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REVEALED: Elp | Rare Historical Photos

“People often crack jokes about that album. We had that dreadful picture on the cover with the three of us looking like the Bee Gees, and I’m thinking, ‘This is wrong’”: Carl Palmer on the disastrous album that led ELP to break up

Keith Emerson called it “an embarrassment against everything I’ve worked for”

MusicRadar

“People often crack jokes about that album. We had that dreadful picture on the cover with the three of us looking like the Bee Gees, and I’m thinking, ‘This is wrong’”: Carl Palmer on the disastrous album that led ELP to break up

Keith Emerson called it “an embarrassment against everything I’ve worked for”

MusicRadar

“It was one of those scary, scary moments. But we pulled it off. And you know, ELP always liked a bit of pressure!”: Carl Palmer sets the record straight about Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s landmark 1977 tour

“The rumours said we were broke. That is not true”

MusicRadar

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“It’s one of the first classic rock ’n’ roll videos. But we were absolutely freezing. It was about 30 below!”: Carl Palmer on ELP’s greatest hit and their glory years as stadium-filling superstars

“We played California Jam and 120,000 people paid and another 100,000 smashed down the fences and broke in”

MusicRadar

“Steve Lukather’s guitar collided with a mic stand. He banked the guitar against it and made it a feature of the song. I don’t even understand!” Toto’s Dennis Atlas and his star-studded solo album

Listen to Principle and you’ll hear Bumblefoot, David Paich, Marco Minneman and others, plus Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman and Jordan Rudess influences

Louder

Peter Hammill and Carl Palmer return to the Royal Albert Hall for the prog prom - Prog Rock: A Fanfare for the Common Man

BBC's 2026 Proms season's Prog Rock: A Fanfare for the Common Man takes place at the Royal Albert Hall on July 18

Louder

From Cream and Velvet Revolver to Them Crooked Vultures and Temple Of The Dog, these are the best supergroups in rock history

Some supergroups just aren't worth the sum of their parts. These are the exceptions

Louder

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“He cannot do that – it’s a criminal act! This is destroying classical music!”: Orchestral players were horrified by Keith Emerson’s work. But times have changed, says acclaimed conductor

Terje Mikkelsen was once told to avoid the ELP icon’s material. He ignored that advice, and went on to collaborate with Emerson himself

Louder

“He said, ‘The music is one thing, but we’re here to put on a show.’ And that’s what he did”: Keith Emerson’s manager wanted to ditch plans for a flying piano. Emerson proved him wrong

Backstage boss Stewart Young took one look at the prototype in 1974 and decided to walk away – but the keyboard maestro wouldn’t have it

Louder

Carl Palmer announces An Evening With Emerson, Lake & Palmer shows in England for February 2027

Carl Palmer will perform live with late band members Keith Emerson and Greg Lake appearing in sync on screens on either side of the stage

Louder

“Professional pianists are the only ones who say, ‘I understand why he wanted to kill himself. I would think the same thing’”: Keith Emerson’s partner says his health issues were caused by his fear of letting people down

Mari Kawaguchi remembers hearing his best-ever performance of Tarkus in a Japanese dive bar, where the critics couldn’t hurt him

Louder

“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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MusicRadar

“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

Louder

“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

Guitar World

“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

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Louder

“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

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