NOT WANTING TO BE LABELED A “SUPER-GROUP,” EMERSON, LAKE AND Palmer, an aggregation of British musicians culled from three top groups have established their popularity as a new group in a hurry.
The group consists of Keith Emerson (formerly with the Nice), Greg Lake (King Crimson), and Carl Palmer (Atomic Rooster). ELP was formed after King Crimson and the Nice toured the United States last year. Talk about forming a new group started in New York and came to a head in San Francisco two months later.
Keith and Greg finished the tour with their respective groups and then started looking for a drummer. “We didn’t realize it would be so hard,” says Keith. “We went through all the name drummers and that was a joke and they were a joke.”
Finally, they came up with Carl, drummer for Atomic Rooster, a group whose popularity didn’t extend to the United States.
The group’s instrumentation includes acoustic guitar, bass guitar, piano, organ, and Moog synthesizer. The Moog was built especially for live performances but limits the group to playing large halls.
“The Moog has twelve programs to be preset before you go on with the Moog. “The Moog cost four grand and it kept going out of tune,” says Carl. “We worked hard rehearsing for months before we were ready to play for an audience.”
The group’s single, “Lucky Man,” is currently number fifty in the country and their album, Emerson, Lake and Palmer is number twenty-five.
Their repertoire includes rock, jazz, and country fused with classical elements. Keith has a classical background and his organ work lifted the Nice out of categorization as a rock group.
Keith’s reason for leaving the Nice was “because each member in this band has something new to offer. I am quite satisfied and so is everybody else with the freedom we have in a three-piece band.
“Greg,” says Keith, “has a similar sort of background in music to mine. He’s very interested in jazz and classical. We are both very broadminded toward music.”
The group seems to center around Emerson but isn’t an extension of the Nice, he claims. “In the past, the image of the Nice was mainly an instrumental group,” says Keith. “The new band will include everything. We’ve got a good singer who can play acoustic guitar as well and a good drummer. I hope people look upon us as a new group.”
Emerson, Lake and Palmer will be appearing at the Alexandria Roller Rink on May 9. Tentatively scheduled as a second act is another British group, Mott the Hoople.