Emerson Lake & Palmer - The Punks of Progressive Rock

"The Three Fates", dedicated to the Greek myth of the three Moirai, is the track most dominated by Emerson's personality. The eerie first movement, "Clotho", is played on the pipe organ of Newcastle's City Hall; the second, "Lachesis", is a harmonious piano excursion that seems to bridge Romanticism and jazz; the third, "Atropos", opens with a brief organ reprise of the introduction, before breaking into a duet between Emerson on piano and Palmer, with a lavish display of percussion. It's the most interesting part of the composition, a kind of polymetric latin jazz, anticipating ideas the band itself would revisit three years later for the second movement of "Karn Evil 9".

"Tank" is likewise an instrumental fantasia split into three parts. In the first, Emerson mimics a baroque harpsichord on a Clavinet, over a bubbling jazz-rock backdrop, followed by a drum solo of over two minutes, with Palmer once again hammering away at the snare. But it's the ending that's the most forward-looking moment: while Palmer shows off a martial, ostinato rhythm, Emerson throws himself at the Moog, overdubbing three lines onto it. One marks time alongside the drums, one emits an intermittent drone in the background, and a higher, more melodic one wanders in the foreground. It's the Moog's first appearance on an ELP track, pushing the keyboard into territory no one had dared before. Music unthinkable for 1970, which goes a long way to explaining why Robert Moog himself would later decide to supply Emerson with prototypes of keyboards he was planning to put on the market in subsequent years, clearly regarding him as the best possible tester.

Closing out the tracklist is "Lucky Man", an anti-militarist folk ballad among the most celebrated in prog and still the trio's anthem to this day. It hardly needs introducing: added at the last minute to fill out the vinyl, it saw Lake put in substantial overdubbing work. Neither the electric solo nor the evocative vocal harmonies were present in the original sketch of drums and acoustic guitar — Lake added them to flesh out an arrangement he felt was too bare. Emerson, who hadn't taken part in the recording, arrived at the end of the session and suggested adding a Moog solo. Lake fell in love with the result on the very first take, against the wishes of Emerson himself, who would refuse to play it live for years. Today it's regarded as one of the defining solos for the instrument.

Driven by the members' fame from their previous bands and the buzz generated by the trio's first live shows, the album reaches number 4 on the weekly UK chart (Record Retailer), number 18 in the United States (Billboard) and number 20 in Italy (M&D).

Its follow-up, Tarkus, begins recording as early as January 1971, hitting shops the following June (just as the band returns from its first US tour).

The first side of the vinyl is taken up entirely by the title suite: at just under 21 minutes long, it's one of the trio's most emblematic moments. Its sheer scale is such that the fragments on the second side inevitably come off diminished by comparison, which is why the album, notable as it is, doesn't quite match the balance of its predecessor.

Divided into seven sections, constantly alternating an instrumental passage with a sung one, "Tarkus" is an extremely sophisticated track.

It opens with "Eruption": the first 30 seconds are filled with an abstract choral crescendo built by Lake overdubbing his own voice multiple times, then an instrumental charge kicks in, with the Hammond organ dictating the groove underneath, doubling the bass but also the melody, playing a higher line that at times reinforces the rhythm and at others wanders off as a solo. In the background, staccato piano chords repeatedly surface, underlining the menacing mood of the arrangement, while the Moog takes control in the central refrain, producing a kind of trumpeting roar.

"Eruption" stands as one of prog's most complex moments: beyond the layering noted above, within just 2'20" driven by the rhythm section, the time signature keeps changing. In order of appearance, the trio tackles the following meters: 5/4, 3/4, 4/4, 7/8, 6/8 and 2/4, not counting creative accents, syncopations, triplet runs and more. There's more rhythmic variety here than you'd usually find across an entire popular music album.

