In The Studio with Redbeard

Tag: King Crimson

  • Emerson, Lake, and Palmer- Tarkus @55

    Emerson, Lake, and Palmer- Tarkus @55

    Listening now fifty-five years later to the Steven Wilson surround mix of the epic title song Tarkus, Emerson Lake and Palmer’s second studio album released in June 1971, is a revelation. Tarkus followed quickly after their stunning 1970 debut, with Greg Lake’s voice delicately yet nimbly bounding along to Keith Emerson’s piano runs, making it crystal clear that Emerson Lake and Palmer were much less “Be Bop a Lula” in their melodic grandeur and much more “Andrew Lloyd Weber”. Here is the story of progressive rock’s first supergroup in their own words regarding Tarkus, a top ten seller on Billboard  in America and a dizzying #1 seller in the UK.

    In 1971 I borrowed the debut album Emerson, Lake, and Palmer from a buddy, and was fascinated by the epic “Take a Pebble” featuring Greg Lake’s choirboy voice, Carl Palmer’s fantastic drum technique, and Keith Emerson’s impressive ability on a variety of keyboards including the new electronic invention, the Moog synthesizer. ELP were not so much about willfully breaking the unspoken rules of rock’n’roll as they were about boldly expanding the boundaries of it.

    Recalling Tarkus, the second Emerson, Lake, and Palmer album, allow me to share a personal memoir. In Summer 1971 there was a college bar not far from the local campus on the main street of  Findlay, Ohio where the “townies” congregated, just a safe haven for the newly-legal-age hippies to get a cold beer without fear of being hassled by rednecks. There was no room or budget in the narrow bar for live music, just a jukebox. Up until then every jukebox I had encountered was stocked with the Top 40 hits of the day, but this one was special. Someone had loaded up this baby with cutting-edge progressive rock that we couldn’t find on the radio dial, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young’s “Ohio” backed with “Find the Cost of Freedom” barely a year after the shocking killing of four fellow students at nearby Kent State University. But when somebody slipped a quarter in and punched up a new band called Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and their “Knife Edge” and “Lucky Man” two-sided single, that ‘box would rock!

    Photo by Alan Messer/REX_Shutterstock (44517f)
    KEITH EMERSON, GREG LAKE AND CARL PALMER
    – 1973

    Here is the story in their own words of progressive rock’s first supergroup from (left to right) Greg (who died in  December 2016), Keith (also gone, at age 71), and Carl In the Studio. –Redbeard

  • Bad Company- Run with the Pack 50th- Paul Rodgers, Mick Ralphs, Simon Kirke

    Bad Company- Run with the Pack 50th- Paul Rodgers, Mick Ralphs, Simon Kirke


    Fifty years ago, England’s Bad Company completed a top-selling album trifecta with Run with the Pack containing “Honey Child”, “Silver, Blue, and Gold”, and the circular refrain of the title song “Runnin’ with the Pack”. In a previous episode we learned that Bad Company lead singer/songwriter Paul Rodgers, guitarist/songwriter Mick Ralphs, and drummer Simon Kirke all agreed that being the first band signed to Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song label, as well as sharing management with them, was advantageous in the immediate popularity of their 1974 debut as well as the 1975 follow up, Straight Shooter. However, the expectations for this “supergroup”, containing Rodgers and Kirke from English bluesrockers Free and Ralphs from Mott the Hoople, were exceedingly high for Run With the Pack  in February 1976.

    Bad Company’s  Burning Sky  in 1977, and the hit album Desolation Angels  two years later, are included here as well. Also in my classic rock interview is Paul Rodgers’ fascinating disclosure about the time during a Bad Company extended hiatus where Rodgers actually helped Queen reunite early in the 21st Century as Queen + Paul Rodgers , re-energizing BOTH Queen and Bad Company, as it turned out; plus a funny, touching tribute to original Bad Company bass player Boz Burrell. Bad Company lead singer/lyricist Paul Rodgers is joined here In the Studio by drummer Simon Kirke and the late songwriter/guitarist Mick Ralphs for the golden anniversary of the silver-clad Run with the Pack. – Redbeard

  • King Crimson- In the Court of the Crimson King- the late Greg Lake

    King Crimson- In the Court of the Crimson King- the late Greg Lake

    It is the Plymouth Rock of progressive rock, and  more than a half century  after King Crimson  released what Bruce Eder on AllMusic.com maintains is “one of the most daring debut albums ever recorded by anybody…”,  In the Court of the  Crimson King  never fails musically to startle and amaze.

