The Tapes Archive

Keith Emerson: Hi Marc, it’s Keith Emerson.

Marc Allan: Hi Keith, how are you?

Keith Emerson: All right!

Marc Allan: Have you guys started touring already, or are you just in and getting ready?

Keith Emerson: Well, we’re in Philadelphia setting up for the pre-production here.

Marc Allan: So you don’t know what kind of crowds are coming out yet, to see you?

Keith Emerson: Eh, no, but we’ve been pretty impressed by the current results anyway.

Marc Allan: I wanted to start out by asking you about the technology and how it’s changed. I remember seeing you guys in the 70’s and I think your synthesizer looked like, a kind of, giant telephone board,

Keith Emerson: Yeah!

Marc Allan: With all the patch cords and everything, and…

Keith Emerson: I still have that

Marc Allan: Do you still have that?

Keith Emerson: Yeah.

Marc Allan: Okay, um, are you still using it?

Keith Emerson: Yes!

Marc Allan: Oh, really? Okay, why is that?

Keith Emerson: It’s become part of me now. I mean how could I not use it? You know…

Marc Allan: Well, what else are you using? Has the technology changed greatly for you?

Keith Emerson: It’s changed a lot to allow me to use the instruments that I’ve always loved in the past and link them with what I love about the latest modular things which I have. So, I mean, there’s a Hammond organ there which is midi’d and can play whatever I decide it can play. It doesn’t just have to play the Hammond, you know.

Marc Allan: Are you pleased with the way the technology has grown? I mean, has it grown to fit somebody like you?

Keith Emerson: I am, I thought in a way it would make my job easier but when you suddenly realize with all these things at your fingertips and all these possibilities are there you tend to sort of bite off more than you can chew. And, you know, and it’s still hard. You know, you think that maybe it’s gonna simplify your job at the end of the day but it doesn’t. Your job is still… It’s still just as hard, but I think the sound quality that comes out is unbelievable.

Marc Allan: Well, I guess you don’t know if it’s workable on stage at this point yet, do you?

Keith Emerson: At this point?

Marc Allan: Yeah, I’m saying you don’t know whether the new technology or the new pieces that you’re working are comfortable for you on stage yet right? I mean it’s…

Keith Emerson: Well, I am pretty well comfortable with them at the moment. In fact, really what I’m doing at the moment is choreographing my moves between all the keyboards. It’s not just a question of playing, it’s getting to sort of learn what keyboard is doing what at what precise time. Bit like a belly dancer’s movements.

Marc Allan: Tell me about the reunion, why did it feel right to get back together after so many years?

Keith Emerson: I think we’d all gone through our period of experimentation and had the wind taken out of our sails, perhaps in some way or another. It’s not an easy job for a keyboard player that doesn’t sing, to get some other format together. Because, what I was finding, whatever singer I did find was always being compared to Greg, my other drummer I did work with in the past was always compared to Carl. And, at the end of the day, if you’re writing and composing you want people to hear your music, you know? The outcome of how we got back together was, I was asked to do some tracks for a movie, and they wanted to use Greg and Carl as well, so… It gave us a good opportunity to listen to what each other’d been doing and writing. We swapped ideas and probably did about five or six tracks, which Victory Records got to hear, and we were offered a record deal.

Marc Allan: When people, you were working with other people and they would constantly compare to Greg and Carl, did that get frustrating for you? Were you working with anybody who you thought “Boy this is really it.” And people would just say “Jeez, well, it’s not Emerson, Lake, Palmer.”

Keith Emerson: Yes, it was frustrating. I thing that if I’d have stuck it out, it might have come to some fruition, but, you know, I know that when Phil Collins went and did his solo thing with Genesis it took him a good two years, but Phil Collins sings. And, exactly the same thing with Sting when he left The Police. Took him a long time too, but then again you’re dealing with singers, you’re not dealing with instrumentalists. Another thing is, it’s easier for a guitar player to get a solo deal than it is for keyboard players.

