rip: keith emerson (of EL&P)

[thwart]

Another one of the rock icons of my youth gone.

... playing 'Lucky Man' at the pearly gates, perhaps.

[93legendti]

Hoedown for me. Remember seeing him at the California SpeedWay Jam.

http://my.mail.ru/mail/alex-enm/video/4457/4549.html

[Tony T]

I remember him stabbing the hammond and the revolving steinway

RIP

http://i.imgur.com/S8Hnay3.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/A24ROtY.jpg

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/files/2016/03/Emerson.jpg?w=630&h=420&zc=1&s=0&a=t&q=89

[drewellison]

One of my favorite musicians of all time.

I went to see him play in my hometown of Everett WA probably 8 years ago. I was able to take my boys with me, then teenagers. He was the opening band for two '70s/'80s heavy metal bands - can't remember their names. He had a singer who sounded just like Greg Lake and a drummer. He did the same songs and performance (multiple keyboards, throwing the Moog around) he was doing back in his heyday, when he was selling out large venues. Except this time, there were maybe a couple of hundred people who showed up for his opening act. All the heavy metal heads (now with pot bellies and drinking Bud Light) showed up later.

At least my kids got to see him and like him.

[OtayBW]

ELP at Upsala College ~1970. First time I ever heard a Moog synthesizer. Blew my mind......(although, I suppose my mind was somewhat 'pre-conditioned' for the event....).

[makoti]

I tried really hard to like ELP, but never could do it. Still, the man could play. Damn. RIP, Mr Emerson.

[eddief]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ9VYqustNA

[bthornt]

Still listen to Tarkus on a regular basis.

[pdmtong]

Saw ELP in the 70s and the he with Greg five years ago

Here's the beast up close

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160311/579c53118d1ff50ad382ef967f53c4d8.jpg

[texbike]

What a lucky man he was....

I know, too easy. RIP!

Texbike

[Michael Maddox]

As a composer/arranger and synthesizer enthusiast, I was lucky to have some interaction with Keith over the years, culminating in his live performance at Moogfest in 2014.

I know his hand issues had robbed him of one of his greatest loves, but the news of his suicide leaves me shaken.

A wonderful individual and an inspired musician has been taken from us.

Much love to you, Keith.

[happycampyer]

By pure coincidence I've been listening to Karn Evil 9 off of Brain Salad Surgery. One of my favorite bands growing up. I used to love playing along to the guitar solo at the end of the 1st Impression, Part 1.

He pulled laughter from the skies. RIP.

[Ti Designs]

Keith Emerson was one of the stronger influences in my piano playing. Watching the exchange between him and Carl Palmer was more like a conversation or argument than a couple of musicians playing what's on the sheet music.

In the 80's ELP released the album Black Moon with a piano solo track called Close to Home. I've watched Keith play in dozens of times (I learn by watching), I can't come close to what he played, but here my tribute:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXn_2J34FKk

[Peter P.]

I saw ELP in the late 70's at the Springfield (MA) Civic Center.

I had the flu, but went anyway-I was a teenager then and that ticket was a lot of money!

It was a general admission show in January or February. All I remember is it was cold.

My friends and I arrived about 8 hours before the doors opened and were near front of the line. But because of my flu I had to leave and sat in the car for a few hours. When I returned, it was a mob scene.

As the doors opened the crowd rushed forward even though we were searched as we entered. The push was so massive, I lifted my feet off the ground and didn't fall down!

Probably the best acoustics for a live show that I ever attended. Needless to say, ELP were true artists that night, too.

[shovelhd]

The Yale Bowl, in quad. The show ended with him tossing the B3 off the stage while plugged in. That was my favorite show of many.

[ultraman6970]

Wow, Remember listening this guys back when i was in like 5th or 6th grade, insanely fast player.

:(

[bironi]

If memory serves, I believe I saw him walking a piano across the stage like a skate boarder when I was in high school. Way over the top performance, but some good stuff.

Amazing what you can dig up on the web these days. I just found a complete historical listing of ELP concerts. The concert I referred to was at the Paramount Theater in Seattle, July, 1971.

[jvp]

Flying piano!

[Tony T]

I know his hand issues had robbed him of one of his greatest loves, but the news of his suicide leaves me shaken.

I'm saddened to hear that this was the cause of his death. I knew of the problem he had with nerve damage to his hand, but that was in 1993, yet he was able to continue with his music. (TMZ is the only source I found alluding that the nerve damage was the reason he took his own life.)

[bking]

another fan. Phoenix Coliseum, sometime around '73 or '74. Really sorry to hear; Hope he's playing something good now

[Peter B]

Still listen to Tarkus on a regular basis.

My older brother named our dog Tarkus. And turned me onto ELP. Keith Emerson was simply an incredible keyboardist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVz35uXqFYw


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKNOlDtZluU


For me it was Oakland Coliseum Arena 1977--INCREDIBLE!

Emerson's work with the Nice stands out too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RSRoM_fc9I

[oliver1850]

My grade school band teacher introduced me to the early albums. Although a professional horn player himself he was excited about the early synthesizers. I listened to Brain Salad Surgery quite a bit in high school and saw ELP at the Assembly Hall in Champaign in 1978.