"Eruption" serves as a guide for the whole suite: its rhythmic patterns, tempos and melodic cells cyclically resurface in the later instrumental sections ("Iconoclast", "Manticore" and "Aquatarkus"), creating continuity between the three vocal passages ("Stones Of Years", "Mass" and "The Battlefield"), which are instead independent from one another, though all played mainly in 4/4. Thus, the melodies sung by Lake, following conventional verse-chorus structures, are set within a flow of torrential keyboard solos, tumultuous drum rolls, exaggerated sound effects (the echo applied to the Hammond, the distorted bass, the flanger on the drums) and further meter changes ("Iconoclast" alternates between 5/8 and 2/4, "Manticore" is in 9/8 with 12/8 interpolations, the coda of "Aquatarkus" moves between 4/4 and 6/4).

The message conveyed by the suite is no less layered than the music: the title comes from the cover art, created by designer William Neal, depicting a huge tracked, cannon-armed armadillo. The band hadn't yet started working on the track when they chose the artwork, and in fact used it as a source of inspiration.

The origin of the name isn't clear: according to an interview Emerson gave to "Classic Rock Presents Prog" in 2011, it was inspired by Tarka the otter (the protagonist of the eponymous classic of children's literature, published by Henry Williamson in 1927), while according to what Neal wrote on his own official website in 2009, it's a blend of the words "tartarus" (the infernal pit of Greek mythology, later also mentioned in the New Testament, in the "Second Epistle of Peter") and "carcass".

Whatever the truth, Neal's artwork spurred Emerson to put the composition down on paper in just six days, with the exception of "The Battlefield", added later by Lake.

Following Neal's drawings inside the sleeve, and partly the titles of the subsections, one can reconstruct the monster's story: born from an egg hatched by a volcanic eruption, Tarkus battles a series of other fantastical creatures. First it defeats a sort of spider-like dinosaur with tanks on its back, then an armored pteranodon, then a hybrid with a rocket-launcher head, grasshopper legs and a reptile tail. Finally it faces a manticore, which manages to wound it in one eye. In the final image Tarkus dives into a river to escape its enemy, hence the title "Aquatarkus", the suite's conclusion.

In any case, the lyrics make no reference to any of this: Lake chose instead to give the story his own meaning. The battles between the monsters aren't meant to be taken literally, but as metaphors for war, understood as an endless series of clashes with no resolution (indeed, Tarkus's story has no real plot, it's just one fight after another).

In "Stone Of Years" a series of symbolic questions follow one another, ending with a reflection on coexisting with realities foreign to one's own ("When you speak, is it your voice that you hear? Are your ears blocked up?"), while "Mass" indicts the powerful as directly responsible for conflicts ("The preacher said a prayer: that every hair on your head be saved. He's dead. The minister of hate arrived too late to be spared. Who cared? The weaver [falls] into the web he wove himself") and "The Battlefield" reflects on the futility of it all ("Clean up the battlefield and let me see all the profits from our victory. You talk of freedom, starving children die").

Making "Tarkus" pushes the band to its limit: Lake doesn't like the music and struggles to keep up with the constant time changes, Emerson isn't sure about such overtly militant lyrics, but in the end both accept each other's creations. Palmer acts as the glue, thrilled at the chance to experiment rhythmically.

On the second side, as mentioned, a series of vignette-style tracks follow one another: "Jeremy Bender" (with ragtime piano), "Bitches Crystal" (a mix of jazz-rock and boogie-woogie), "The Only Way" (with church-organ fugues drawn from Bach), "Infinite Space (Conclusion)" (a jam built on a syncopated, jazz-flavored piano groove), "A Time And A Space" (the closest the tracklist gets to hard rock) and "Are You Ready Eddy" (a rock'n'roll divertissement modeled on Little Richard's "The Girl Can't Help It"). The closing track's title refers to the sound engineer, Eddie Offord, who at the time was also producing Yes.

Tarkus repeated the success of the debut, reaching number 1 in the UK, number 9 in the United States, and number 1 in Italy (three weeks atop the Tv, Sorrisi e Canzoni chart).

