Greg Lake Pg. 2

   The 1970s

Not long after leaving King Crimson, Greg received another telephone call that would alter the course of his career. Keyboard virtuoso Keith Emerson had recently departed The Nice and was looking to form a new group. Emerson admired Greg's singing, songwriting, and musicianship, believing he could provide the melodic balance needed for a band built around ambitious compositions and technical virtuosity. Greg immediately recognized the opportunity. Having just left one groundbreaking band, he now had the chance to help build another from the ground up.

The two musicians soon invited drummer Carl Palmer, who had made his name with Atomic Rooster after earlier work with The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Although each was already highly respected, none could have predicted how quickly the trio would become one of rock's premier supergroups.

Before recording a single album, Emerson, Lake & Palmer made its public debut at the Isle of Wight Festival in August 1970 before an audience estimated at more than half a million people. Standing before one of the largest crowds in rock history, the trio unveiled music unlike anything most listeners had ever experienced. Classical themes, jazz influences, extended improvisation, and powerful rock instrumentation combined to create a sound that was simultaneously sophisticated and accessible.

Their self-titled debut album followed later that year and became an immediate success. While Keith Emerson's dazzling keyboard work and Carl Palmer's athletic drumming naturally attracted attention, Greg quietly became the band's emotional center. His warm baritone voice grounded even the most complex compositions, while his songwriting ensured the albums contained memorable melodies alongside instrumental brilliance.

No song demonstrated that better than "Lucky Man." Greg had written it years earlier as a teenager, never imagining it would become one of Emerson, Lake & Palmer's defining recordings. Its simple acoustic guitar accompaniment reflected the instrument he had loved since childhood, while Emerson's revolutionary Moog synthesizer solo transformed the gentle folk-inspired ballad into something unmistakably modern. The contrast perfectly captured the band's identity: tradition meeting innovation.

Although Greg was now known primarily as ELP's bassist, the role never fully reflected his musical background. He remained a guitarist at heart and regularly returned to acoustic guitar whenever the songs called for it. Rather than being confined to one instrument, he became the member who most naturally bridged the band's technical ambitions with its emotional core.

The trio's momentum accelerated in 1971 with Tarkus. The album's opening twenty-minute suite demonstrated that audiences were willing to embrace large-scale musical works traditionally considered impossible for mainstream rock. Yet Greg again provided balance, ensuring the album also contained moments of lyrical beauty that prevented it from becoming an exercise in technical display.

Later that year, Pictures at an Exhibition took another remarkable risk. Instead of merely performing Modest Mussorgsky's famous piano suite, Emerson, Lake & Palmer reinvented it for a rock audience. Greg wrote new lyrics for several sections, helping transform a nineteenth-century classical composition into one of progressive rock's boldest live albums. The project illustrated that ELP was never interested in borrowing from classical music simply to appear sophisticated. They wanted to reinterpret it as living, contemporary rock.

By 1972, Emerson, Lake & Palmer ranked among the world's biggest touring acts. Trilogy continued their extraordinary run of successful albums and featured "From the Beginning," one of Greg's finest compositions.

Built around delicate acoustic guitar, understated bass, and one of his most heartfelt vocal performances, the song revealed everything that made Greg unique. While Emerson and Palmer often pushed toward greater complexity, Greg consistently reminded listeners that simplicity, when written well, could be just as powerful. "From the Beginning" became one of ELP's biggest hits and remains one of the defining songs of Greg's career.

As the band's popularity grew, so did its live productions. Emerson's rotating piano, towering banks of synthesizers, Palmer's massive drum kits, and elaborate lighting systems turned every concert into a theatrical event. Yet amid the spectacle, Greg usually stood quietly with his bass or acoustic guitar, allowing the music rather than his stage antics to command attention. His calm presence provided an important visual and musical counterbalance to Emerson's energetic performances.

In 1973, ELP reached what many fans consider its artistic peak with Brain Salad Surgery. The album featured Greg's beautiful ballad "Still... You Turn Me On" alongside the epic "Karn Evil 9." Once again, Greg's songwriting demonstrated that emotional intimacy could coexist with progressive rock's grandest ambitions.

The accompanying world tour became one of the most elaborate productions ever attempted by a rock band. Rather than traveling with the relatively straightforward stage setup used by most touring acts, Emerson, Lake & Palmer carried enormous banks of synthesizers and keyboards, Carl Palmer's massive drum kit, elaborate lighting systems, rotating and suspended pianos for Keith Emerson's theatrical performances, and enough sound and staging equipment to fill fleets of trucks. Hundreds of crew members were needed to transport, assemble, operate, and dismantle the production from city to city. The result was one of the most spectacular live shows of the decade, but it came at an enormous financial cost. Even sold-out arenas sometimes struggled to generate enough revenue to offset the sheer expense of moving such a massive production around the world.

Seeking greater artistic independence, the trio established Manticore Records. The label gave them greater creative control and provided opportunities for other artists, but running a record company proved considerably more difficult than making records. Administrative responsibilities and financial pressures gradually added new strains to an already demanding schedule.

Greg also pursued music outside ELP. In 1975, he released the solo single "I Believe in Father Christmas." Far from being a traditional holiday celebration, the song reflected on the contrast between childhood innocence and adult reality. Featuring orchestral arrangements adapted from Sergei Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé Suite, it became an international hit and has remained a seasonal favorite ever since. Decades later, many listeners continue to discover Greg through that single before exploring the rest of his remarkable career.

By the middle of the decade, however, changing musical tastes were becoming impossible to ignore. Punk rock challenged the elaborate productions and extended compositions that had defined progressive rock's golden era. Emerson, Lake & Palmer remained enormously successful, but the musical landscape around them was changing rapidly.

In 1977, the trio embarked on its most ambitious studio undertaking, Works Volume 1. Rather than functioning as a conventional group album, each member was given an entire album side to present his own compositions before joining together for a fourth side recorded collectively. Greg's section emphasized strong songwriting and melodic craftsmanship, highlighting the qualities that had always distinguished him within the trio.

The subsequent Works tour expanded the band's ambitions even further by adding a full symphony orchestra to the concerts. Artistically, the performances were spectacular. Financially, they became one of the costliest undertakings in rock history. Mounting expenses eventually forced the orchestra to be dismissed before the tour concluded, leaving the trio to finish the remaining dates alone. Greg later reflected that although the concerts had been musically rewarding, they illustrated the limits of even the most successful rock bands' resources.

Love Beach, released in 1978, reflected a band struggling against exhaustion, changing musical trends, and growing internal frustrations. Neither the album nor its accompanying promotion matched the creative heights ELP had reached earlier in the decade. By the end of 1979, the trio quietly went its separate ways.

For Greg, the decade had been extraordinary. In just ten years he had helped create two of progressive rock's defining bands, recorded several of the genre's greatest albums, written enduring classics including "Lucky Man," "From the Beginning," and "Still... You Turn Me On," and established himself as one of rock's most recognizable voices.

The 1980s would present a very different challenge. Rather than helping invent a musical movement, Greg would have to find his place in a world that had largely moved beyond it.

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