Emerson, Lake & Palmer / YMMV

Award Snub: To some, anyway, the fact that they are not in the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame bites. Perhaps they don't have quite the popularity or staying power as other bands, but there's no doubting they produced some excellent work and made quite the splash in the early seventies. The fact that even if they do get in, at least two-thirds of the band will already be gone makes this extra painful. Lake himself was aware of this, as an interview from October 2016 showed.
Awesome Music:
- Despite all the accusations of pretentiousness by critics, there's still some good stuff that can be found on the band's first five albums, such as "The Barbarian", "Tarkus", "The Curse of Baba Yaga", "The Endless Enigma" and, most definitely, "First Impression, Part 2" of Karn Evil 9 ("Welcome Back, My Friends to the Show that never ends!")
- Excerpts from "First Impression, Part 2" have even been used for the theme song and incidental music of BBC Television's prime-time show The Generation Game — though not the bit about "seven virgins and a mule", obviously.
- Let's not forget songs like "Take a Pebble", "From the Beginning", "Trilogy"... really, ELP had quite a few classics on their first five albums, and even the often reviled Works had their great arrangement of Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man". Their King Biscuit Flour Hour live appearance, later issued on compact disc, also has quite a few great performances in it.
Broken Base: There's two extremes when it comes to this band, either you see them as everything wrong with both progressive AND classic rock in the 70's, or they're one of the most remarkable bands on the progressive-era with their first four studio albums being prog classics.
Covered Up: Most people who aren't classical music listeners are most likely to identify Pictures at an Exhibition with ELP than with Modest Mussorgsky. The same may be true of their version of Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man".
Critic-Proof: Like a lot of '70s rock bands, ELP received scathing reviews but sold millions of albums and filled arenas anyway.
Critical Backlash:
- Even though they're not as popular today there is still some criticism aimed at them. Thankfully ELP has maintained some of their fanbase from their highlight years and has even drawn in some fans in the newer generations who are very appreciative of their contributions to progressive rock at the time and think very highly of their first four studio albums.
- Specific example with Love Beach. Based on its reputation, one would think it's one of the worst albums of all time. The truth is that it's closer to average than bad.
Ending Fatigue: "Memoirs of an Officer and Gentleman", a 20-minute song that has a five-minute coda consisting of marching music with no vocals.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Emerson, Lake & Powell. In spite of the fact that Carl Palmer was replaced (coincidentally with a drummer with the same initials, Cozy Powell), some people hail it as the best album since Brain Salad Surgery.
Epileptic Trees: Given the bizarre nature of Sinfield's lyrics most of the songs he wrote for them could fall into this. The most notable example is "Still... You Turn Me On" which is often theorized to be a love song aimed at a dead person.
Even Better Sequel: While their first album is considered strong, their second, Tarkus, is considered one of the best progressive rock albums ever made, and emblematic of the genre.
Fanon Discontinuity:
- Love Beach.
- To The Power of Three, in which Greg Lake was replaced by American Robert Berry, is not remembered fondly either.
Faux Symbolism: Peter Sinfeld's lyrics have been accused of running on this trope.
And not content with that
With our hands behind our backs
We pull Jesus from a hat
Get into that! Get into that!
- Overall, the metaphors arguably make sense in the context of the song's depiction of the human race's decadence, but they're still pretty confusing.
Friendly Fandoms:
- There's a good deal of overlap these days between ELP fans and Yes fans; both bands were progressive rock icons, and the creators themselves were quite friendly over the years.
- There's also some overlap between fans of ELP and fans of King Crimson, especially the latter's earlier stuff; Greg Lake's involvement with both likely has something to do with that.
- To bring things full circle, many fans of Asia are fond of all 3 of these bands since the classic lineup was made out of assorted members from each.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: For as reviled as ELP was in the west, they have a marginally dedicated following over in Japan. In fact, ELP was cited to be a major influence for the composition styles of Nobuo Uematsu and Koji Kondo. In essence, any song you listen to from Final Fantasy or Super Mario Bros. is, at its core, an Emerson, Lake & Palmer song.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- Keith Emerson's suicide makes the end of "Lucky Man" that much more haunting, particularly because he shot himself.
- From "Karn Evil 9": "Come inside, the show's about to start/Guaranteed to blow your head apart". In light of Emerson doing just that, this line has suddenly become much more uncomfortable.
- Even worse after Lake died later that same year (although at least firearms weren't involved in his death).
- An interview from 1971 includes Greg Lake commenting he'd rather commit suicide than do anything other than music. While it wasn't him but his bandmate who would do that nearly fifty years later, it's still wince-inducing.
- During an ELPowell interview, Lake claims that the three viewed themselves as a "band of the future" rather than a one-hit comeback. Unfortunately, given the band split after a single tour and album, that did in fact come to pass.
Hilarious in Hindsight: The overlap of fans between ELP and Yes becomes this when taking into consideration the bands' Colbert Bumps through JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood, with the two undead servants of Mary, Queen of Scots being named Tarkus and Bruford.
Ho Yay: Some mild examples from Keith Emerson, who described Carl as "cute" and in his autobiography mentioned that once, when girls put makeup on a sleeping Carl as a prank, he started to look like his ex girlfriend. He also once joked that he and Greg were going to "69" on the Persian carpet "for the audience's entertainment".