The band immediately set to work on the next album, which was meant to be a live recording of Pictures At An Exhibition captured at Newcastle City Hall on 26 March 1971. However, the band's American label, Atlantic, refused to release it; manager Stewart Young recalls: "The label told the band that record was – literally – a pile of shit and that it would destroy their career. We thought otherwise and released it in Europe, where it was a huge success. In America they sold 50,000 import copies, so one day Atlantic called me saying they intended to release the album. I told them to go to hell. Three days later the president of the company flew to London to try to make us change our minds, and so [a couple of months later] the album came out in the States too".

It's not really among the band's best work, and the tracklist feels a bit disjointed, particularly due to the inclusion of pieces – at times brilliant in their own right – that have nothing to do with the original work, such as the acoustic ballad "The Sage", the jam "Blues Variations" and the closing "Nutrocker", a rock version of Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker", in the arrangement already put forward by Kim Fowley back in 1962.

The album still reached number 3 in the UK, number 10 in the United States, and number 2 in Italy and Japan.

The band embarked on a tour starting in England and crossing the ocean: ELP played in the United States, Canada, and even at the "Mar Y Sol Festival" in Puerto Rico, in front of 30,000 people. These shows saw the imposing array of keyboards used onstage by Emerson take shape: two Hammond organs, a modular Moog, a Bluthner grand piano and a Clavinet; Palmer was no slouch either, with his percussion rig – including timpani, xylophones and a gong, mounted on a giant mobile platform – valued at around 25,000 pounds, a truly remarkable sum for the time.

Trilogy came out in June 1972: it was the fourth album in a year and seven months, proof of a release pace that, just five years later, would already be impossible for a successful band.

The record marks a fundamental step forward on the production side, being one of the first ever recorded on 24 tracks. This brought a notable advance in terms of clarity and depth of sound: Trilogy sounds markedly more modern than Tarkus (recorded on 16 tracks), despite barely a year separating the two, further proof of how, at that point in history, constant technological innovation was driving the music industry forward at a frantic pace. Lake would later call it the album he most enjoyed recording, precisely because – thanks to the large number of overdubs – it was the one that most placed his role as producer front and centre.

The opening "The Endless Enigma" immediately showcases the creative use of the studio: it opens with a heartbeat, mimicked by Lake playing bass with palm muting, followed by the whistle of a synthesizer, a bed of congas and piano stabs. A bass ostinato then comes in, paving the way for the Hammond organ solo, and finally the drums. For just eight seconds, from 1'39" to 1'47", the sound of a zurna appears, a Middle Eastern wind instrument played for the occasion by Emerson. After this brief but striking intrusion, the instrument never returns, confirming the musician's playful spirit. When Lake's voice enters, the song turns into a lament for the end of a relationship, built entirely around the ebb and flow of the arrangement. What follows is the interlude "Fugue", true to its title a piano fugue with bass accompaniment and triangle chimes, and a brief reprise of "The Endless Enigma", complete with tubular bells and synthesizers mimicking a brass section.

"From The Beginning", written by Lake back in his King Crimson days but left in a drawer, was chosen as the lead single in the United States. A sentimental ballad with the vocals made ethereal and distant through echo, it's played almost entirely by its author (acoustic guitar, bass, electric guitar solo in the middle section), with Palmer accompanying on congas and Emerson only coming in at the end, for a Minimoog solo. The underlying idea is similar to that of "Lucky Man", but the mood is less epic and decidedly more intimate, particularly due to the gentler rhythmic approach and the absence of backing vocals.

"The Sheriff", with its tongue-in-cheek western atmosphere, is followed by "Hoedown", a rearranged version of "Hoe-Down", a movement from Aaron Copland's famous 1942 ballet "Rodeo". The American composer, still in good health at the time of the "Trilogy" sessions, gave his blessing to the reworking. The track faithfully follows the melody of the original (except for a brief quotation of the American traditional "Zip Coon", dating back to 1834) and is used by Emerson to showcase a wide range of tones on both the Hammond and the synthesizers. It would go on to become a live staple, played at a tempo even faster than the already brisk studio version.

