by Greg Lake
1. ‘Hoedown’
2. ‘Jerusalem’
3. ‘Toccata’
4. ‘Tarkus’
5. ‘Benny the Bouncer’
6. Fugue from ‘Take a Pebble’
7. ‘Still . . . You Turn Me On’
8. ‘Lucky Man’
9. Piano improvisations
10. Fugue from ‘Take a Pebble’
11. ‘Karn Evil 9’
12. ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’
13. ‘Nutrocker’
While some critics might have claimed that we were pretentious, we were not the sort of band that refused to play any music that wasn’t on our latest album. Again, as Don Strike had taught me, ‘Four for the audience . . .’ The best performances often occur when the band are happy playing, and the audience get to hear the songs that already mean so much to them as well as some newer material.
By this point, the cities were all starting to become even more of a blur and, in truth, if we knew then what we know now we should have probably stopped touring for a while in order to refuel and re-energise the batteries. But at that time no one really had any clear idea about career pacing or the danger of what happens when an artist starts to burn out. The whole focus was simply upon the next challenge that lay ahead and how best to accomplish it, and so it was that we embarked upon what was to become the seventh ELP tour of North America.
One of the most memorable dates on this tour was the August Jam at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, North Carolina, performed on 10 August 1974.
This was another one of those open-air, Woodstock-type festival events that dominated rock music at the time, and this one featured ELP, the Allman Brothers Band, Black Oak Arkansas and numerous others. ELP had originally been booked to headline the festival but, when we arrived at the site, it was obvious that there were some arguments taking place between the Allman Brothers Band’s managers and the promoter about who was supposed to be headlining the show.
Reading between the lines, I think that when the Allman Brothers Band discovered that ELP had been booked to headline, they did not feel comfortable because this show was pretty much taking place on their home turf – they were from Florida, further down the eastern seaboard. Quite why they had not discovered that we were headlining before the actual day of the show still bewilders me but they were pretty much demanding that if they were going to perform at all, then they had to be the last act of the evening.
The promoter came over to our dressing-room trailer and explained the situation. We told him that it wasn’t a big deal to us and that we would be just as happy to go on and perform before the Allman Brothers. Consequently, our show time was reset for 9 p.m. that evening.
Nine o’clock arrived and we were ready and waiting to go, but there was some complication with the sound system that had come about as a result of the belated change to the running order. The set change was delayed by around forty-five minutes.
We took to the stage a little before ten o’clock and performed one of the shows of our lives. As we finished the encore of a shortened version of ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, the audience just went crazy. The whole festival site was lit up by a magnificent firework display that our team had arranged. We left the stage area immediately in a helicopter and some of the fireworks screamed right past us and threatened to take out the rotor blades.
At the base, we returned to our trailers to dry up, get changed and so on, and eventually went back to say our thank yous and goodbyes to all the local dignitaries, promoters, festival crew, etc.
At around midnight, the Allman Brothers Band had for some reason still not taken to the stage so we boarded a helicopter again and took off from the festival site. As we looked down, all we could see were thousands upon thousands of people streaming away from the site on their way home, obviously thinking that the show was over.
We were later told that the Allman Brothers Band finally got on stage to perform at 2.30 in the morning!
A week later, on 17 August 1974, we were booked to play at the 24,000-capacity Roosevelt Stadium at Droyer’s Point, New Jersey.
The stage where we were due to perform had been erected on the pitch at one end of the stadium, and the trucks, dressing-room trailers and other facilities were all gathered around and behind the stage. When we arrived at the stadium, it was a beautiful sunny afternoon and everything was peaceful and relaxed. We were told that the sound check was scheduled for 4.30 p.m. and went to the trailers for a rest until then. I lay in my trailer reading a book but I must have fallen asleep almost straight away because it only seemed like seconds later that someone was pounding at my door.
As I came round, the first thing I noticed was that the light had completely changed. The bright sunny afternoon had gone and it was as black as night outside. I opened the door and asked what was happening. I was told to get into the waiting car immediately because, apparently, a severe tornado warning had just been issued. Only seconds after I jumped into the car, I could see a twister begin to develop right there in the middle of the stadium.
It was an incredible sight to see as it weaved its way around, picking up anything and everything in its path and just sucking it up into the air. At first, it was just chairs and odd items of debris, but soon I could see that the stage itself was being ripped apart. Huge PA cabinets began flying around like leaves in the wind.
My car joined others speeding towards the exit tunnel but just as we entered we encountered a blockage of people on foot who had decided to run there for shelter. The cars inched forward slowly as people began to make their way through but other people coming from behind us were beginning to panic. They started to scrabble over the roof of the car to try and escape. At this point, the roof of the vehicle began to buckle, and the whole situation started to become extremely scary.
Eventually we reached the exit of the tunnel and I will never forget that, just as we cleared the exit, we were hit in the side window by a house brick. The projectile had nothing to do with the twister: someone had thrown it indiscriminately at the car. It is very strange how people sometimes react in times of distress.