Mis-blamed:
- Neither ELP nor Love Beach were the deciding factors in the mainstream death of Progressive Rock, but the ill-regarded shift to pop rock, the fact that said pop rock was commonly conflated with disco just before that genre's reputation went nuclear in America, and its timing with prog's downfall led to a great deal of prog fans pinning the blame on both the band and the album.
- Specifically, Greg Lake is usually viewed as "the pretentious one", when he was down-to-earth, humble, and never mistreated fans in any way.
- He's also often attacked as the one who split up the band in 1998 due to comments about his reduced playing ability when it was Keith Emerson who was struggling at the time. While he was the first one to release a statement about leaving the band, it's unlikely that the blame rests entirely with him.
- Really, the band members as a whole did not seem to be very pretentious at all, on a person-to-person basis. They're all pretty much universally described by people who met them as humble and kind.
Memetic Mutation: "THE WEAVER IN THE WEB THAT HE MADE!"^Explanation
More Popular Spin-Off: ELP were much more popular than the bands its members came from, save maybe for King Crimson.^note
Narm Charm:
- "Lucky Man". Yes, the lyrics are simplistic and naive (it was written by a twelve-year-old Greg Lake). Yes, the guitar and vocals are pretty. And yes, it's pretty sad nonetheless.
- The band's music itself. Sure, it's overindulgent and bombastic, but their early albums are awesome.
Never Live It Down:
- Greg Lake performed standing on an expensive Persian Carpet, which was used to cover up a rubber mat which in itself protected him from electrical shocks after he was electrocuted once onstage. Many, many interviewers brought up how expensive the carpet ended up being, sometimes clearly to his annoyance.
- The band only recording Love Beach to satisfy their record contract. To this day, there's a great number of people who still treat is as the Genre-Killer for Progressive Rock (when in reality the genre's decline was owed to multiple socioeconomic factors that the band had no involvement in).
Nightmare Fuel: On the one hand, a lot of ELP's attempts at this come across as Nightmare Retardant. On the other, they could pull it off when they tried, as seen with "The Barbarian", "Toccata", possibly "Knife Edge" and maybe Keith Emerson's distorted, Dalek-like computer voice at the end of "Karn Evil 9".
Posthumous Popularity Potential:
- Keith Emerson has gotten a lot of tributes in the press after his death in 2016.
- Lake has gotten this somewhat too, although he was already better liked among the rock press due to his tenure in King Crimson.
Refrain from Assuming: It's called "Karn Evil 9", not "Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends". And the section where the mistitling comes from is from the second part of the 13-minute first movement ("impression") of a 29-minute piece. It just happens to lead off the shortest track of the "Karn Evil 9" epic and thus the easiest to play on the radio. It helps that on the original vinyl version parts one and two were split across two sides, so part two lead off side 2. (Not to mention the band rarely played the other 2 2/3 movements during their later years anyway, if at all.) Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends is the title of their (BSS era) live album, 2 CDs (or 3 LPs) long.
Seasonal Rot: Works started their decline, but Love Beach was the final nail in their coffin. To be fair, they only made the latter album because they owed their label another album and were already planning on disbanding anyway.
Signature Song: By album...
- Emerson, Lake & Palmer: "Knife-Edge" or "Lucky Man"
- Tarkus: The title track or "Bitches Crystal"
- Pictures at an Exhibition: "The Gnome" or "Nut Rocker"
- Trilogy: "From the Beginning" or the title track
- Brain Salad Surgery: "Jerusalem", "Toccata", "Still… You Turn Me On", or "Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression, Pt. 2"
- Works Volume 1: "C'est la vie" or "Fanfare for the Common Man"
- Works Volume 2: "Brain Salad Surgery" or "I Believe in Father Christmas"
- Love Beach: The title track
- Black Moon: The title track, "Romeo and Juliet", or "Footprints in the Snow"
- In the Hot Seat: "Daddy" or "Man In the Long Black Coat"
  - Overall: Tie between "Tarkus" and "Karn Evil 9", with some competition from "Lucky Man" and "From the Beginning".
Sweet Dreams Fuel: Several of Greg Lake's ballads. "From the Beginning", "Watching Over You", "Closer to Believing", and "Footprints in the Snow" jump to mind.
Sweetness Aversion: Many songs by Lake that don't have lyrics by Peter Sinfield suffer from this, though some of his lyrics, such as "Tarkus", are Tear Jerkers instead. (Emerson wrote or co-wrote most of the music for "Tarkus", but Lake wrote all of the lyrics.)
Tear Jerker: Have their own page.
Vindicated by History: Not to the same extreme as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, and Queen as they still get criticism to this day but more and more people have become appreciative of their work in the recent years. Many retroactive reviews rate their first albums (especially their debut and Brain Salad Surgery, the latter of which is also an example of this as well) very highly and there are some newer fans who put them up there with King Crimson, Yes, and Genesis as one of the greats of progressive rock. ELP's massive influence on video game music (with Koji Kondo and Nobuo Uematsu, among others, citing them as inspirations) also won over a lot of younger listeners who had never witnessed the band's contemporary backlash, aiding their retrospective reappraisal.
The Woobie:
- Keith Emerson has become this to a lot of fans since the extent of his health problems and depression were revealed after his suicide.
- A large portion of the fandom also wants to hug Carl Palmer in the wake of both his bandmates' deaths within a ten-month period. The passing of Asia bandmate John Wetton in early 2017 (interestingly, he also had Lake's role in King Crimson during the mid-'70s) has not helped matters.
- Hell, some even want to hug Greg Lake given both his harsh treatment at the hands of the press and his quiet, but apparently fierce struggle at the end of his life, which he kept to himself. This approaches Stoic Woobie territory, however.

YMMV / Emerson, Lake & Palmer

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