The title track, opening the second side, is so named because it's made up of three sections. The first is a delicate ballad for piano and voice that flows into a coda of virtuoso flourishes, which serve as the bridge into the second section, entirely instrumental, with the full band: a rhythm in 5/8 driven by a unison riff from bass, piano and synthesizer, while the drums mark time with a relentless double snare hit and another synthesizer line indulges in virtuosic runs. The third section pushes on with a muscular groove, this time in 6/8, marked by a prominent distorted bass, a cowbell, Moog solos filtered through echo and soft Hammond beds introducing the vocal lines: Lake sings three short verses, suspended between nostalgia and hope for the future, which serve as a coda to the broken relationship narrated in the first part.

We'll talk about the places we went

and the times we spent free and penniless.

You'll see the day in a different light

and you'll wake up with the sunlight pouring right where you lie.

You'll love again, I don't know when,

but if you do, I know you'll end up happy.

“Living Sin,” almost a hard rock number in the style of Atomic Rooster were it not for the absence of guitars, serves to showcase Lake's vocal range, which dips down to a low D2 at the start before leaping up shortly after to an A4 (over the course of his career he would indeed reach more extreme peaks in both directions, but it's the contrast of the sudden shift between the two registers that really strikes here).

Closing the album is “Abaddon's Bolero,” a martial, ever-building bolero whose structure is inspired by Ravel's, though different in melodic cells and rhythm (in 4/4 rather than 3/4).

Trilogy becomes the trio's best-selling album, reaching number 2 in the UK, number 5 in the US, number 1 in Italy (five weeks at the top of the Sorrisi chart) and number 4 in Japan, where ELP perform for the first time that very year.

At the end of '72 the trio launches its own label, Manticore, created to gain greater artistic control over their work. Manticore also releases other artists, including Pete Sinfield, Stray Dog, and the Italian acts PFM and Banco.

Brain Salad Surgery hits stores in December 1973, almost a year and a half after Trilogy — a considerable gap given the pace the band had kept until then. The delay is due partly to the launch of the band's own label, Manticore, following the end of their contract with Island, and partly because the band pushes itself to the limit during the sessions, buying up a huge range of electronic instruments and thoroughly exploring the new technological resources of the recording studio. "Jerusalem" alone, just 2'45" long, took 54 hours of work to complete.

A poem published in 1808 by the visionary writer and painter William Blake, set to music a century later by Hubert Parry, “Jerusalem” is chosen for its evocative power, having over time become one of England's most beloved songs, both as a religious hymn and as a patriotic banner. The idea is to release it as a single, to break into a market the trio had barely touched until then — that of the 7-inch single (they had released a few in the US, with no great success, but never in Britain). The media, however, prove hostile: the reinterpretation is seen as an outrage, the BBC puts it on its list of banned tracks, and other broadcasters quickly follow suit.

Yet there is truly nothing irreverent about it: the trio simply tries to make it as majestic as possible, with Palmer turning to timpani for the passages that need to land with the most solemn force, Emerson layering two Hammond organ lines to give the sound more body, and finally Lake delivering one of his most intense performances, launching his airy, powerful voice like a charge over his bandmates' arrangement, at once churchly and futuristic.

Besides remaining to this day the finest version of the song, it also marks an important moment in the history of electronic music. By using a prototype Moog Apollo to enrich the electric organ bed, it effectively became the first recording to feature the sound of a polyphonic synthesizer (unless one counts the antediluvian Novachord, a wholly different era, mechanism and purpose).

The futuristic drive is even more overwhelming on “Toccata.” Emerson is fascinated by Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera's First Piano Concerto and decides to arrange its fourth movement in electronic form. He pays Ginastera a visit, bringing along the recorded tape so as to avoid any possible legal trouble. After listening to it, the composer says he is astonished. Convinced that no one had ever rendered his music so vividly, he gives the band his blessing.