Marc Allan: Can you put your finger on why that is? I mean here you are, and you know, maybe the best keyboard player ever to come along in rock music, and, you know, why would people overlook you?

Keith Emerson: I think it’s still the stigma attached to keyboards, that it’s still not a guitar and I think that in the age of corporate rock and roll they look at a keyboard and they say “No, this still doesn’t have much of a place in this business.” I think there’s still that stigma attached to the keyboards. It tends to belong more to jazz, to classical, than it does to rock and roll. People just haven’t… Guys that sit behind their desk at record companies, I just don’t think they’ve got any understanding. You know, I mean it comes from experience. Whenever I’ve met any of these record executives, the only thing they remember is, what they thought was great was me spinning ’round on the piano. You know?

Marc Allan: Well I must admit, I enjoyed that myself.

Keith Emerson: Well I enjoyed it too, but you know.

Marc Allan: But there were…

Keith Emerson: I wrote a few cheers in my time, you know?

Marc Allan: Yeah… But there was so much more to it than that.

Keith Emerson: Yeah, I know.

Marc Allan: You mentioned classical, and I guess, you know, you guys were kinda the forerunners, or the greatest practitioners of what became known as classical rock.

Keith Emerson: Yeah, well I think if I can sort of develop what I just said there.

Marc Allan: Sure.

Keith Emerson: If you think of the saxophone as an instrument, the weird thing about it is you can’t imagine the saxophone is actually used in classical music. You see, that, that’s what really I’m trying to get at. When you see a sax player, you immediately go, “Oh, jazz.” Right? If you put the saxophone in a classical orchestra you go “You can’t do that!” And I think the keyboards have got that same sort of stigma. It’s like, “Yeah keyboards are all right in a jazz group or in a cocktail lounge, but in rock and roll it’s not there, guitars are rock and roll.” I disagree, you know, but bit of a heavy job on my hands to tell them otherwise.

Marc Allan: I just remember when you guys were very prominent, and Yes was very prominent, we spent a lot of time, my friends and us would spend a lot of time talking about, you know, comparing you and Wakemen, and you know, the merits of both, and that kind of thing. We never thought anything that keyboards didn’t belong in rock and roll.

Keith Emerson: Yeah

Marc Allan: Then again we didn’t run record companies, so…

Keith Emerson: Right

Marc Allan: Yeah Did you ever feel any type of competition like that between you and Rick Wakeman, or anyone else that was prominent at that time?

Keith Emerson: I think I was aware of the fact that there were other keyboard players that figured they were being competitive with me, but I, only what I read in musical publication. I don’t know whether certain keyboard players were misquoted or what, but when you read something by a keyboard player, and when he’s asked if he’s actually listened to me, and he’s denied that, and he’s gone on the stage and he’s wearing capes and he’s playing the organ either side… You go, “Come on, you’ve got to have seen that.” Please do me a favor. That doesn’t get to me, I just feel it’s pretty sad. I think they just… Why don’t they be honest and say “Yeah they have heard it.” Or they don’t like it, or what, you know. But to actually deny my mere existence, I’ve got a bit p’d off about that.

Marc Allan: In making the new record, how much did you think about balancing what the old ELP fans would want with the need to sound contemporary?

Keith Emerson: No, because I think we could only do what we feel comfortable with doing. And with the three of us, we tend to throw all the ideas into this melting pot. I think the beginning I was trying to become more contemporary with my musical ideas with Greg, but at the end of the day Greg still has to sing it, and he has to feel comfortable with it. And I didn’t really want to get into this whole sort of ego challenging situation and say, “Look, you really must try this.” Push, push, push, you know? Thing is you can’t push Greg at all, and it’s best not to. He’s much better if you leave him on his own to do what he feels like he can feel good at, and play what he really wants to play. So, I think we left it at that. I just said, “Well if you don’t like that, what about this?” You know, and we became more relaxed and a lot of on this black moon album was composed in the studio amongst the three of us. Rather than, as it used to be in the 70’s, I would write a lot of material on my own, and then arrange a rehearsal with the band and teach it to them, and they’d pull it apart. It was like, it was very hard in those 70’s days to, having spent a lot of time writing, and then you take it to them and they completely pull it apart. Well, when you think you’ve written the best thing you’ve ever done and it’s all changed, you know. So, I wasn’t about to get into that this time.