[Tony T]

Saw them in the early 70's after the release of Brain Salad Surgery.
Great show. As impressed as I was with Keith, Carl Palmer (still touring btw) was also a sight to see (and hear).

NYT: Keith Emerson, ’70s Rock Showman With a Taste for Spectacle, Dies at 71 (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/12/arts/music/keith-emerson-70s-rock-showman-with-a-taste-for-spectacle-dies-at-71.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-0&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0)

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/03/12/arts/12Emerson-Obit/12Emerson-Obit-master675.jpg
Keith Emerson in the 1970s, when he became an early adopter and customizer of the Moog synthesizer.
Chris Walter/WireImage

Keith Emerson, the keyboardist of the English supergroup Emerson, Lake & Palmer and one of the key figures of the progressive-rock era in the 1970s, was found dead on Friday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 71.

His death was confirmed by Martin Darvill, an associate of Mr. Emerson’s longtime manager, Stewart Young. The Santa Monica Police Department said the cause appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Mr. Emerson had a background in classical music through private lessons, and an interest in jazz, particularly as played on the Hammond organ by Jimmy Smith and others in the 1950s and ’60s.

This mixture of influences had its most powerful apotheosis in Emerson, Lake & Palmer, on songs like “Knife-Edge,” from 1970, with its overdriven organ sound and musical borrowing from Janacek’s “Sinfonietta.”

Likewise, “The Barbarian” borrowed from Bartok’s “Allegro Barbaro” and “Toccata” from Alberto Ginastera’s Piano Concerto No. 1. “Pictures at an Exhibition,” released in 1971, was an album-length arrangement of Mussorgsky’s suite of the same name.

Drawn to spectacle and bombast, and often criticized for it, the band concluded some live performances with cannon fire.

The other members were the bassist, guitarist and vocalist Greg Lake and the drummer Carl Palmer. Mr. Emerson was a showman, standing up and playing fluidly on multiple keyboards, sometimes turning an organ over on top of himself or stabbing knives into the keyboard to hold down a note.

He became an early adopter and customizer of the Moog synthesizer, from which he coaxed rumbles and sirens and thick, swooping tones. He positioned the Moog onstage so that it towered above his keyboards, sprouting patch cords like spaghetti. His solo on the 1970 record “Lucky Man,” a rock-radio hit then and thereafter, includes one of the first well-known solos on that instrument.

Keith Noel Emerson was born in Todmorden, Yorkshire, on Nov. 2, 1944, while his father, an amateur musician, was serving with the British Army. He took piano lessons from an early age and joined a blues band, Gary Farr and the T-Bones, before helping to form the Nice, which combined psychedelic rock, jazz and symphonic music, interpolating Dvorak, Sibelius and Leonard Bernstein’s “America,” among other sources.

The Nice, which lasted from 1967 to 1970, toured with Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd.

In a 2015 interview with Anil Prasad of the website Innerviews, Mr. Emerson explained his adaptations of classical music and jazz as purely a matter of harnessing force.

“I think playing music of the greats such as Mussorgsky or Alberto Ginastera can be an explosive experience,” he said. “The energy just comes at you.”

He left the Nice in 1970 and joined forces with Mr. Lake, who had played in King Crimson, and Mr. Palmer, who had played with the Crazy World of Arthur Brown and Atomic Rooster. With the advance from the band’s first album, Mr. Emerson bought his first Moog synthesizer.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer lasted from 1970 to 1979, making seven albums, then reformed in 1991 and stayed together until 1998. (Before the band reunited, Mr. Emerson and Mr. Lake recorded one album with the drummer Cozy Powell as Emerson, Lake & Powell.) The band played a single reunion concert at the High Voltage Festival in London in 2010.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s tours were complicated and expensive, often using quadraphonic sound: According to an article in New Musical Express in 1974, the group traveled with 40 tons of equipment. In some mid-’70s performances, Mr. Emerson rose above the stage on a wire while seated at the bench of a grand piano, which was strapped in place and spinning end over end as he appeared to keep playing. (Mr. Lake later explained that the piano had no insides.)

Mr. Emerson lived in Santa Monica with his companion, Mari Kawaguchi. She survives him, as do two sons, Aaron Ole Emerson and Damon Keith Emerson, both from his marriage to Elinor Emerson.

Mr. Emerson also wrote music for films, including the 1980 horror movie “Inferno” and the 1981 Sylvester Stallone crime drama “Nighthawks.”

He toured with Mr. Lake in 2010, performed at the music and technology festival Moogfest in 2014 and wrote classical music.

For around a decade he had been leading the Keith Emerson Band, which was preparing to tour Japan next month.

Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.

[dan682]

My 2nd ever rock concert was when I was 14, saw ELP open for Jethro Tull in 1996 out at the gorge here in WA. Awesome show that kept me listening to classic rock instead of whatever was popular at the time. RIP Emerson!

[soulspinner]

Saw em in high school. When he destroyed the Moog synthesizer he had on stage(end of show) I was screaming no give it to me!!!!!!!!!!!!

[cmg]

rip saw them after brain salad surgery heydays.... always though take a pebble was great song... need to youtube it.