Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [24]
‘em, they’re no more important than Davison and Jackson were in the Nice. All Emerson really needs is Emerson.”
Which sure shows where that piano-pounder's head is at: that review was not only favorable, but went so far as to paint said keyboarder an even loftier genius than he must conceive himself, shunting L&P off to the sidecar. Some people just don’t know how to accept worship gracefully, but that's okay, because L&P are such good sports they overlooked the insult and not only consented to be interviewed but were genial as chowder to boot. Glad to see there's class somewhere in this band.
A beamy sod is Carl Palmer, in his charcoal black chinee pullover and matching jammerbottoms. Friendly and attentive, he looked straight at me and smiled guilelessly all the way through the interview. He's straight-A and true-puce, as is Greg Lake, who with his babyfat beamer and dutchboy bob looks like a deejay I know.
However I’m paid to be skeptical; prying at the scabs of their real motivations, I wondered oh-so-idly whether they thought of this dream scam they were in as more of an artform than a) a business or b) entertainment. Hell, Alvin Lee and Deep Purple both as much as admitted to me on separate yoric occasions that they were only in it for the bucks.
“It's principally entertainment, I think,” said Greg Lake, shooting me down as ingenuously as I’ve ever been twisted. “It's not art in the same way as painting a picture.” Oh. “We’re very conscious of playing our performances as close to the way they were written and the record was made as possible. That's what the people come to hear.”
Up the people, I say. Did Beethoven give two armpit-farts for the people? Aren’t you guys supposed to be in some sense student-heirs of the Classical Tradition whatever that is? Name-droppers at court tell me Keith had ten years of music lessons when wee, which may be the only reason he didn’t stay in his career as bank teller. What's more, Niester was right: the Nice were at least 80 percent pure treadle for Emersonic virtuositisms with a concretely classical cast. But they never became the popular sensation that ELP is, which maybe was why in 1970 Keith jettisoned ListDavJack, and culled Greg from King Crimson and Carl from (kak, gug) Atomic Rooster so this ostensibly super-groupic triumvirate could begin plotting their ascendance.
Carl takes up the tale: “When we first came together, we went musically for something that we thought was different at the time, which Keith had involvement with—classical music. The first piece of music we ever played together was ‘Pictures at an Exhibition.’ And the reason for learning that was that we could all be together on the same musical plane, to see how we got into things as a band.”
Why not “Pressed Rat & Warthog?”
“It would have been foolish to pick a rock song by another band to learn, so we took a whole work, and learned about instruments and the way they’re used to do different things in orchestras. And out of our band we tried to make a mini-orchestra sound.”
But why? Everybody knows Classical-Rock (alternating with -Jazz) Fusions never really work. Perhaps what really paved the astroturf for ELP was 2001, that dopey cozzed collegiate smoker flick: not only did it star a computer that could kick ass on Keith E.'s in a microsputum, but crafty Kubrick saw sure the soundtrack was fattened with all the glorioski Classicorn any rube could swallow. “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” and Keith Emerson heard the word just like he was Joseph Smith shoveling off the tablets. By the time Kubrick got to Clockwork Orange, thereby installing Beethoven in the prostate projection chamber of next-up fad of trendy androhoodlum, the insidious befoulment of all that was gutter pure in rock had been accomplished. It's worse than eclecticism, it's eugenic entropy by design, and Emerson and cohorts are more than mere fellow travelers.