Greg Lake

(7-inch single, Manticore, 1975)

The coincidence of Greg Lake's recent passing with the Christmas season suggests it's worth turning our attention to "I Believe In Father Christmas", one of the singer's most famous songs.

The summer of 1975 finds Emerson Lake & Palmer enjoying a well-earned break, following the success of the triple live album "Welcome Back My Friends…" and the massive crowds at the California Jam festival, where they had appeared as headliners (despite a bill that included the likes of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath). It's around this time that Lake sketches out a riff on acoustic guitar and builds a melody on top of it. One day, humming it in the car, he notices it fits well with "Jingle Bells" and decides to turn it into a Christmas song. That's his version, anyway — Peter Sinfield, former King Crimson man and the song's lyricist, claims the idea as his own, and says that Lake was in fact reluctant at first.

Once the lyrics were written, Lake played the song for Keith Emerson, who liked it but suggested adding that festive, seasonal-single flourish typical of songs of this kind. He thus persuaded Lake to insert a triumphant melodic passage taken from Prokofiev's suite "Lieutenant Kijé". At least on paper, the song was ready, so it was then dressed up with an orchestral arrangement by violinist Godfrey Salmon, who had recently played on the successful Caravan live album, "Caravan & The New Symphonia". An ensemble was then put together, made up mostly of freelance musicians according to Salmon, or of members of the London Philharmonic according to Lake. One suspects the singer enjoyed playing games with the song's mythology, given that the conflicting versions always originate with him.

The orchestral and choral part of the song was, incredibly, recorded in a single take. Nailed it first time. Lake had the bright idea of decking out the studio in Christmas decorations to get the musicians in the mood. At first this wasn't taken too seriously, but the track turned out to be so stirring and majestic that, by the end of the take, several of the performers were visibly moved (on this point, at least, those involved seem to agree).

The finished product is impressive in its attention to detail: the crystalline guitar tone, which almost sounds like a harpsichord; the martial tread of the drums; the moog that swells the arrangement and injects an unexpected hint of prog even here; the wall of choral voices and the solemn timpani in the finale.

A video was shot for the song, sending Lake and his entourage off to Israel. The idea had come from Andrew Lane, ELP's tour manager, who had fought for Israel during the Six-Day War. Having been away from his country for some time, he wanted the chance to return, and Lake for his part immediately liked the idea of filming there, in a land of enormous historical, cultural and spiritual significance. When the footage aired on Top Of The Pops, the public response was immediate. Before long the song shot to number two on the British charts, held off only by one of the best-selling singles of all time, Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" (much to the annoyance of Salmon, who still considers it dreadful to this day; Lake, more sportingly, expressed his admiration for Mercury and co.).

The effect must certainly have been striking. Just try to imagine the impact on the lucky inhabitants of Albion of seeing that video on television for the first time.

The opening shot on the guitar. Then Lake, sitting on the ground among the Bedouins. Camels in the distance against the sun. That breathtaking close-up of the singer's face, half in light, half in shadow. All while the lyrics throw up unimaginable contrasts: on one hand the decorations, the fire in the hearth, the tree, and on the other the rain that keeps falling despite the promise of happiness the holidays are supposed to bring, and the child who realises the fiction of Father Christmas, in what is, for this writer, one of the most emotional passages in the history of pop.

⟦Q1⟧

The ending doesn't ease the unsettling mood for even a moment, with Lake wishing listeners a Christmas full of hope and a new year marked by courage, only to immediately return to reflecting on the many shaky illusions of that season, first and foremost peace on earth, closing with the masterful line ⟦Q2⟧ (with his voice splitting in two as he sings the key words "heaven or hell").

After this short-circuit, so affirmative yet so full of doubt, the song bursts into the tremendous section lifted from Prokofiev, while Lake's face dissolves into flames and the video cuts to a series of images from the war in Vietnam.

Lake often took care to point out that the song wasn't meant to be against religion, as it's often perceived, but rather about the capitalist hypocrisies that Western society has come to associate with that time of year. Sinfield, on the other hand, reads it as a song about growing up and losing one's innocence. Its meaning is, in any case, open to the widest range of interpretations, precisely because of its persistent interplay of opposing ideas. Many English people consider it the secular anthem of Christmas. Be that as it may, rarely — if ever — has a song on this theme turned out to be so complex, both thematically and in terms of its musical construction.

They said there’ll be snow at Christmas

They said there’ll be peace on earth

But instead it just kept on raining

A veil of tears for the virgin birth

I remember one Christmas morning

A winter’s light and a distant choir

And the peal of a bell and that Christmas tree smell

And their eyes full of tinsel and fire

They sold me a dream of Christmas

They sold me a silent night

And they told me a fairy story

‘Till I believed in the Israelite

And I believed in father Christmas

And I looked to the sky with excited eyes

‘Till I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn

And I saw him and through his disguise

I wish you a hopeful Christmas

I wish you a brave new year

All anguish, pain and sadness

Leave your heart and let your road be clear

They said there’ll be snow at Christmas

They said there’ll be peace on earth

Hallelujah, Noel be it heaven or hell

The Christmas we get we deserve

(24/12/2016)