RIP: Greg Lake, co-founder of Emerson, Lake & Palmer

[thewayne]

Lake passed away Tuesday at the age of 69 after a "stubborn battle with cancer". Cancer sucks. This comes nine months after Keith Emerson passed away.

I really liked ELP when I was younger. I still like them now, but I now recognize that the prog rock scene has more than a little bit of elements of improv jazz that I'm not a huge fan of. Still, I'll be giving my ELP+ playlist a workout today: the + is that it includes the albums Three and Emerson, Lake & Powell.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/greg-lake-emerson-lake-palmer-co-founder-dead-at-69-w454546

Warning: link has an auto-play video.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Yep, they were definitely amongst the highlights of the early 80s for me. (Did they ever collaborate? I don't recall any such)

Cancers can be so damnably insidious, especially the completely "internal" varieties, like pancreatic - fine until some point, get a diagnosis, dead in a few months, and there's so little we can do to help.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Well, ELP broke up after Love Beach in 1979 (apparently it was a contractual obligation album and it tanked). Emerson, Lake & Powell formed and recorded one album in 1986 with Cozy Powell on drums when Carl Palmer was unavailable to record due to his work with the supergroup Asia. 3 recorded their only album, To The Power Of Three, in 1988, which was Emerson, Palmer, and Robert Berry. E&P got back together with Greg Lake for the ELP album Black Moon in 1992.

Cozy Powell died in a car crash in 1998.

Apparently Emerson and Lake had some conflict: Emerson wanted to pursue more classical lines and Lake more rock, and Emerson played in keys that weren't good for Lake's voice. I just read about that on Wikipedia -- what ever did we do without Wikipedia?! I always thought it was Lake and Palmer that had a tiff since the last two albums didn't have the two of them together, I didn't realize the Asia commitment kept Palmer away.

But it's sad nonetheless. They were certainly formative for developing my music tastes. Because of problems with my right hand, I always thought synth keyboard would be about the only musical instrument that I had a decent chance of playing, and that was largely inspired by ELP, not that I ever pursued it.

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

Oh no , how sad.