Marc Allan: Over the years, you guys have taken your share of shots from critics for being, you know, whatever, ponderous, excessive, whatever words they want to use, but I’m thinking it must have been very different on the inside. And I’m wondering, were you thinking, as you were creating the music, that, you know, you’re basically trying to create some sort of symphonies for rock fans?

Keith Emerson: In the 70s?

Marc Allan: Yeah

Keith Emerson: Yeah, see the thing with keyboards is that they don’t resonate like a guitar resonates. And playing hooks on a guitar, I mean, they sound good doing that. You can play hooks on keyboards obviously, but the guitar has this ringing thing. So, to compensate for the volume of… The sheer volume of sound that the guitar can make, I tend to compensate with getting sheer volume of musical ideas. All the time the textures were changing to maintain the interest. And also, I think the reason ELP’s music was so eclectic was that we just didn’t want to stick to one particular style. We were full of surprises, musical surprises.

Marc Allan: Did you feel like they were symphonies, or symphonic, or that it was only marginally related to rock music?

Keith Emerson: I never felt ELP being a rock band, in the say, you know. We played in the theater of rock, and we used a lot of the vehicles to do that but it was still very much the same way really. We just do what we feel we have to do. And I do like the symphonic form when it comes to writing conceptual pieces, but I don’t use it the same way as the classical musicians use. I like a melody to develop and go through modulation. I like exploring different ways of playing a scene. Very much the same way as jazz musicians like to take old songs and put some different chord shapes behind them, and you listen to it in a completely different way. You know, I find that fascinating.

Marc Allan: I always felt like Emerson, Lake, and Palmer was a teaching band in a sense that I learned a lot about music. Not just your music, but other people’s music by what you did. I mean, Pictures at an Exhibition for example. I mean, I’d listen to that then I’d, you know, go back and pick up Mussorgsky and see what, you know, how it compared.

Keith Emerson: Yeah, well, I mean that wasn’t our intention, but the reason why ELP did that really is because we actually liked the tunes. It’s pretty simple really, we just, I had never heard Pictures at an Exhibition until I went to a concert hall in England, and that was on the agenda for the orchestra to play. And, I really liked, it’s full of great melodies. And I wanted to play those, and so did Greg and Carl. So that was really the reason, it wasn’t really a question of, “Gosh we’ve got to do this.” I think in a way it was like we were saying to the audience, “Have you heard this piece?” And I’m sure a lot of them probably had, but I hadn’t so that was interesting.

Marc Allan: Yeah, how are we doing time wise, you still okay?

Keith Emerson: It’s fine, actually I’ve got someone at the door, can you hold?

Marc Allan: Okay sure.

Keith Emerson: Okay.

Marc Allan: Okay good.

Keith Emerson: Well, I can tell you, I don’t think I knew anybody that knew that piece of music at the time, so it was a learning experience for all of us. But, you know, and this is just a minor trivial thing, but at the beginning of the record he says, “It’s Greg, we’re going to give you Pictures at an Exhibition.”

Keith Emerson: That’s me.

Marc Allan:  Oh that’s you, okay. And the audience goes nuts. How did they know that you were going to do that? Had you been doing that piece?

Keith Emerson: We had actually, right from our first concert which was the Isle of White Festival. We finished off the Isle of White Festival with Pictures at an Exhibition. Plus the fact that we had cannons on stage, and we blew the place up.

Marc Allan:  Yeah.

Keith Emerson:  So all of this got around. It was becoming our signature tune sort of thing or one of them, and we’d gone up and down England playing it and the fans had followed us, and when we recorded it at the New Castle City Hall, it’s only about 2000 seater. And New Castle was a very, very big territory for us. When I had the band called The Nice, we always went down very well in New Castle. So, I think that’s one of the reasons why we chose New Castle to record because they were a very responsive crowd.