The ELP version of “Toccata” is an avalanche of sounds that seem to come from a fearsome dystopian future. It opens and closes keeping the same Stravinsky-like rhythmic aggression as the orchestral version, while in the middle Palmer juggles timpani, tubular bells and intermittent synthetic hisses, achieved through a set of electronic percussion (another striking innovation: before him, only Graeme Edge, drummer of the Moody Blues, had gone there, on "Procession").

The first original track on the tracklist is “Still... You Turn Me On,” penned by Lake. It's a romantic ballad, with Lake's voice stealing the scene so completely that the sophistication of the arrangement almost goes unnoticed, amid trickling synths and effect-laden guitars, but also gentle accordion and harpsichord melodies.

Lake's change of tone on “Benny The Bouncer” is startling. Up until the previous track a crystal-voiced angel, here he becomes a rotten saloon drunkard, with a tone as rough as sandpaper. Just beneath him, Emerson lets loose one of his most complex ragtime runs, while Palmer follows along playing drums with brushes. It's the last moment of lightheartedness before the tour de force.

Split into three movements, listed as impressions on the tracklist, “Karn Evil 9” is ELP's definitive statement. All their artistry, all their values — or rather all their systematic challenges to dominant values — summed up in a twenty-nine-and-a-half-minute behemoth. An extremely demanding composition, it originally began at the end of side A before going on to take up the entire second side.

The first impression is the most rock-oriented, essentially a thirteen-minute gallop without a single moment to catch your breath. Emerson alternates between Hammond and Moog, with a relentless stream of solos and riffs, while Palmer wears out cymbals and snare with tight, tumultuous rhythms that occasionally take on a martial flavor.

The alternation of dense and empty passages is striking: there are several stretches where the arrangement swells, even calling on a piano and a prototype Taurus I, the pedal synth-bass that gives the whole thing a surprising depth. But just when the architecture couldn't get any denser, it suddenly drains away, leaving only a trickle of synth, or the drums rolling freely. All these maneuvers happen repeatedly within the space of a few moments, succeeding in adding further color to Lake's vocal melody, which is already effective enough on its own.

The second impression is an Emerson piano concerto, with Palmer once again picking up the brushes. Around 14'30" into the suite (1'10" if you count only this section), there's a thrilling variation with a Caribbean flavor on the theme of Sonny Rollins's "St. Thomas," played on the Minimoog. Also interesting is the digression immediately after, where the atmosphere turns gloomy and Lake's bass marks out chords that, if listened to closely, manage to evoke the gothic mood of certain pre-war cartoons.

The third impression also features a prototype synthesizer supplied to the band by Robert Moog, the Lyra, which would never make it to market, but which here cuts a fine figure with a trumpet-like sound capable of lending the piece a feel that is at once medieval and sci-fi. After a long Hammond solo, the piece reaches its climax, with Lake intoning a hymn in alternation with Emerson's electronically processed voice. The epic ends with twenty-four Moog notes sent into a loop, accelerating constantly, as if mimicking a computer glitching out.

It's worth taking a step back here and re-reading the suite by considering the other side of the coin, the lyrics, written by Lake together with Peter Sinfield, who at the time had recently left King Crimson. Unless we're talking about Lake's ballads, it's natural not to dwell on the lyrics when it comes to ELP. In "Karn Evil 9," however, this can limit one's appreciation of the music, whose sound is rather well painted by the words that accompany it.

In the first impression we discover a future world in which humankind, overwhelmed by its own ego, has been sucked into a vortex of cruelty and violence. What's described is a carnival-like show in which deformed creatures are put on public display for ridicule, and every kind of torture is thrown in the face of the gleeful spectator—something halfway between Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" and a Grand Guignol performance. The setting is indeed unsettling, but Lake's grotesque taste tints it with a dark, paradoxical comedy, which spills over into the list of all the specialties of that circus of perversion, from the gypsy queen smeared with Vaseline and ready for the guillotine, to the seven virgins in the company of a mule (we're thankfully spared the details).

