R.I.P Keith Emerson

[Nebukadneser]

Keith Emerson has left us. He died on March 10th, aged 71. I am sure other scope users are influenced by Keith, so please join me on this thread and share your thoughts and gratitude of the composer, performer and his music.

Although it has been a while since I last time put on one of his records, I spent a great deal of my youth in the eighties listening to Emerson Lake & Palmer, The Nice, and to Emerson’s film scores available on records. I remember my first encounter with ELP. I got the album “Trilogy” on a trip abroad, aged 14. The intro to “The endless enigma” blew me away. This music were new references to me as to technical skills, harmonies and sonic textures. I remember how I later managed to transcribe “Hoedown”, from the same album, which was one of the first tunes I coul play really fast on my first synth, a brand new 4 op. Yamaha DX21.

Later, “Pictures at an Exhibition” was added to my record collection, and the Moog addiction was a fact. At that time I knew little about the distinction between a Moog modular and a Minimoog, but Keith’s handling of the Moog modular on that album became a reference to me of how proper music should sound. I remember how I attempted to make a saw lead sound on the DX 21 to copy Keith’s Moog solo on the track “The Old Castle” (no 5. Side A).

Now, “Brain Salad Surgery” is perhaps ELP’s master piece. The grand “Karn Evil 9” is an outstanding musical effort. However, on tracks such as “Benny the bouncer”, Keith shows how great a pianist he was within the blues idiom. I remember how I made futile attempts on copying his piano solos on that track.

Having bought the albums in the “wrong” order, it wasn’t until later I came across their debut album Emerson, Lake & Palmer, which features the famous Moog solo on “Lucky man”.

The "Emerson, Lake & Powell" album came out in 1986, and this album I got hold of shortly after its release. It sounded quite disappointing to me, I remember, since the virtuoso parts were fewer, and the synth textures were more towards what could be heard elsewhere. “Lay down your guns” does feature some great piano parts though, and the mighty “Mars, the bringer of war”, by Gustav Holst, is a wise track to record as it suits Cozy Powell’s drum blasts very well.

I found at the local record store the album “The Nice, Greatest hits”. The opening track is their version of Sondheim’s “America”, blended with quotes from the 2nd amendment. A powerful expression of the protest movements of the US in the late sixties, a refined version of Hendrix version of Star sprangled banner, perhaps?

Skipping past Works I & II, Tarkus, and the live album “Welcome back my friends …”, which are all great, I think it is worth mentioning the many film scores he released between 1980-86. On his 1986 soundtrack album “Best revenge” there is a beautiful piano piece called “Dream runner”. This was the first proper piano piece I managed to play. I spent much of the summer of ‘88 to transcribe it from a cassette tape and rehearse it in order to have 1 single piece on my repertoire upon entering music studies at upper secondary school. This piece I am now scoring in Finale to pass it on to my daughter who also plays the piano.

I hope our sons and daughters will be curious and delve into the musical universe of Keith Emerson. It surely is a rewarding experience.

R.I.P

[Nestor]

The same here, Keith Emerson was one of my main references for keyboard players, but the way he arranged music was also really great, as in the “Pictures at an Exhibition” from the amazing Mussorgsky.

I studied Emerson Lake & Palmer in detail when I was very Young. We all loved them very much, it was a great revolution in those times.

Because of Keith complicated setup and many cables and because of his enormous modular synth, their performances were a little challenging too, and sometimes things would not go the way they expected them to go. I remember once they had something wrong on a connection of the big modular, and the sound got stacked, they had to switch the power off and start all over again, he would not find which one it was. Keith had so many cables entangled to each other, so much to check out to find the problem that this would eventually take a lot of time, in this occasion I’m talking about, Palmer had to perform a 20 minutes solo… But no problem, people enjoyed his long solo as if it was a preferred situation. Amazing! He was a very interesting and creative player, not only a technically gifted one.

Their musical and compositional experiences have become my own, so much I have listened to their albums. I have no listened at them, nevertheless, for many years already, but they are second nature to me. I would even say I am influenced as to even have composed certain things, without realizing it, biased by ELP.

I definitely thank Keith his amazing talent, his genius, and the present that his music is to my ears and heart.

Thank You!

[dante]

LA police are treating the case as a possible suicide with gunshot evidence at his Santa Monica home. Apparently he had a degenerative nerve disease impacting his ability to play keyboards and therefore contributing to depression.

I loved 'Pictures At An Exhibition'. Definitely an Electronic Music Pioneer was Keith.

Pictures

elp_exhibition103.jpg (69.35 KiB) Viewed 2269 times

For the record, I disagree with Billy Sheehan over this, both his view and his airing of it.

[stonberg]

Dude. NOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooo!

ELP were more responsible than any other band for opening my eyes to a whole world of music outside of TOTP when I was a kid. I heard their first album when I was 11 and it blew me away.

I've just been reading some articles regarding the circumstances surrounding his death and that has really pissed me off.

Sh1t. Gonna crank up the Karn Evil 9 at work this morning, I haven't felt like this about the death of a musician since Zappa passed away.

[Nestor]

I didn't know about this..., I throught it was natural...

[hubird]

It was in the news here too.

[dawman]

Police in California are always careful to release any information when a celebrity is involved.

Their lack of response usually allows for conspiracy theories to flourish until they have to come out and say what happened.

[hubird]

Police in California are always careful to release any information when a celebrity is involved.

Their lack of response usually allows for conspiracy theories to flourish until they have to come out and say what happened.

Btw., just like it is the other way around, authorities and conspiracy activists share this attitude.
Conspiracy lovers love to keep information under the hood.
They love talking about 'the R. family', don't like to publish their sources (if you can speak about it that way), predict mass slaughter without showing any proof, etc., haha
As if the local slaughterings happening every day in the world aren't enough to worry about.

It's hard to keep things covered these days.
Bowie did it.

[dante]

Police in California are always careful to release any information when a celebrity is involved. Their lack of response usually allows for conspiracy theories to flourish until they have to come out and say what happened.

Well, he couldn't play keys the way he wanted anymore, there's not much to conspire about that.

[braincell]

It's not a surprise. From Wikipedia: "The medical examiner's report, following an autopsy, concluded that Emerson had also suffered from heart disease and from depression associated with alcohol."

Alcohol is a cause of heart disease. For many, quitting alcohol is too difficult even when they know they are dying.

Phil Collins has a similar problem with his right arm. I think it's from playing too hard. They call it a nerve disease but I think it's like when they call alcoholism a disease. It's not really a disease, it's self-inflicted. Collins also did too much drinking. Seems to be a pattern with rock stars.