”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

While Emerson, Lake & Palmer made a great deal of majestic music, the supergroup’s reputation for pomposity and excess often did them no favours. That was partly down to the their strong personalities. But ahead of ELP’s final concert in 2010, Prog pointed out that they’d struggled even when one of those personalities was missing.

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Preposterous, Excessive & Egotistical… Musical, Challenging & Dynamic… Emerson, Lake & Palmer. No other band in the history of prog rock has engendered such extreme reactions as ELP. In fact, they’ve come to embody the best and worst of the genre – depending on your viewpoint.

The first true supergroup of prog, it was the coming together of three established talents, a trio of individuals who couldn’t even agree on a band name; even Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton settled on Cream.

“In the end, we had to go for our own names,” keyboard master Keith Emerson once said. “But that caused problems. In what order should names appear? What we had was alphabetical – but you try telling Greg Lake and Carl Palmer that!”

From taking a 58-piece orchestra on the road in America to Lake’s infamous Persian rug, this band led the way when it came to doing things in the most ridiculously overblown manner. But they also created some of the most inspiring music of the 1970s.

There’s an obvious reason why there was constant tension between the three – all of them were personalities and leaders in their own right. None of them could act as a conduit or sounding board for the others. There were no sidemen.

It might have been different had Emerson and Lake secured Mitch Mitchell, their first choice drummer; he was used to playing second fiddle in the Jimi Hendrix Experience. He could even have been the catalyst in persuading Hendrix himself to join the band, as was once strongly mooted.

Without a low-key member, there’s an imbalance – and ELP were definitely never balanced. Emerson noted: “I’m the sort of guy that likes to go on stage with a whole band. They’re all around and once you get warmed up and you’re playing for the audience, I don’t mind if they leave the stage for me to do a couple of piano solos.”

Lake’s voice simply wasn’t suited to Asia’s songs… He was also reading the lyrics from a teleprompter

Still, there was an underlying, albeit grudging respect between Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Evidence lies in the myriad of subsequent projects which involved two of the three. Every possible permutation has occurred.

Consider the pressure they were under when they got together: unlike Yes, Genesis or Pink Floyd – all of whom developed organically – as a union of high-profile musicians, ELP were expected to be supercharged and successful from the start. Anything they achieved was under the most intense of spotlights.

The same might be said of the decision to bring Lake into Asia in 1983, thereby re-uniting him with Palmer. Themselves a supergroup, Asia had parted with vocalist/bassist John Wetton after the release of second album Alpha. So Lake joined Palmer, guitarist Steve Howe and keyboard player Geoff Downes in Tokyo on December 6, 1983.

It was the first gig ever to be simulcast by MTV via satellite to the US – but the performance wasn’t a huge success. Lake’s voice simply wasn’t suited to the songs, many of which had to undergo a key change. He was also reading the lyrics from a teleprompter – and it was obvious to everyone.

It was no surprise that he quit early in ’84, with Wetton returning. But did he ever really stand a chance? The first reunion of ‘two from three’ (as it were) wasn’t so much a failure as something that never had the opportunity to develop.

In 1985, it was Emerson and Lake’s turn to regroup. When Palmer declined to join a full-blown reunion, preferring to stay with Asia, there was an attempt to secure Bill Bruford. But he was committed to King Crimson and his own Earthworks, so the pair turned to Cozy Powell.

By the time it came to making a second Emerson, Lake & Powell album, there wasn’t any money left

“Cozy was a very old friend of mine,” said the keyboardist. “He called up and said, ‘If you need a drummer, I’d love to do it.’ So Cozy came down to my studio and we started working on this album. And then we realised, ‘Oh my goodness, we have the same initials – it’s ELP again!’”

The trio’s subsequent self-titled album, released in 1986, was actually quite a success, generating the hit single Touch & Go as well as featuring a cover of 60s hit The Loco-Motion and the classical piece Mars, The Bringer Of War. The balance within the band worked well. Unlike Palmer, Powell could act as a sounding board. He was prepared to underplay his role to bring out the best in the others.

“I’d worked with Ritchie Blackmore, David Coverdale and Michael Schenker,” Powell said, “so I was used to dealing with those sort of people. After them, Keith and Greg were almost a dream.”