One of the most striking lines is "Lì dietro alla teca c'è un vero filo d'erba, fate attenzione mentre passate, proseguite, proseguite" ["Behind that glass case lies real grass, mind as you pass it, moving on, moving on"]. The meaning is clear: what's on display is the last blade of grass left, which thus becomes exhibition material for the onlookers, as well as evidence, for the listener, of the effects an unrestrained human race has had on its own planet.

In the third impression, man ends up a victim of his own creations, enslaved by the computers and machines he himself built—a recurring theme in science fiction of every era. This explains the meaning of the final duel between Lake-as-man and Emerson-as-computer, and the synth gone haywire that closes the album.

Brain Salad Surgery once again achieves remarkable commercial success, reaching number 2 in the UK, held off only by Yes's "Tales From Topographic Oceans," at the height of the rivalry stoked by the British press, Melody Maker in particular. In reality the two bands are on excellent terms, but newspapers have to sell copies somehow. The album also reaches number 11 in the United States, staying on the charts for almost a year, and number 7 in Italy.

All this despite the numerous instances of censorship it suffered. Besides that of "Jerusalem" and the radio edit of "Karn Evil 9" — which, understandably, isn't forgiven for its long list of atrocities — the album also risks ending up without a cover. What is one of the most beautiful and celebrated artworks in rock is in fact the result of a compromise. During a brief tour of Switzerland, the trio had been invited to Zurich by the artist H.R. Giger, who had transformed his own home into a kind of cyberpunk cathedral (the term had yet to be coined, but the aesthetic left no room for doubt). The band was captivated by the place and asked Giger to handle the artwork for the album they were working on.

The painter thus created two panels meant to be layered on top of each other. In the first, an industrial mechanism is fused with a skull, just beneath which opens an empty circular space revealing part of a woman's face. Lifting the first panel, the face appears in full, showing deep scars and hair that looks like a preview of "Alien," Giger's most famous creation. What many don't know is that just below the woman's chin there originally appeared a phallus, which was reluctantly removed when the band ran into trouble getting the cover printed.

Though toned down, Giger's work remains extremely powerful and captures perfectly the sense of tension that defines the album's key moments — starting with the words written a hundred and seventy years earlier by William Blake, where industrial-revolution England appeared as a technological hell.

To promote it, the trio toured the US from December 1973 to February 1974. By now the visual spectacle of their shows had reached exaggerated proportions: they traveled with 25 roadies and 35 tons of equipment, including an advanced quadraphonic sound system, a revolving drum kit, a grand piano that was hoisted ten meters into the air and swung from one side of the stage to the other, and a special lighting rig with sophisticated laser equipment. On April 6 they played the biggest show of their career at the California Jam Festival (on the bill alongside Deep Purple), in front of 175,000 paying fans. At the end of the same month they returned to England, where they sold out Wembley Arena.

In August, from all the material recorded live, the monumental triple album Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends... Ladies And Gentlemen, Emerson, Lake & Palmer was put together, reaching number 6 in the UK, number 4 in the United States and number 20 in Italy. It features the greatest classics of their repertoire, in impassioned versions that showcase their melodic skill and their dazzling virtuosity at its most expressive peak. It remains to this day one of the very few triple albums ever to reach the Billboard top 5.

It's time for the band members to take a break, during which each works on solo projects.

Emerson begins composing an ambitious piano concerto; Lake writes a batch of acoustic songs with Pete Sinfield to be recorded with a full orchestra; Palmer devotes himself to creating a concerto for percussion. Part of this material would eventually flow into Works Volume 1.