    In 1969 Buzz Aldrin, one of the first two humans on the Moon, described the unearthly sight as “beautiful desolation”, even as our ears beheld the same thing musically from the debut album by this King Crimson boundary-busting London quintet. Led by guitarist/electronic keyboardist/composer Robert Fripp, multi-instrumentalist to the max/songwriter Ian McDonald, and featuring a baby-faced singing bass player  Greg Lake, King Crimson’s first album in Autumn 1969  In the Court of the Crimson King   contains the sonic max out “21st Century Schizoid Man”, the soaring melancholy of”Epitaph”, the tranquil “I Talk to the Wind”, and the prog rock Rosetta Stone title song. In these classic rock interviews, find out from dearly departed Lake, prog titans Jon Anderson of YES and Mike Rutherford of Genesis why King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King  established the benchmark by which all progressive rock would be measured since. –Redbeard  (r) Robert Fripp

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  • King Crimson- Epitaph- San Francisco 12/14/69

    King Crimson- Epitaph- San Francisco 12/14/69

    By looking at this San Francisco Fillmore West poster, clearly King Crimson were third billed openers that night of December 14, 1969 ahead of fellow countrymen from London, The Nice, and headliners local Bay Area favorites The Chambers Brothers (“Time Has Come Today” ). But now we know all manner of rock history was being hatched both on and behind the Fillmore West stage that fateful night.

    The Nice were led by a highly-touted keyboard player named Keith Emerson who had struck up a budding friendship with the baby-faced lead singer and bass player for King Crimson, Greg Lake, as the two bands shared dressing rooms as they crossed America for the first times. The seeds were sewn that night at the Fillmore West for what would become Progressive Rock’s first supergroup a year later with Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. What no one realized was that this performance would be the last ever by the original King Crimson line-up of Robert Fripp, Ian McDonald, Michael Giles, and Greg Lake. –Redbeard

  • Emerson, Lake, and Palmer- Brain Salad Surgery- Carl Palmer

    Emerson, Lake, and Palmer- Brain Salad Surgery- Carl Palmer

    Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s creative peak arguably may have been the Trilogy album a year earlier, but the Progressive Rock juggernaut’s best seller and biggest supporting tour was for Brain Salad Surgery in November 1973.  That legendary Emerson, Lake, and Palmer album  came out at the apex of the Progressive Rock era, and here In the Studio we have my archival interviews with the late keyboard whiz Keith Emerson, the choirboy-voiced late Greg Lake, and the bombastic drummer Carl Palmer.

    It certainly was no accident that Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, and Carl Palmer each had a hand in actually defining the Prog Rock sound, albeit individually in separate bands. Emerson was a highly-regarded keyboard innovator with The Nice; Greg Lake wrote and sang on the 1969 King Crimson Progressive Rock groundbreaker In the Court of the Crimson King ; and Carl Palmer exhibited power and space-filling percussion in the trio Atomic Rooster. On Brain Salad Surgery, no one can deny that the Emerson, Lake, and Palmer repertoire was undeniably eclectic and adventurous. The album opener “Jerusalem” featured lyrics by English poet William Blake; the over-the-top synthesizer and electronic percussion in “Toccata” occurs while re-interpreting Argentinian composer Alberto Ginestera’s “First Piano Concerto, 4th Movement”;” Still You Turn Me On” continued the gorgeous Greg Lake ballads in the tradition of his “Lucky Man” and “From the Beginning”; and the album centerpiece “Karn Evil 9” was uncannily prescient by predicting the Computer Age and Artificial Intelligence over five decades ago. Do not let revisionists try to convince you otherwise: Emerson, Lake, and Palmer were HUGE arena fillers and sales monsters (UK #2 sales, Top 10 US) and quite innovative progressive rockers when Brain Salad Surgery came out in November 1973. Any accounting of Progressive Rock’s defining albums from the genre’s golden age must include this fourth ELP studio album. And you must hear Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, and Carl Palmer tell the story of visiting Swiss cover artist the late H.R.Giger!

    With Keith Emerson and Greg Lake now gone, their recollections from  In the Studio archives are precious indeed, along with recent updates here from Carl Palmer. – Redbeard

  • Asia- Carl Palmer, Geoff Downes, the late John Wetton

    Asia- Carl Palmer, Geoff Downes, the late John Wetton

    Asia was the 1980s’ first “supergroup”, including (from left) Emerson Lake and Palmer drummer Carl Palmer, former King Crimson/Roxy Music /UK singer/ bass player the late John Wetton, Buggles vid-kid Geoff Downes on keyboards, and YES virtuoso guitarist Steve Howe. Their March  1982 debut rose to #1 in America on both the album sales  and  singles charts for “Heat of the Moment”, plus additional hits “Only Time Will Tell”, “Wildest Dreams”, “Sole Survivor”, and “Here Comes the Feeling”. At year’s end when the figures were tabulated, Asia‘s nine weeks at #1 contributed continental-sized sales, which resulted in it being the #1 seller for the year 1982!

