Keith Emerson
Keith Noel Emerson (2 November 1944 – 11 March 2016) was an English keyboardist, songwriter, composer and record producer. He played keyboards in a number of bands before finding his first commercial success with the Nice in the late 1960s.[1] He became internationally famous for his work with the Nice, which included writing rock arrangements of classical music.[2] After leaving the Nice in 1970, he was a founding member of Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP), one of the early progressive rock supergroups.
Keith Emerson
11 March 2016 (aged 71)
Lancing and Sompting Cemetery, Lancing, West Sussex, England
Musician, songwriter, composer
1964–2016
2
Edel, Victor, Shout! Factory, Varèse Sarabande, Rhino, Manticore, J!MCO Records, Sanctuary, EMI, Marquee Inc., Charly, Gunslinger Records, Cinevox
Emerson, Lake & Palmer were commercially successful through much of the 1970s, becoming one of the best-known progressive rock groups of the era.[1] Emerson wrote and arranged much of ELP's music on albums such as Tarkus (1971) and Brain Salad Surgery (1973), combining his own original compositions with classical or traditional pieces adapted into a rock format.[3] Following ELP's break-up at the end of the 1970s, Emerson pursued a solo career, composed several film soundtracks, and formed the bands Emerson, Lake & Powell[1] and 3 to carry on in the style of ELP.[4] In the early 1990s, ELP reunited for two more albums and several tours before breaking up again in the late 1990s. Emerson also reunited The Nice in 2002 and 2003 for a tour.[5]
During the 2000s, Emerson resumed his solo career, including touring with his own Keith Emerson Band featuring guitarist Dave Kilminster, then replaced by Marc Bonilla, and collaborating with several orchestras. He reunited with ELP bandmate Greg Lake in 2010 for a duo tour, culminating in a one-off ELP reunion show in London to celebrate the band's 40th anniversary.[6] Emerson's last album, The Three Fates Project, with Marc Bonilla and Terje Mikkelsen, was released in 2012.[5] Emerson reportedly suffered from depression, and since 1993 developed nerve damage that hampered his playing, making him anxious about upcoming performances. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on 11 March 2016 at his home in Santa Monica, California.[7][8][9]
Emerson was widely regarded as one of the top keyboard players of the progressive rock era.[1][10][11][12] AllMusic describes Emerson as "perhaps the greatest, most technically accomplished keyboardist in rock history".[13] In 2019, readers of Prog voted him the greatest keyboard player in progressive rock.[14]
Early life[edit]
Emerson was born on 2 November 1944 in Todmorden, West Riding of Yorkshire. The family had been evacuated from southern England during World War II, after which they returned south and settled in Goring-by-Sea, West Sussex.[15] Emerson attended West Tarring School (now Worthing High School) in Tarring.[16] His mother Dorothy was not musical, but his father Noel was an amateur pianist and taught Emerson basic piano. When Emerson was eight, his parents arranged formal tuition, learning to play and read music with "local little old ladies" until he was around thirteen, with whom he studied to ABRSM Grade 7.[17][18][19][20] Emerson's teacher put him in competitions at the Worthing Music Festival and suggested he finish studying music in London, but Emerson had little interest in classical music at the time and chose jazz piano.[17] His studies in Western classical music largely inspired his own style in his professional career which often incorporated jazz and rock elements.[5]
Although Emerson did not own a record player, he enjoyed listening to music on the radio, particularly Floyd Cramer's 1961 slip note-style "On the Rebound" and the work of Dudley Moore. He used jazz sheet music from Dave Brubeck and George Shearing and learned about jazz piano from books and Andre Previn's version of My Fair Lady.[17] He also listened to boogie-woogie, and to country-style pianists including Joe "Mr Piano" Henderson, Russ Conway and Winifred Atwell. Emerson later described himself: "I was a very serious child. I used to walk around with Beethoven sonatas under my arm. However, I was very good at avoiding being beaten up by the bullies. That was because I could also play Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard songs. So, they thought I was kind of cool and left me alone."[18]
Emerson became interested in the Hammond organ after hearing jazz organist Jack McDuff perform "Rock Candy", and the Hammond became his instrument of choice in the late 1960s. Emerson acquired his first Hammond organ, an L-100 model, at the age of 15 or 16, on hire purchase and a loan from his father.[21][22] He had saved money to buy a Bird electric organ with built-in speakers on each side, but then spotted a Hammond in the shop and thought it was a better purchase.[17] Emerson's initial plan was for a non-musical career while playing the piano on the side. Upon leaving school he worked at Lloyds Bank Registrars where he played the piano in the bar at lunch times and local pubs at nights. He was ultimately fired from the bank.[23][16] Emerson played in a local 20-piece swing band run by Worthing Council, performing Count Basie and Duke Ellington tunes. This led to the formation of the Keith Emerson Trio, with the group's drummer and bassist.[17]