In November 1975, Lake released his first solo single, "I Believe In Father Christmas", a splendid Christmas ballad that reached number 2 in the UK and to which OndaRock has dedicated a dedicated article, which we point readers to ("Juke-Box: Greg Lake – I Believe In Father Christmas").

In March 1976 it was Emerson's turn, with the instrumental "Honky Tonk Train Blues": a reworking of Meade Lux Lewis's historic boogie-woogie, dating back to 1929, it initially stalled at number 21 on the British singles chart, but by the end of the year it also arrived in Italy, where, boosted by the publicity generated by the TV show "Odeon", which picked it as its theme tune, it reached number 2.

Finally, two years after the release of the live album, the band began recording new music again: the ambitious double album Works Volume 1 was released on Atlantic (Manticore had meanwhile been put on hold, though it kept reissuing previously released works), featuring one side for each member plus a collective one.

Lake recalls: "This allowed us to play with other musicians and make solo music, while at the same time working on new material with ELP".

Emerson's side consists of "Piano Concerto No. 1" (particularly beloved by its author, though the absence of Hammond and Moog is perhaps felt more than it should be), Lake's side contains the acoustic songs with orchestral accompaniment already mentioned (the solemn ballad "C'est la vie" stands out, complete with accordion and choir), while Palmer splits his time between reinterpretations of the classical repertoire (Prokofiev, Bach) and jazz-rock jams backed by a big band, among them an excellent "La Nights", with an urban, nervy sound (thanks also to the electric guitar and vocal improvisation of Joe Walsh).

The peak of the record, however, lies on the shared side: the three return to Aaron Copland's repertoire, this time choosing "Fanfare For The Common Man", which they turn into a nine-minute technological charge (OndaRock has also dedicated a separate article to this track: "Juke-Box: Emerson Lake & Palmer – Fanfare For The Common Man"). Trimmed to three minutes for its single release, it reached number 2 on the British chart. The album itself peaked at number 9 at home, number 12 in the United States, and number 9 in Italy.

Fulfilling a dream Emerson had nurtured his whole life, the band's new tour was accompanied by a symphony orchestra and a classical choir, for a total of 75 musicians chosen out of 1,500 auditions held in six cities around the world. In the end, the tour's entourage grew to more than 130 people, at a daily cost of 20,000 dollars. Just two weeks into the tour, the financial situation was tragically in the red: reluctantly, the orchestra and choir were sent home, and the band carried on the tour as a trio.

ELP were on tour from autumn 1977 until March 6, 1978, when the final show was held in New Haven, Connecticut. After the tour, Works Volume 2 was released, containing an unreleased track dating back to 1973 (the opening "Tiger In A Spotlight"), three B-sides that had not previously found a home on an LP, six outtakes from the Volume 1 sessions, and the two tracks released in 1975-76 ("Honky Tonk Train Blues" in its single version, "I Believe In Father Christmas" in a previously unreleased version without orchestra). The album, however, turned out to be their worst-selling to date (number 20 in the UK, 37 in the United States and 41 in Italy), sealing ELP's premature end.

In 1978 the three wanted to take a long break to focus on their respective solo projects, but Atlantic Records demanded they honor their contract and release a new studio album. The trio headed to Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas and recorded Love Beach, an uneven and uninspired collection of songs released in mid-1979.

Lake recalls: "After 'Love Beach' ELP were no longer a band with any desire to make music, but a band that had had enough and wanted to stop, yet couldn't because of contractual wrangles". Emerson confirms: "We were weighed down by financial worries when we made that album. I don't think our hearts were in it".

ELP announced their official breakup in December 1979. Shortly afterward came the live album In Concert (1979), recorded at Montreal's Olympic Stadium on August 26, 1977 in front of 74,000 paying fans, and the compilation The Best Of EL&P (1980).

The three musicians immediately turned to their own projects: Emerson composed the soundtrack for Dario Argento's film "Inferno"; Lake wrote songs for a solo album of his own, and Palmer formed PM, a short-lived jazz-rock project.

