by Greg Lake
Apart from Richard, Roger and myself, over the years the varied line-up has included Robert Plant; Lulu; my friend Gary Moore; Steve Smith, the drummer from Journey; Rick Wills, the bassist with Foreigner; Gary Brooker of Procol Harum; and Simon Townshend, the brother of Pete, who has performed with the Who and Pearl Jam.
One of the mainstays of the Crusaders is Russ Ballard. A terrific guy, Russ was the lead singer of Argent back in the 1970s, and as a songwriter has penned hits for Rainbow, Kiss, Santana, Roger Daltrey and many more. His knowledge of rock-and-roll history is remarkable. Another regular is the keyboardist George ‘Zoot’ Money. He began his career in Bournemouth, very near to where I started my own career, and in the early days during the 1960s we would often appear at the same clubs and dance venues. Zoot, who has played with a whole roster of people including Spencer Davis and the Animals, has soul music running through his veins and anyone into that music should definitely go and see him perform.
The very first RD Crusaders show took place in September 2003 at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London in aid of Teenage Cancer Trust. For some weeks before the show, Richard and I would get together at his house in London and rehearse through the material. It’s a strange thing how music brings people together but over those weeks and months we spent rehearsing, Richard and I developed a close friendship that remains until this day. I was truly honoured to have been part of the Crusaders for a while.
All the Crusaders shows were fun and, of course, what really made them gratifying was the amount of money they generated for charity – over £14 million so far. The material we performed was a mixture of the best-known songs from each of the band members, with the backbone of the show being mainly material from the Who’s back catalogue. Playing the Who songs was particularly enjoyable for me, firstly because they are all great compositions but, perhaps even more importantly, also because Roger is such a pivotal part of the Who sound and of their remarkable history.
One thing that I soon noticed about Roger is that his hearing has become so sensitive. If a pop went off a lead, he would jump. You would think after years and years of being in the Who, one of the loudest bands going, he would be immune or even deaf to loud noises, but almost any noise makes him jump.
I remember getting a call from Roger a few days after one of the shows, asking me if I would like to record with the Who. I believe their regular bass player Pino Palladino, who started playing for them after John Entwistle sadly passed away in 2002, was unable to make it for some reason and so Roger had suggested to Pete Townshend that it might be a good idea to try and get me in.
Roger also told me that Zak Starkey would be playing drums during the session, which was great news as I am a big fan of Zak’s playing. It really was great fun working together with him after touring with his father, Ringo, and it was very interesting to see both the similarities and the differences in the way that they perform. The one thing that immediately struck me was that they share this remarkable gift of feel, and also the ability to know when it is better to leave a space rather than simply to keep blasting through the tune, filling every possible bar with noise.
The song we recorded at Eel Pie studios in Twickenham was called ‘Real Good Looking Boy’, written by Pete Townshend and partly inspired by the story of Elvis Presley. Roger, like me, saw Elvis play live when he was young and was truly inspired by him.
Although I was more than familiar with the recordings of the Who, it was not until I got in the same room and played with them that I began to add up all the dots and understand what really made them tick.
Of course, everyone is aware that Pete is an extremely talented songwriter, but I do sometimes get the impression that he is not given the full credit he deserves for being the great guitar player that he is. The reason for this, I think, is that Pete’s guitar-playing forms a very supportive role in the Who’s overall sound, and many of his guitar parts work on two levels simultaneously and seamlessly, i.e. part rhythm and part lead, all bound up into one powerful package. The way he uses punctuation and staccato is simply unsurpassed and for me that is what makes his style of playing so unique.
‘Real Good Looking Boy’ was recorded in one take and, although perhaps not a typical Who song, it did nevertheless bear the hallmark that all of the band’s recordings have, which is the inescapable identity of Pete’s guitar-playing and Roger’s voice. When you consider that, added to this formidable combination, before they both passed away the Who also had the benefit of Keith Moon’s drumming and John Entwistle’s bass-playing, it is little wonder they achieved the iconic status that they have.
I was delighted when ‘Real Good Looking Boy’ was put on the Who’s compilation album Here and Now in 2004, rubbing shoulders with the classics ‘I Can’t Explain’, ‘My Generation’, ‘Pinball Wizard’ and all the others. I am proud to have played a tiny part in the Who legend.
I seem to have always been lucky when it came to forming bands and, as a result, I’ve had the good fortune to have worked together with some of the world’s truly great players. The Greg Lake Band was no exception.
The band was formed in 2005 for a tour of the United Kingdom. It consisted of Brett Morgan, who has drummed for everyone from George Harrison to Sting, Trevor Barry on bass, and Florian Opahle, who has worked a lot with Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, on guitar. Dave Arch was the acting MD and on keyboards. Many British television viewers will know Dave’s name as he is the MD on BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing, but as a keyboardist he has worked on hundreds of film scores, including the Harry Potter series, and he has recorded for everyone from Philip Glass to Paul McCartney to the Spice Girls. Dave helped me to shape new live interpretations of the ELP classics ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ and ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’.
