EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER - The Last Fanfare

22. November 2017

ELP Emerson Lake & Palmer

EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER - The Last Fanfare

Emerson, Lake & Palmer are history. Still in summer 2016 Lake and Palmer gave interviews about whether and how ELP will continue after Emerson's death. Already at that time Carl Palmer said: "Of course I am happy that there are obviously still enough people [...] who are interested in our compositions. I'm very proud of that. But ELP as such has become pure nostalgia for me. I'd rather look to the future, have my own projects, especially the Carl Palmer Band."

And he continued: "Many of our fans thought Keith, Greg and I had been at odds for ages. In fact, there's never been a really dramatic fight between us. We were even in contact with each other somehow, at least sporadically, over all the decades we knew or knew each other. But we were never fat friends, not even in the seventies. But we made amazing music together. That's what connects us forever, or am I wrong?"

Even for Greg Lake in the summer of 2016 there was no turning back to working with Palmer: "A reunion with Carl, whatever it might look like, is definitely out of the question for me. How could you replace a genius like Keith Emerson? No, I will certainly not expose myself to the accusation of body snatching. At some point, everything in life is over." Carl Palmer agrees with this last sentence in the current interview about the boxing set "Fanfare".

eclipsed: When and why did you decide to go for Fanfare?

Carl Palmer: There were two good reasons for this: On the one hand, there was a great demand worldwide for the previously unreleased live recordings on vinyl. Which made me very happy, who has always preferred the sound on vinyl to the somewhat sterile sound of the CD. On the other hand, the BMG label approached me with this idea after the death of Keith and Greg. I took the chance to close with a long story that ended so sadly.

eclipsed: You think Emerson and Lake would have been proud of that box?

Palmer: I'm absolutely sure of that! The three of us may not always have been on the same wavelength as humans. But musically we have blindly trusted and congenially complemented each other. Of course, especially in the late seventies and eighties there were weaker works, that is clear to me. But the musical handwriting of three individuals who complemented each other perfectly was always to be heard.

eclipsed: What remains of ELP?

Palmer: Spectacular music, that's out of the question for me! Not all of them were successful, but which composer can claim this for his complete works? What's not left is a lot of money for me, how many envious people always spread. We have earned a lot, no question about it, but we have burned a lot of coal - for elaborate production processes, for tour bombast, which the income from the tickets often did not cover. But I don't want to moan. I'm not begging for ELP.

Lest mehr im eclipsed Nr. 196 (12-2017/01-2018).