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REVEALED: Elp | Rare Historical Photos

“I opened the curtains a bit and said, ‘Look at all these people who’ve paid to see us!’ I didn’t realise that was the worst thing I could have done”: Carl Palmer on Keith Emerson, and how his death wasn’t the worst part of losing him

They met when Palmer stood in with Fleetwood Mac for a show with The Nice. Half a century of amazing music and friendship followed. The drummer reveals what they’d be doing today if Emerson was still alive

Louder

“Greg Lake was a bit of a cabaret singer. Jon Anderson, whatever you think of his lyrics, bloody meant it”: The prog stars who influenced a comedy musician’s career – and made him become a milkman for a while

Graham Fellows, creator of Jilted John and John Shuttleworth, started out with ELP before finding Yes, Focus, The Enid and Pink Floyd (although he has no time for The Dark Side Of The Moon)

Louder

“What Keith Moon did on drums, he did on keyboards. Without him the genre would be much poorer”: When Geoff Downes saw Keith Emerson live, he found immediate inspiration

The Yes man hails ELP counterpart as a musician and entertainer

Louder

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“We weren’t like a normal group that’s ready to take a knock. We couldn’t fight back”: Carl Palmer on how punk killed ELP

Plus he reveals Mitch Mitchell almost joined the prog icons

MusicRadar

“If you’re talking dazzling sleight of mind, radical ideas and a willingness to create shock-art for the masses, there was no one more brilliant”: Revisiting David Bowie’s career from a prog perspective

Beyond his work with Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Rick Wakeman and others, plus comparisons to Rush, ELP and krautrock, a commitment to audacious experimentation ran through the true icon’s entire life

Louder

“The publisher told us to forget it. But I didn’t give up so easily – I got his home number and called him”: How Emerson, Lake and Palmer charted with Aaron Copland’s Fanfare For The Common Man in the year of punk

Even cut down to a third of its length, the 1977 track became their biggest hit, and one of the most successful instrumental single of all time

Louder

“Robert said, ‘Would you be prepared to play bass?’ And I thought, ‘Four strings, six strings... what could be the problem?’”: Greg Lake started out as a guitarist – before being convinced by Robert Fripp to switch to bass when joining King Crimson

Lake went on to form Emerson, Lake & Palmer – ELP – with keyboardist Keith Emerson and drummer Carl Palmer, creating one of rock’s first super-groups

Guitar World

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“We made bad albums. Two of them should be melted down into flowerpots. But how many great pieces of artwork are you going to create in your career?” What Carl Palmer really thinks of ELP

Comparing his band to Yes and Pink Floyd, the sole surviving member looks back on OTT productions, getting carried away with overdubs and constant criticism – but insists: “We were setting a standard”

Louder

“It was an awful mistake to overlook his album. But you could be excused for not sticking with it”: Fired by King Crimson, this prog poet assembled a group of A-list colleagues and took them on a trip into the unknown. They got lost – or so it seemed

His only solo release merged Genesis, Greenslade and Soft Machine vibes with an additional experimental edge. But the real beauty is that it couldn’t have been made any other time than the early 70s

Louder

“If you want to play that kind of music, play it on your solo album. I’m not interested”: In 1971 Greg Lake enraged Keith Emerson, who immediately quit ELP. The result was their acclaimed album Tarkus

Carl Palmer recalls a crisis meeting, arguments over time signatures, and playing the whole album top to bottom in the studio – only to discover their engineer had taken a break

Louder

"I've never talked about progressive rock, or thought that we were": David Gilmour says Pink Floyd were never progressive rock

It turns out that lengthy, multi-part instrumentals and concept albums aren't prog after all

Louder

“I’m not a massive fan of all things prog. But I must have listened to the Tarkus album a million times down the years”: Twisted Sister’s Jay Jay French wants Emerson, Lake and Palmer to be remembered for ever

Glam metal guitar slinger had been a fan of The Nice but hadn’t even heard of Carl Palmer when the super-talented supergroup blew him away live

