Emerson Lake - Lucky Man

The Autobiography

Greg Lake

Constable London

CONSTABLE

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Constable

Copyright Creative Musical Arts Ltd, 2017

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-47212-647-4

Constable

An imprint of

Little, Brown Book Group

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

An Hachette UK Company

www.hachette.co.uk

www.littlebrown.co.uk

DEDICATION

D uring my lifetime I seem to have been blessed in so many different ways, but without doubt the greatest of all of these was the good fortune to have met and eventually married the love of my life, Regina, who for over forty years has stood by my side through good times and bad.

The music business is a notoriously difficult place for any marriage to survive, and it is through her good grace and strength of character that we have been able to endure and it is to her that I dedicate this book.

GREG LAKE

T his was the night that every musician in the world dreams about. Here we were, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, the three of us standing together at the bottom of the stairs to the stage, waiting for the house lights to go down and for the show to begin. The air was charged with electricity: the audience was expecting to see the greatest show of their lives.

All of a sudden, with his hands firmly gripping his headset, the stage manager turned towards us and asked if we were ready to go. We looked at each other momentarily, then gave the thumbs up. Almost immediately the house lights went down as the entire audience began to scream. Then, echoing all around the arena, came the legendary voice of the late and great Scott Muni. Ladies and gentlemen, now get ready! All the way from London, England, to perform for you tonight, here they are! The fantastic, Emerson, Lake & Palmer!

As we walked out on to the stage, the screaming turned into a thunderous avalanche that caused the 22,000-seat arena to shake to its foundations. Nothing can quite prepare you for this feeling. This is Madison Square Garden, New York.

We have all heard the line about New York: If you can make it there you can make it anywhere. When you stand on the stage at Madison Square Garden, its like staring out at a gladiatorial arena. Its an awesome and imposing spectacle and the New York audience is ferocious. They have seen it all, so to break through there youve got to be a little special. If they love you, they love you. If they dont, its not so good! But when we played there on 17 December 1973, they loved us.

The Brain Salad Surgery album had been released a month earlier and to celebrate the event we had embarked upon our fifth North American tour. By now the show had evolved into a huge production. The question most bands most great bands ask is: how can we be better? Better songs, better sound, better visuals, better anything and everything. When you play shows in different venues every night, it all changes: the acoustics, the distance you are from each other, the lighting, everything. I thought one thing we could do was to design our own self-contained stage, with built-in monitoring, so that the sound every night would be the same because, if the sound isnt in order, the playing never will be. Ringo Starr told me that one of the reasons the Beatles retired from live performance was because they couldnt hear what they were doing, which became too frustrating. Hearing your fellow musicians is pretty much everything when you are performing live.

That was the primary reason why we toured with our own stage set. And along with the sound, we gave a lot of thought to the visual elements that would underpin and empower the music, such as the lighting and the stunts, including Keith riding the organ, stabbing the keys and throwing daggers.

The set included an enormous circular projection screen, 156 feet in diameter. During the show, it would display eerie skull imagery from H. R. Giger, who had designed the Brain Salad Surgery album cover. There were two sixty-foot proscenium arches, framing the stage and holding 100 spotlights, which were assembled by our crew as part of a load-in that took five hours. Carl Palmer had developed a new hand-engraved, revolving, stainless-steel drum kit weighing in at a remarkable four tons, which by itself took a crew of six roadies over two hours to erect every night. The kit was set up within a frame styled like a Japanese pagoda and complete with thirty-eight-inch Paiste gongs and a custom-made cast-bronze church bell. With the help of our friend David Hardstone and his cutting-edge sound company, IES, we had also developed a brand new thirty-channel quadrophonic PA system with thirty-two speaker stacks weighing thirty-six tons. I had my multi-guitar rack and, of course, my $6,000 spotlit Persian rug. And Keith had a full-size Steinway grand piano, which would float up into the air before spinning around in circles, with Keith still playing it, and then disappearing into a massive cloud of smoke and flame.

That night at Madison Square Garden was one of the shows that people still come up to talk to me about to this very day. We were just entering the period that many people think of as ELPs golden era. The band was right on top of its game from a musical standpoint and at the very cutting edge of technology as well. It was also a time when the band still felt like a brotherhood the spirit was all for one and one for all before individual egos and self-indulgence from all of us began to erode the power of the bond.

We were entertainers. Every night, we would give everything in order to entertain as much as possible, and when we came off the stage we would be so tired that we would be shaking and trembling.

As we came towards the end of the show, we performed Pictures at an Exhibition and during the tubular bells section, right before the huge climax of The Great Gates of Kiev, we diverted away and I sang the Christmas carol Silent Night. As I began to sing, the entire stage fell into darkness and, rising up from what seemed like nowhere, the Harlem Gospel Choir appeared, dressed in their maroon and white robes and joining in with their massed voices. I can still remember the hair standing up on the back of my neck. Just to add to the emotion, snow started to fall inside the whole of Madison Square Garden just as the last verse began.

It was probably the most spectacular single stage production I have ever been involved in. The audience went crazy and we then went on to finish the climax of Pictures of an Exhibition with Keith and the grand piano spinning around in the air before disappearing in a cloud of smoke.

When the show came to an end, both the band and the audience were completely demolished. It was a magical, once-in-a-lifetime performance. I will never forget the incredible reception we received. It confirmed that New York had taken the band to its heart. Afterwards we mainly felt relief.

Aaahh. At least I dont have to go through that again.

I have always seen music as something magical. As a young boy of five or six years old, I heard the medieval tune of Greensleeves playing on the radio, and I was emotionally touched by its magical power. I had heard lots of music before, of course Vera Lynne and all that sort of stuff, which was popular at the time but that piece taught me that music could really mean something, and that it could touch people personally. I still feel like that when I listen to similar pieces of music to this day I think it is to do with the way they are structured: there is a feeling of suspension and then relief, which draws you in and makes you react emotionally.