    Asia debut sales have exceeded four million in the US, with worldwide estimates close to ten million. Palmer, Downes, and Wetton (who died at the end of January 2017 ) joined me In the Studio to admit that none of them imagined that sort of reception in their “wildest dreams”.- Redbeard 

  • Foreigner- Mick Jones, Lou Gramm

    Foreigner- Mick Jones, Lou Gramm

    This one was a “sleeper”, as the debut album by the new group Foreigner came out in March 1977 without any fanfare. Rock nerds like me recognized guitarist/co-writer Mick Jones’ name from the English blues/rock band Spooky Tooth, but that had almost no resonance in the US. There was ex-King Crimson multi-instrumentalist co-founder Ian McDonald, and the singer Louis Grammatico had caught my ear as a Paul Rodgers sound-alike from a short-lived Rochester band, Black Sheep. But the whole of Foreigner clearly was much greater than the sum of its parts, upon release rapidly becoming the biggest-selling debut album by any band in the history of estimable Atlantic Records…including Led Zeppelin.

    Foreigner founder Mick Jones and original singer/co-writer Lou Gramm join me here In the Studio for realization of their collective dream in the stories behind the songs “Cold As Ice”, “Headknocker”, “Starrider”,”Long Long Way from Home”,”At War with the World”, and the time-less “Feels Like the First Time”. Most of the top-selling debut album covers from rock’s first half century, including Boston, Led Zeppelin, The Band, Men At Work, and Hootie and the Blowfish, all share an obvious commonality of design in that each one looks…well… cheap. Record companies, in their plantation model business relationships, have always charged  album cover costs of photography, artwork, and graphic design back to the recording artist, so a first-time recording artist has no economic incentive to, in essence, borrow money to splurge on their initial album cover. This indentured servitude was applied equally to all, including this week’s guest Mick Jones, then a veteran of British minor bluesrockers Spooky Tooth, when Jones signed his new band Foreigner for their initial foray in March 1977. Atlantic Records showed their support and confidence in Jones’ new outfit by letting what appeared to be a middle schooler with paint-by-number water colors do the cover art.

    Long after the ensuing debut release Foreigner, containing such big hits as “Feels Like the First Time” and “Cold As Ice”, became the fastest-selling debut album in Atlantic Records’ long storied history, the remastered music has continued to be wrapped in that original artistic austerity. Now fans have even taken to employing the latest computer re-tinting in an attempt to enhance the original Foreigner  cover, but you know the old adage regarding the futility of conjuring a silk purse from a sow’s ear: in this case, it’s just lipstick on a pig.

    But then again, looking at these covers of  top-selling debuts , there is indeed a sense of innocence and humility in all of them that can never be recaptured. Dedicated to Foreigner co-founder Ian McDonald who passed away in early February 2022. –Redbeard

  • Greg Lake- Affairs of the Heart- Dallas 1992

    Greg Lake- Affairs of the Heart- Dallas 1992

    Greg Lake, of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and the original King Crimson, showed up In the Studio in Dallas on Q102 one afternoon in 1992 with a curvy blonde (guitar) on his lap, and serenaded us with this spine-tingling rendition of “Affairs of the Heart”. This guy could have sung the Yellow Pages and I would have bought tickets. Greg Lake  passed away in December 6, 2016 at 69 after a lengthy bout with cancer. Greg always was very gracious to share his time and recollections here In the Studio  over the years, as well as his beautiful voice and under-acclaimed guitar work. He will indeed be missed, but you can find the original recording of “Affairs of the Heart” on the  Greg Lake : the Anthology compilation.- Redbeard

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  • YES- Best pt 1- Jon Anderson,Tony Kaye,Bill Bruford,Steve Howe,the late Chris Squire

    YES- Best pt 1- Jon Anderson,Tony Kaye,Bill Bruford,Steve Howe,the late Chris Squire

    The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame  finally employed some “affirmative action”  with the induction of progressive rock icons YES, a band whose family tree has enormous branches. For part one of the best, In the Studio  miraculously assembled everyone pictured below to share the saga, first focusing on the music and years  of The YES Album,  Fragile,  and the #1 seller Close to the Edge  from the detailed recollections of band co-founders Jon Anderson and the late Chris Squire, plus original and prodigal keyboard player Tony Kaye, original drummer Bill Bruford, guitarist Steve Howe, and rock keyboard pioneer Rick Wakeman all here in this classic rock interview. –Redbeard

     

  • Greg Lake Dies, 69- From the Beginning

    Greg Lake Dies, 69- From the Beginning

    King Crimson original singer/ bass player and ELP co-founder Greg Lake passed away December 2016 after battling cancer. He was 69.

    Greg Lake brought his choirboy voice In the Studio of my Q102 Dallas/ Ft Worth radio show one afternoon in 1992, sat a curvy blonde on his knee ( a guitar ), and sang several songs including the gorgeous “From the Beginning”, which appeared on Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s 1972 progressive rock album Trilogy. Greg also joined the late Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer in the links below. –Redbeard