Sadly, there was no second album; but that was down to finances, rather than any inherent problems between the three members. “By the time it came to making a second album, there wasn’t any money left,” Emerson admitted. “Greg said, ‘Well, if PolyGram isn’t interested in putting any more money up, I’m not interested’. And, of course, Cozy was being offered jobs and he got fed up with the indecisions and said, ‘I’m leaving!’”

Surprisingly, Palmer was delighted to see Emerson, Lake & Powell working, because it gave him the chance to get Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s back catalogue re-activated – by then he’d almost taken over protecting the trio’s heritage. “If they hadn’t gone out with Cozy Powell, I couldn’t have gotten the record company to spend the money on the catalogue that they spent,” he said. “I’d already made 16 albums which Cozy was promoting for me and the band. It was a much better thing for them go out with him than to not go out at all.”

Unlike the situation with Lake and Palmer in Asia, a pairing had managed to record. But even so, there reamained a feeling of unfinished business.

Very few people who’ve come out of successful bands have really sustained solo careers

Next on the reunion cycle were Emerson and Palmer. In 1988 they got together with American Robert Berry to form 3, releasing one album, To The Power Of Three. But it was to be another short-lived liaison. The record was heavily criticised for being too bland and commercial – although Emerson launched a staunch defence at the time: ”If people want ELP, then they can check out what we’ve done before. It’s all there.

“This isn’t supposed to be a rehash of the past, but something all three of us want to do right now. Is it bland? Well, if you want to consider well-crafted songs that way, then fine. To me, Carl and I are being very creative, and Robert’s the right man to be involved. He’s contributed a lot to 3.”

But the trio appeared to be doomed when they played at the Atlantic Records 40th anniversary show in 1988, billed as ‘Emerson And Palmer’ (3 were signed to Geffen, hence the reason that the band themselves weren’t credited). All they did were covers of America, Fanfare For The Common Man and Dave Brubeck’s Blue Rondo À La Turk. Even a subsequent tour failed to take them further. Once again, it appeared that pairing two from the ELP trio couldn’t quite cut it – there was always something missing.

Of course, the trio had each pursued their own solo projects during the intervening years, with moderate success. Perhaps it was Lake who summed up the band’s dilemma best: “After a lifetime of being in high-profile bands, all of a sudden there’s a feeling of disorientation.

“Interestingly enough, there are very few people who’ve come out of successful bands who’ve really sustained solo careers. It’s a very difficult thing to do. I’m not quite sure why that is – whether it’s because of their previous identity, or simply because the artist in question just feels a greater degree of discrimination.”

So there was perhaps an inevitability about the decision to reunite the three-piece in 1992, for the Black Moon album and a highly successful tour. But the initial enthusiasm soon waned; in 1994, they released the hugely disappointing In The Hot Seat, and over the next few years, interest seemed to be on the wane.

Yes, we were pompous – we’re English! You have to be pompous

They called it quits again in 1998, amidst more arguing. Emerson publicly berated Lake for not rehearsing enough; Lake moaned that he wanted to produce the band’s next record; Palmer merely stated, “I thought the albums were rubbish. Every band has its day, and possibly, from a creative point, we might have had our day.”

Their overpowering personalities and overwhelming sense of self-importance (however justified) has to be destructive for any project involving two or more of ELP. Perhaps Palmer gave a decent insight into the psychological mechanics of the three when he said: “Yes, we were pompous – we’re English! You have to be pompous. We weren’t a blues band. We weren’t a rock band. We played classical adaptations similar to what I do now. We played folk tunes; we were quite eclectic.

“We dealt with technology, we didn’t have a guitar player, and we never played 12-bar. We were pomp because that’s where we come from. We’re not from the South, or from Mississippi – we’re English!”

If, as is being heavily rumoured, there’s to be a 40th anniversary tour, one can only hope it lasts long enough for the trio to celebrate the positives of their union, yet ends before old problems are resurrected. Ultimately, these are three highly gifted men with the capacity to behave like spoilt brats in each others’ company.

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term “thrash metal” while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021.