Marc Allan: Alright, so here we were, and you’re teaching a lot of people about music whether it’s intentional or not, and there are other groups following your lead, and people were learning about music, I think, in a whole other way that doesn’t exist anymore. What happened to, I guess, what we used to call classical rock?

Keith Emerson:  Well, I don’t know. I mean, there was a band called Sky that had a pretty good attempt at doing it. I don’t know, I think there’s been a swing away from melody with record companies changing. They want a fast turnover; I think it’s damaged music considerably, really has. I hope the wheel has turned full circle now, or it’s going to turn full circle. Because I think people do wanna listen to a melody. Majority of the stuff that you listen to on contemporary hit radio, there’s not a lot of melody there, really, it’s almost like the younger generation is saying, “If you’ve got a song, you can’t sing it, you’ve got to have a rhythm, you’ve got to dance to it.” I think this is whole reflection on the way kids are. I mean, I don’t mind rap, and I think it’s a great form to exercise in the street, but to market it as a musical product is different, you know. I don’t mind it at all; I’m not putting it down. I just think kids want something so easy, and just laid on the table, that’s effortless. I mean, the idea of a kid sort of sitting down at a musical instrument and learning it properly is just, it doesn’t go along with Nintendo GameBoys, you know? It’s a shame, it’s frustrating.

Marc Allan: I think everybody feels very attached to the kind of music that the grew up with, and since I grew up with the music that Emerson, Lake, and Palmer played, I feel like that’s the best music there was, and, you know, people ought to appreciate it.

Keith Emerson: Yeah. But I mean, you can see why, when it’s rammed in your face all the time, you’ve got like a boy growing up and he wants to attract a female, and he sees on MTV that, you know, you wear your baseball cap back to front, and you go skipping and dancing, and you get lots of chicks. Like in my time, it was a question of, like, you’d impress them by playing some good jazz runs. And you could actually say, “Oh, you’ve been listening to Miles?” You know, “Yeah.” There’s a lot more depth there, you know what I mean?

Marc Allan: Yes, I know exactly what you mean, which sort of brings, goes right into my next question which is can Emerson, Lake, and Palmer make inroads into radio and audiences in 1992?

Keith Emerson: We’re just about to find out.

Marc Allan: Yeah, I just wonder if you’re going to get a lot of people like me who want to see you again, who obviously haven’t been able to see you in 15 years or so, or are you going to get new people, saying, “Wow, I’ve heard of this group, I wanna come out and see!” For the people who remember your piano spinning, and organ stabbing, and Carl’s rotating drum kit, and Greg’s standing on an oriental rug, will they be getting the same kind of show this time?

Keith Emerson: You’re going to have to come and see it. We’re still working on that.

Marc Allan: Uh-huh, oh okay, so it’s still up in the air at this point?

Keith Emerson: Yeah.

Marc Allan: Um, would you tell me a little bit about some of the projects you did since Emmerson, Lake, and Palmer broke up and specifically the ones that you’re most proud of?

Keith Emerson: I mean, some of the music I wrote for films I’m very proud of. Night Hawks, and a lot of music I did in Italy. That’s stuff I’m going to be remastering soon anyway, and releasing.

Marc Allan: And finally, is there anything else you want me to tell people about you or Emmerson, Lake, and Palmer, or the record or anything that we haven’t touched on?

Keith Emerson: Well just that ELP are alive and well.

Marc Allan: Yeah

Keith Emerson: And, getting ready do it.

Marc Allan: And young too, I was looking just up in some rock and roll reference books, and you guys are young yet. I think everybody has this impression that if you played in the 70s that you’re about 70 years old now right?

Keith Emerson: Oh, right, yeah…

Marc Allan: That’s not true at all, so… Anyway, I appreciate your time. I’m real excited that you guys are back. I’m looking forward to seeing you.

Keith Emerson:  Great!

Marc Allan: Okay, thanks a lot Keith.

Keith Emerson: Thanks a lot.

Marc Allan: Take care, bye-bye.

Keith Emerson:  Bye!