I suppose we must have driven for about a minute through a rainstorm, the like of which I have never seen before or since. Each drop of water was almost the size of a golf ball and within less than a minute the water was rising up to the level of the windows of the car. We were forced to stop.
All of a sudden the rain eased, and people were soon swimming around the car and laughing. Almost as fast as it had come, the water subsided and we drove away towards our hotel in Manhattan.
When we arrived back at the hotel, the doorman came out to greet us with a shocked look on his face. ‘What on earth happened to you?’ he asked.
It was only when we stepped out of the car that we could see why he was so shocked: the car was a complete write-off. In Manhattan, apparently, the weather had been perfect all day.
We returned to play the Roosevelt Stadium show a few days later on 20 August 1974. I remember how eerie it was when Keith opened the show with this noise from his Moog synthesiser that sounded exactly like a howling wind. The whole audience was spellbound in silence as they collectively understood what the sound referred to, and then we segued into ‘Hoedown’.
The North American leg of the tour drew to a close on the following night. Although no one realised it at the time, perhaps along with it fell the final curtain upon the golden era of ELP as a band with a shared vision.
We would not perform together again for three years.
CHAPTER 11
A Christmas Intermission
After Brain Salad Surgery, Emerson, Lake & Palmer took a break from recording a new studio album. We did try out some material in sessions at Manticore studios, but other things in my life came to the fore, not least the birth of my precious daughter Natasha on 6 March 1975.
It was a life-changing experience being present at the birth. It had a profound effect on my faith in God and gave me an obvious connection to the
nativity story. It is a beautiful and enchanting tale which – whether it’s true or not – evokes the spirit of Christmas and illuminates the good in humanity.
I had always had a thing about Christmas, in any case. No matter how financially tough it was during my childhood, my parents made sure that it was a time of happiness. I used to love watching my mother cut up the paper chains that would later decorate the sitting room.
We were not a religious family, but my mum and dad were keen to give me the best education they could and arranged for me to attend the regular Sunday school classes at the local church. The strict and intimidating approach there – we were taught to ‘Fear the Lord’ – was such a contrast from the feeling that I had at home, which was warm, generous and forgiving. Luckily, my parents were not dictatorial or rigid about my religious instruction. I eventually told them that I no longer wanted to attend the Sunday school and they realised that it was unhealthy to force a young child into it. The freedom of choice they gave me then allowed me to revisit the Christian story in my own time later on.
Growing up, I was deeply moved by the famous story about an event that took place in the trenches on the Western Front in 1914, during the First World War. On Christmas Day, the British and German soldiers apparently spontaneously downed their weapons and started singing carols, and played a game of football together in no-man’s-land. Even in their darkest and most pitiful hour, it was still possible for a sense of humanity to shine through. Whether you believe in Christianity or not, Christmas is a time of hope, when many of us try to put our troubles to one side and concentrate a little harder on goodwill.
Late in 1974, while Regina was pregnant, Pete Sinfield and I started writing together for what would become Works Volume 1 at my house in Ascot. I had tuned the bottom string of my guitar from E down to D and started this cascading riff. It was very infectious. I could not get it out of my head. Then it occurred to me – in this half-demented state – that the melody of ‘Jingle Bells’ fitted over it.
Perhaps this song can be about Christmas too? I thought. So I put the idea to Pete. Neither of us liked the typical party Christmas songs and the serious ones are rare and so hard to write. The more we talked about it, the more we agreed that the reality was that Christmas had become cheapened by commercialism, and that we regretted the loss of childhood innocence. The ideal of ‘Peace on Earth and goodwill to all men’ had been pushed into the background. This seemed to us reason enough to make a statement. The essence of what we wanted to say was that, despite all the commercialism, it would be good to believe in Father Christmas and the magic of childhood, and to have the joy of giving rather than receiving. Surely – just for one day in the year – this was a spirit worth preserving.
At first, we thought the song would just be an album track. It was recorded at Abbey Road on a hot day in the summer of 1975 with a hundred-piece symphony orchestra and choir assembled and conducted by Godfrey Salmon. A few days before the recording, Godfrey had called me on the phone saying that he felt some trepidation about the possible attitude of the orchestra during this recording session. In those days, classical players were snobbish towards pop and rock musicians and Godfrey wanted to make sure that they started the session in a positive frame of mind.
While on the phone, we racked our brains about how to achieve this but nothing came to mind. So we agreed to give it some thought and talk again later. No sooner had I put down the phone than it rang again and I heard Godfrey’s excited voice. He had cracked it! Once the entire orchestra was assembled in the studio and ready to perform, we would dim all the lights and then we would play music from ‘The Stripper’ over the studio tannoy.
‘How is that going to help?’ I asked him.
