ELP Appreciation thread !!!!

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 rushfan4 wrote:

An interesting interview with Greg Lake in Rolling Stone that I thought should be shared.  http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/prog-rock-pioneer-greg-lake-punk-is-not-a-form-of-music-its-a-fashion-statement-20130305?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Rollingstone%2FCNN%2FNews+%28RollingStone.com+--+CNN%29

thanks!

a few snippets on the actual creative end of ELP and then why they didn't tour after High Voltage:

By the late Seventies critics really turned on you guys. You became the embodiment of rock excess. Did that perception bother you? 
I think there is truth in the fact that the group was pretentious. You don't make an omelet without cracking eggs. We wanted to try and move things forward and do something new and break boundaries. It was important for us to be original. Certainly the early albums . . . I'm talking now especially about Tarkus, Trilogy and Brain Salad Surgery. Those records were really great and innovative. There were members of the press that didn't love us, but the public loved us.
I'm very proud of ELP, but it wasn't the journalists that brought down ELP. I think it was ELP themselves. It started to fragment when they made Works Volume 1. It was a good album, but it wasn't ELP. It was Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer with an orchestra. Well, with three separate orchestras. [Laughs]
The album went platinum, and I can say with all the humility that I can muster that there were some great tracks on the record. But it wasn't a record that reflected the chemistry of ELP. It reflected the individuals apart from each other.  There are some tracks, like "Pirates," for example, which stand up on their own. Leonard Bernstein liked that song a lot. But the truth of it was that Works Volume 1 was the beginning of the end. After that, ELP never made another really innovative record.
ELP played a single concert a couple of summers ago. Why just the one? Why not tour?
I don't know. It frustrates me. Frankly, it takes a lot of energy and determination to reach a playing standard that people expect from a band like ELP. The expectation is very high. People are coming to see the legendary ELP. What do they expect? I'll tell you. They expect to see the band they heard on record or saw on tour in 1974. And now we're 40 years older, and you've got to do it the same. That takes some doing. 
I really wanted to go out and play a world tour. We only got the one show, and after five or six more the band would have been formidable.
Who pulled the plug on doing more?
Keith and Carl didn't want to do it. I don't know why. It's very strange, but there's something about ELP that doesn't work. It used to work, but it doesn't work now. That might change. People do change, of course. I go back to my philosophy of the duty you have to perform for people who have invested not only their money, but a lot of their feelings into your music. I just feel that you should try and give them satisfaction

Edited by richardh - March 05 2013 at 17:21