I can only say that this is the sort of band that one dreams about forming – musicians of the very highest calibre with personalities to match. In some ways, I suppose you could compare it to driving a really powerful Bentley with automatic drive. The whole thing just floats along effortlessly as it generates a seemingly endless and awesome amount of power.
I have to say that despite the fact that we were only together for a very short time, playing with these people was one of the most rewarding musical experiences of my entire career. Ten years after the band was formed, we met up for lunch to celebrate this special anniversary. This band meant a lot to all of us and, indeed, Florian flew all the way from Munich to London just for the occasion. It was a moving moment, all being together once again and sitting around one table.
Thankfully the 2005 tour, which also featured ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’, ‘Touch and Go’, ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ and ‘Lucky Man’ on the set list, was recorded for the DVD and album Greg Lake: Live. It really would have been more honest to call it Greg Lake, Dave Arch, Trevor Barry, Brett Morgan and Florian Opahle: Live.
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In 2006 and 2007, I appeared in the United States as a guest with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra on some of their Christmas extravaganzas. The TSO concept is as remarkable as it is unlikely. The whole thing was conceived by Paul O’Neill together with long-standing friend and musical arranger and producer Robert Kinkel, along with Jon Oliva and Al Pitrelli, who are both members of the heavy rock band Savatage.
It turns out that Paul and Robert are big Emerson, Lake & Palmer fans, and one day in the 1990s they came up with the idea of doing a ‘progressive rock’ Christmas show. I think the idea was to use classically influenced rock music as a basis for the show. After crystallising the whole concept, they then went to almost every promoter in the United States to try and get the whole thing off the ground. Without exception, each and every one of them turned the band down (something that is slightly reminiscent of the Beatles story).
Eventually, after having exhausted every other possibility, they managed to persuade one of their friends, a small concert promoter in Cleveland, Ohio, to put on the first small show. After doing everything humanly possible to
sell tickets, the show went ahead and to everyone’s surprise it was well received.
The following year they asked the same promoter if he would be prepared to do the same show again but this time in a slightly larger venue. Again, he was reluctant and, again, tried to dissuade them from doing it. However, as before, they managed to persuade him to do it and the show went ahead, this time selling out surprisingly fast.
Since then, year upon year the whole TSO concept has become a phenomenon, selling out every night during the month of December in arenas on the East and West Coasts. The shows are multi-media events with anything up to fifty singers and musicians, including a string section, performing on stage at any given time, accompanied by lasers, a light show, video screens and moving elements of the stage, all synchronised to the music. By the time I linked up with them, the band had released a series of Christmas-related rock-opera albums, Christmas Eve and Other Stories (1996), The Christmas Attic (1998) and The Lost Christmas Eve (2004), and they have now sold over ten million albums.
They donate a dollar to local and national charities for every ticket sold on their tours, raising over $10 million, particularly for charities that help children. Classically influenced music, technologically advanced stage shows, a love of Christmas and a concern for child welfare – they are a band after my own heart, and it was a pleasure to perform with them. Apart from all this, Paul O’Neill and I discovered that we had something else in common, which was that we both love to collect books and are both extremely interested in history. Perhaps this is part of the reason why we both feel a connection to classical music.
We performed ‘Karn Evil 9’ together at the 2006 and 2007 concerts. Then, in 2009, Trans-Siberian Orchestra recorded ‘Nutrocker’, which had always been a favourite of ELP live performances, for their album Night Castle. I was touched that the TSO asked me to play bass on their recording, and I was honoured to accept. The album has sold over a million copies in the United States.
CHAPTER 17
A High Voltage Finale
In 2009 Keith Emerson and I decided to write together again. During the day, we would take a short break and play old Emerson, Lake & Palmer songs just for fun. We noticed that when it was just the two of us playing, the songs had a different feeling than we were used to. Over all of these years, we had played them live in the band and had heard the albums hundreds of times, but of course, when we wrote most of that early material, it was often just the two of us working on the songs. When we played those songs for fun in 2009, it took us right back to the roots of the songs, before they were augmented with other instruments, produced and mixed. The sound was quite different, and we heard the material conceptually again. We thought that was an interesting new perspective on the material.
We then had the idea of creating a show that would offer the audience an insight on how these songs had evolved, with the two of us performing them. I am not sure that Carl would have wanted to be involved, but he had commitments to Asia in any case.
We set the stage up to look like a recording studio with an engineer behind the mixing desk – the engineer was Keith Wechsler, who has worked with us for a long time. He would issue the instructions and then the red light would go on ‘Record’, and then we would start the show. Inspired by our old label, Manticore, we created a fantasy of what Manticore Hall would look like. Whenever ELP or even just E & L got together, the production would turn out to be expensive.
The rehearsals for the ‘Manticore Hall’ tour took place inside an aircraft hangar on the Santa Monica airfield in California. Keith worked around the difficulties with his hand, but, although the music was developing well, I noticed that there was something strange about the way he was behaving. He became increasingly reluctant to arrive at rehearsals on time, and the start times got later and later. The tour was looming and ideally we would have postponed it. However, it was too late to cancel it without causing significant problems.