Louder

"A little more restraint in the number of extra notes would help let things shine": Camel break out the complexity but fail to enthral on Mirage

Mirage: a flute-heavy mix of symphonic sweep, jazz fusion and melodic subtlety

Louder

"The Queen Mother asked us to play something on the Moog. She was really cute": PFM on brushes with royalty, spaghetti with Aerosmith, and how to annoy America

Premiata Forneria Marconi, aka PFM, remain one of the great trailblazers of European prog rock

Louder

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MusicRadar

“Although it might not feel natural, when you translate what he does for guitar, it sounds different”: Adrian Smith on how Steve Harris is the secret to Iron Maiden’s triple-guitar attack – and the prog instincts driving their sonic evolution

When your principal songwriter and driving force is directing traffic on bass, is it any wonder the guitars took a different path in search of brave new worlds to explore?

Louder

“There were arguments. But they weren’t personal – they were musical. They helped make it what it is”: How Yes defined themselves with Fragile, before success went to their heads

The arrival of Rick Wakeman, the freedom to be adventurous and the discovery of Roger Dean led to the creation of a prog landmark in 1971

Louder

”Three highly gifted men with the capacity to behave like spoilt brats in each others’ company”: Emerson, Lake & Palmer often didn’t work. But then, neither did projects that featured just two of the trio

Massive musical ability crossed with pomposity and excess made it difficult for the supergroup to meet expectations – but even with one of the giant personalities missing, the other pair could struggled to deliver

Louder

“The depression lasted quite a long time. At the end of it, when I felt I was coming out of a long tunnel, I wrote God Gave Rock And Roll To You”: The epic story of Argent, the forgotten early 70s band who inspired one Kiss’ biggest hits

Argent were the missing link between the 60s pop scene and the emergence of Cream and Led Zeppelin

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Louder

"The haters won’t stop us from doing what we do": Geoff Downes on Asia's new lineup and the band's future plans

The Geoff Downes-led new lineup of Asia play the band’s first three albums, one per night, in April

Louder

“We took it badly – ‘No one wants us any more!’ We’d never been through the school of hard knocks. We didn’t know what it meant to work hard”: When ELP collapsed, Carl Palmer’s career-long lucky streak ended. But he didn’t give up

Born into a musical family and a pro by his teenage years with a real-life education in backstage realities, the passionate drummer has seen dreams come true with Arthur Brown, Atomic Rooster, Asia, Mike Oldfield and others

Louder

“I don’t think he ever got over being fired from King Crimson… but he went on to bigger, more financially successful things”: Peter Sinfield, the prog poet who gave voices to ELP, Roxy Music and many others

Lyricist, art director, producer and all-round creative who aimed to enlighten, provoke or stir died in November 2024 without being fully aware of what he’d achieved

Louder

“It seemed to me that America was ruled by the gun… if you don’t like the President, shoot him”: Flag-burning prog innovators The Nice found trouble on stage and off it

Keith Emerson, Davy O’List and Lee Jackson created enough controversy to last for decades in their original three-year run

Louder

“I’ve always wanted to be in a metal band… Pantera and Dream Theater are great”: Carl Palmer on his desire for a life beyond classic prog, the final ELP show, and why he wishes they’d had a guitarist

After Emerson Lake & Palmer’s High Voltage concert, the drummer shared his thoughts on his former bandmates and pondered an unfulfilled ambition

Louder

“Andrew Loog Oldham asked if we were songwriters. I said we were – then I had to go away and figure out how you wrote songs”: The Nice helped found prog and merged classical music with rock, then they were gone

Prompted by a disagreement that spilled into the public domain, co-founders Keith Emerson and Lee Jackson once visited the Prog office to set things straight

Louder

"It's unlikely that I'll ever listen to any other Asia albums but only time will tell": Asia upset the prog purists and delight their bank managers on freakishly successful debut album

Featuring members of Yes, ELP and King Crimson, Asia were billed as a prog rock supergroup but kept it concise, to enormous success

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