During the 1980s their careers would meet with varying degrees of artistic and commercial success. Emerson continued working on film scores, Lake formed a band with former Thin Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore and released two solo albums, "Greg Lake" (1981) and "Manoeuvres" (1983). Palmer joined Asia, a supergroup at the crossroads of prog and arena rock, alongside Steve Howe (Yes), John Wetton (King Crimson, Uriah Heep, U.K.) and Geoff Downes (Buggles, Yes): their self-titled debut album stayed at number 1 in the United States for nine weeks.

In the summer of 1985, Emerson got a call from Jim Lewis, vice president of Polydor, about a possible ELP reunion. Emerson and Lake met in London after several years to discuss the project; they contacted Palmer, who was too busy with Asia and declared himself unavailable.

After many auditions, Emerson thought of his old friend Cozy Powell (1947, Cirencester, Great Britain), who had already been part of Whitesnake, the Jeff Beck Group and Rainbow. After playing together, the three decided to form a new trio, Emerson Lake & Powell — in other words, ELP once again.

The band released their debut album in 1986 and set off on an American tour from August to October of that same year. Despite decent success (the record reached number 23 in the United States), driven mainly by fans still loyal to old-school progressive rock, the band split up at the end of the tour.

The following year, in 1987, Emerson and Palmer (who had left Asia) joined forces with Californian guitarist Robert Barry to form a band called 3, with whom they recorded the album To The Power Of Three. In spring 1988 the group toured America playing theatres and clubs, but the record sold less than expected, sealing the project's fate.

In 1991 Emerson, Lake and Palmer were approached to write the soundtrack for a film. The movie was never made, but the band, riding the revival of interest in progressive rock that blossomed in the early Nineties, released a new album as ELP, Black Moon, produced by Mark Mancina, a huge fan of the group as well as a respected composer and musician. It's a decent, if somewhat superfluous, effort that echoes the progressive sound of the Seventies: grand piano flourishes, dizzying reinterpretations of classical pieces (Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet"), and lush ballads penned by Lake.

In 1992 the band returned to the road for a grueling nine-month string of dates across the United States, Europe and South America, which yielded the punchy but overlong live album Live At The Royal Albert Hall (1993). Afterwards they headed to Los Angeles to work on a new record, but Emerson began suffering from nerve problems in his right hand, which forced him to undergo surgery. As a result, the parts for the album were recorded separately by the three musicians and only later assembled together. Released in 1994, In The Hot Seat was met with general indifference.

The keyboardist's health problems forced the band to put things on hold temporarily, before they returned to the stage in 1996 for a triumphant American tour alongside old friends Jethro Tull. It proved to be the swan song for a band that had effectively opened new doors for rock music.

In 2016, both Keith Emerson, who took his own life on 11 March, and Greg Lake, who died of pancreatic cancer on 7 December, passed away. On those occasions OndaRock published two features examining the iconic stature of each man, the all-too-often underrated influence they exerted on the musicians who came after them, as well as assorted trivia. Both are worth reading, and should be considered a companion to this profile: "Potere di un'icona: cosa significava Keith Emerson?" and "Potere di un'icona: cosa significava Greg Lake?".

In 2021, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the collaboration between Emerson, Lake and Palmer, BMG put together Out Of This World: Live (1970-1997), a box set containing recordings from five full concerts held at different points in their career as a trio. Five double vinyl sets (or seven CDs), some previously unreleased, with high-quality restored audio, new artwork and a glossy photobook featuring rare images of the band. A full immersion into the baroque grandeur of a band that always made technical prowess its calling card, yet knew how to temper the grandiloquence of its arrangements and the flawless individualism of its members within moments of blistering, collective rock.

Authors: Federico Romagnoli (introduction; analysis of the albums from 1970 to 1977), David Pezzi (biography; analysis of the albums from 1978 onwards).

Review of "Out Of This World: Live 1970-1997" by Claudio Lancia.