The first show was due to be performed at the Civic Auditorium in Lakewood, Cleveland, Ohio, on 1 April 2010 and we set up at the venue the day before to rehearse. Due to technical issues, it was early evening before we got under way. We played for a couple of hours and I decided to go backstage for a coffee break. After sitting there for a few minutes, I looked up and saw Keith walking towards me with tears streaming down his face.
‘I’m really sorry, Greg, but I can’t go on,’ he said.
At first, I didn’t know what to say but as soon as I had collected my thoughts I realised that the best thing to do was to get him back to the hotel. Maybe he would feel better after a rest.
On the next afternoon, I arrived at the venue for the sound check. Keith arrived later, at around five o’clock, and came on stage to start preparing his equipment. I could immediately see that his face looked ashen and drawn, and it was clear that he had not slept well. We started to run through the material and make the necessary adjustments. In the middle of this, at 6.30, the doors to the venue were opened, despite the fact that we had warned the promoter to keep them closed. The audience started to drift into the theatre, so we decided to head back to the dressing room and wait for show time.
After a few minutes, the tour manager came into the dressing room.
‘Has anyone seen Keith?’ he asked.
We went outside to look for him but he was nowhere to be seen. Eventually one of the security staff said that he had seen Keith leaving by the back door of the theatre and jumping into a taxi.
We waited for him to return, but given the way Keith had seemed over the last couple of days, we knew he was not suddenly going to reappear, having popped back to the hotel for something he had forgotten. It became obvious to all concerned that the show was not going to take place.
The announcement was made to the audience shortly thereafter. It was April Fool’s day, but it was no joke: the concert had to be cancelled forty minutes after the scheduled start time. I attributed Keith’s behaviour to stage fright but he would later deny this. He said he merely had no time to tune up his Moog.
We decided it would be best to cancel the next couple of shows to try and allow Keith time to get back on track. Happily, it worked. Keith returned in good shape and the tour was able to continue. We started to really enjoy the performances. We did King Crimson’s ‘I Talk to the Wind’ from In the Court of the Crimson King because I had never performed it live before, as well as the Nice’s ‘America’ and ‘Rondo’. We had unearthed some other surprises while we were putting together the set list, such as the fact that ‘Bitches Crystal’ from Tarkus was very interesting to play as a duo. It’s such a rhythmic piece that we thought it wouldn’t work without a drummer, but it did. We also played ‘Pirates’, ‘Lucky Man’, ‘The Barbarian’, ‘Take a Pebble’, ‘Tarkus’, ‘From the Beginning’ and ‘C’est la Vie’ among others, all of which can be heard on the live album we released, Live from Manticore Hall, so the set covered different aspects of our work together.
Some songs featured sequenced backing tracks, but on many it was just the two of us playing together – nothing else. Sometimes we could wander off the script and go where the music took us. This was one of the things that King Crimson would do. One of the tenets of the band was that it was just as important to listen to your bandmates as it was to play, so I had acquired that skill.
It was an adventure to put the Emerson & Lake ‘Manticore Hall’ show together, and so gratifying to see that the material still held up and we were receiving standing ovations. There was a strong sense of family, not just between myself and Keith, but with the audience during those performances.
While we were preparing for ‘Manticore Hall’, we received an offer for Emerson, Lake & Palmer to perform at the High Voltage Festival in Victoria Park, London, in summer 2010. We spoke to Carl and the three of us realised that this might be the last time the band would be able to perform live. So we agreed to do it.
The rehearsals took place at Shepperton Film Studios just outside London. It was surre
al hearing us perform together again after so many years apart. It was as if someone had edited out twelve years of my life and joined the two ends up together. Frankly, it took a lot of energy and determination to reach a playing standard that people expected from a band like ELP. People were coming to see the legendary ELP. What did they expect? I’ll tell you. They expected to see the band they heard on record or saw on tour in 1974. And now, decades older, we had to do it the same way. That took some doing. Carl went on record to say that he could not understand why we needed to rehearse for weeks before the show, but he later admitted that maybe that wasn’t long enough.
The atmosphere was not helped when Carl told the media that he had expected us to be at each other’s throats again. I have never understood his negative tendency. Keith and I had come to treasure and value each other, despite our differences over the years. We were getting on better than we ever had done. But I think that Carl found it harder to let go of the grudges from the past, and sadly for him it’s always the person carrying the grudge that bears the burden. I have always liked Carl, whatever our differences, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.
We appeared on the main stage of the High Voltage Festival on Sunday 25 July 2010, almost exactly forty years after we had first performed together. Gary Moore had played the day before, and Ian Hunter, who I had got to know on the tour with Ringo, was also on the bill on the main stage on Sunday.
We played some of the works our fans loved the most – including ‘Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression Part 2’, ‘Tarkus’ and ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, finishing with a medley involving ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’. Despite various technical problems, the ELP show was an intensely emotional and nostalgic experience for the three of us, and for the people who came along that night. Many of them had been there with us since the early 1970s. Afterwards, the atmosphere backstage was like a cross between a party and a funeral. There were people with tears in their eyes and others celebrating with champagne – and some with both.
