Palmer) which survived for over forty years until Lake finally debunked them in 2012.Meanwhile, Robert Stigwood (manager of Cream) had suggested Carl Palmer, formerly of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and at that time a member of Atomic Rooster. Palmer was initially reluctant to leave Atomic Rooster (a band he had just helped form) but was persuaded by the "magic" he felt when playing with Emerson and Lake.
The name Emerson, Lake and Palmer came about for two reasons: to remove the focus on Emerson as the most famous of the three (and thereby recognise all three) and to ensure that they were not called the "new Nice"
Debut album and Pictures at an Exhibition
Their debut album was simply titled Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and was released in late 1970. It was mostly a collection of solo pieces. Keith Emerson contributed a series of treatments of classical pieces (such as Bach's French Suite No. 1 in D minor, BWV 812 and Bartok's 'Allegro Barbaro'), Carl Palmer provided a drum solo (called "Tank") and Greg Lake provided two ballads, beginning with the folky, extended work "Take a Pebble". It was the ballad, "Lucky Man", which was a song Lake wrote when he had his first guitar at the age of 12,[18] that brought the band to prominence. It received heavy radio play in the UK and Europe, and also became a surprise hit in America.The commercial success of "Lucky Man", combined with a strong performance at the Isle of Wight festival (released on CD in 1997 as Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970), brought ELP rapidly to prominence.
Keith Emerson
The band's March 1971 live recording, Pictures at an Exhibition, an interpretation of Modest Mussorgsky's work of the same name, was issued as a low-priced record, the success of which contributed to the band's overall popularity. Due to management conflicts, the recording was not released until after Tarkus, their second studio album. Fearing that this would lead to poor sales, ELP instead decided to shelve the work. After the success of their second album, however, the label agreed to release Pictures as a budget live album.
It was unprecedented for a rock band to devote an entire album to a treatment of a classical work, and Pictures remains the only complete classical suite that has hit the top 10 in either the US or the UK. The album mixed in a ballad by Greg Lake (The Sage), a Blues Variation section by Emerson and many instances of heavily electronic and synthesised interpretations of Mussorgsky's work (although the opening promenade was played faithfully on a Hammond organ).
The band's March 1971 live recording, Pictures at an Exhibition, an interpretation of Modest Mussorgsky's work of the same name, was issued as a low-priced record, the success of which contributed to the band's overall popularity.