Godfrey had a friend who knew a lady who was a professional burlesque feather dancer, and he said that he could probably arrange for her to suddenly appear live in the studio at the appropriate moment. He was convinced that this would break the ice and get the best out of the musicians. Given that I had little previous experience of dealing with orchestras myself, I decided to take his word for it.
The day of the session arrived and the orchestra assembled in the studio. Everyone in the control room had been briefed and knew what was about to happen. The studio lights began to dim and the players looked around wondering what was happening. The music from ‘The Stripper’ began to play and, through the main studio door, a vivacious Las Vegas showgirl appeared, wearing nothing other than white ostrich feathers. A shockwave passed right through the orchestra.
The showgirl went straight over to the lead violinist and started to bury his face in her huge breasts. He went bright red. He was very straight-laced and really didn’t want that sort of attention. Which, of course, amused a lot of the other players. Some of them rushed forward from the back of the orchestra to get a better view. And that’s when it started to go wrong.
In the frenzied stampede, one of the trombone players put his foot right through the front of a double bass that had been left lying on the floor. Meanwhile, some of the women in the choir were obviously thinking, ‘That’s disgusting!’
The showgirl was only there for five minutes but by the time she left there was total mayhem. This guy crying about his double bass. Angry women. Men cheering. Of course, instead of perking them up, we had to calm them all down.
So, it’s true, the recording of our pure and simple Christmas song, ‘I Believe in Father Christmas’, began with a stripper, lust, anger, tears and destruction. And the whole thing cost me a fortune, not least, as I recall, because I had to pay for the double bass.
Eventually, we tried to convince the orchestra to perform, just to take their minds off it, but of course the studio was still full of chatter and laughter. After allowing everyone finally to settle down and get back to their places, Godfrey raised his baton and we began to record.
The song was captured on the very first pass and that is the version that was used on the original recording. Great players.
And to round off the song, Keith Emerson suggested we use part of the Lieutenant Kijé suite by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. It worked perfectly.
A couple of months later I received a call from Phil Carson, our label manager at Atlantic Records, telling me that they would like to release ‘I Believe in Father Christmas’ as a single. I was shocked. I tried to explain that the song was meant to be a serious Emerson, Lake & Palmer album track but he insisted on it. The research they had done had convinced them that it would do well on radio and it was worth giving it a shot. Reluctantly, I agreed to go along with it. It ended up as a solo record released under my own name in November 1975.
To promote the record, we decided to make a video in the archaeological site of Qumran in the Judean Desert in Israel, about an hour-and-half drive from Jerusalem and a few miles from the Dead Sea. Together with Andrew Lane, the ELP tour manager, I flew into Tel Aviv and our music was playing in the terminal as we arrived. This – along with the sight of young civilian teenagers with sub-machine guns strapped to their back – was certainly a first for me.
We stayed at the famous King David Hotel in Jerusalem where there was a reception hosted by the Mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, often referred to as ‘the greatest builder of Jerusalem since Herod’. He asked if I would one day play in a Roman theatre on the beach at Caesarea, near Tel Aviv.
We then explored the old city of Jerusalem. It was like walking back into the Bible. As I strolled through the covered market, the air was filled with the unmistakable smell of incense and my eyes danced from one sight to the next, never stopping long enough to take it all in. Lamb carcasses hung in the walkway. A young boy passed on a bicycle with live chickens dangling upside down from the handlebars. A priest dressed in black robes and a tall hat rode by on a donkey. Merchants were selling their engraved plates, silk, spices, robes and kaftans and mirrored pillows. It was a scene that probably had not changed much in 2,000 years.
While there, I visited many other famous ancie
nt places such as Bethlehem, the Dome of the Rock, the Mount of Olives and the Western Wall built by King Herod. It felt strange to be a twentieth-century rock musician basically being given a guided tour through biblical history.
Most of the filming took place in the desert. We were accompanied by a small military escort and one of the soldiers explained that the plateau around the Dead Sea gets so hot in the middle of the day that locals refer to it as the Sun’s Anvil. To demonstrate, he took a raw egg and cracked it open on the mudguard of his Army truck and it fried almost immediately.
One day, somebody suggested that we should do a special sequence in the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. It sounded like a good idea until I saw that the caves were situated halfway up a huge cliff face: they were only accessible by helicopter or by inching along a deadly-looking ledge. It was just eighteen inches wide with a sheer drop of hundreds of feet. One false move and it would be all over.
I had been drinking and having a smoke in the limo on the way over, so I took one look at the drop and said, ‘No way.’
Before I could add to my protest, I saw the cameraman, with all his gear in hand, moving along the ledge like a tightrope walker. Having watched him risk his life on my behalf, I had no other choice than to man up and get on with it.
My heart was in my mouth as I inched forward but I reached the other side and felt extraordinarily relieved. Until, that is, the cameraman quietly reminded me that the only way we were going to get back was by doing the same thing in reverse.
We recorded the sequence and, with great care, we all made it back safely.
