Born in 1944 in Todmorden, the Englishman was the only child of a middle-class family. For a decade he was to be the rock keyboardist par excellence. Keith Emerson freed the organist from the corset of the sitting bureaucrat, who stoically pressed chords on a nut-brown box. The "King of Keyboards" took organ playing to a new level of sex, violence and ecstasy. In private rather shy, Emerson on stage turned into an aggressor who shook his Hammond like a stubborn lover, maltreated her with his elbows, stood on her and performed a wild ride. With this fascinating and disturbing performance, the dandy type early became the "Hendrix of keyboard instruments". However, he had not copied his wild stage show from the guitarist of the century, but from Don Shinn, whom he had seen at the Marquee Club in the autumn of 1966: "In the middle of one piece he began to shake his organ and poking around with a screwdriver. I was so impressed, I had a lot of ideas in my head afterwards."