Career[edit]
1965–1970: Early groups and The Nice[edit]
While performing in the Worthing and Brighton area, Emerson played in John Brown's Bodies where members of The T-Bones, the backing band of blues singer Gary Farr, offered him a place in their group.[17][23] After a subsequent UK and European tour with the T-Bones, the band split. Emerson then joined The V.I.P.'s,
which he described as a "purist blues band";[17] his noted flamboyance began when a fight broke out during a performance in France. Instructed by the band to keep playing, he produced some explosion and machine gun sounds with the Hammond organ, which stopped the fight. His band members told him to repeat the stunt at the next concert,[23][24] where Emerson played the organ back to front.[17]
In 1967, Emerson formed The Nice with Lee Jackson, also of the T-Bones, David O'List, and Ian Hague, after soul singer P. P. Arnold asked him to form a backing band.[25] After replacing Hague with Brian Davison, the group set out on its own, quickly developing a strong live following. The group's sound was centred on Emerson's Hammond organ showmanship and theatrical abuse of the instrument, and their radical rearrangements of classical music themes as "symphonic rock".[26][27][28][29] To increase the visual interest of his show, Emerson abused his Hammond L-100 organ by, among other things, hitting it, beating it with a whip, pushing it over, riding it across the stage like a horse, playing with it lying on top of him, and wedging knives into the keyboard.[20][30] Some of these actions also produced musical sound effects: hitting the organ caused it to make explosion-like sounds,[31] turning it over made it feed back, and the knives held down keys, thus sustaining notes. Emerson's show with The Nice has been cited as having a strong influence on heavy metal musicians.[27]
Away from The Nice, Emerson was involved in the 1969 Music from Free Creek "supersession" project that included Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. For the session, Emerson performed with drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Chuck Rainey covering, among other tunes, the Eddie Harris instrumental "Freedom Jazz Dance".[32]
Emerson first heard a Moog synthesizer when a record shop owner played him Switched-On Bach (1968) by Wendy Carlos, and thought the instrument looked like "an electronic skiffle".[24] He got into contact with keyboardist Mike Vickers, who had paid £4,000 to have one shipped from the US, and organised to play it at an upcoming The Nice concert at the Royal Festival Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, in February and March 1970.[22] Vickers helped patch the Moog, and the concert saw Emerson perform "Also sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss with Vickers behind the machine to swap patches.[22][24]
Playing style[edit]
Emerson sometimes reached into the interior of his piano and hit, plucked, or strummed the strings with his hand. He said that as a keyboard player, he hated the idea of being "static" and that to avoid it, he "wanted to get inside the piano, brush the strings, stick Ping-Pong balls inside".[114] "Take a Pebble" included Emerson strumming the strings of his piano, a technique pioneered by avant-garde composer Henry Cowell, referred to as string piano.[115] In the Nice's 1968 live performance of "Hang on to a Dream" on the German television program Beat-Club (later released on DVD in 1997), Emerson can be seen and heard reaching inside his grand piano at one point and plucking its strings.[116][117]
In addition to such experimentation, Emerson also incorporated unique musical stylization into his work. Emerson is recognized for having integrated different sounds into his writing, utilizing methods of both horizontal and vertical contrast. Horizontal contrast is the use of distinct styles in a piece of music, combined by alternating between two different segments (in Emerson's case, most frequently alternating classical and non-classical); this technique can be seen in numerous works, such as "Rondo", "Tantalising Maggie", "The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack" and others. Vertical contrast is the combination of multiple styles simultaneously; Emerson frequently played a given style with one hand and a contrasting one with the other. This structure can be seen in works such as "Intermezzo from the Karelia Suite", "Rondo", and others. Emerson's love of modern music such as Copland and Bartok was evident in his open voicings and use of fifths and fourths, "Fanfare" emulated guitar power chords. He also used dissonance, atonality, sonata and fugue forms, exposing rock and roll audiences to myriad classical styles from Bach to Stravinsky.[118]
Honours and awards[edit]
In December 1980 Contemporary Keyboard magazine announced, in their Fifth Annual Readers' Poll, that Emerson had—for the fifth time in a row—captured first place in two categories - '"Overall Best Keyboardist" and "Best Multi-Keyboardist". The five-time wins put Emerson in their "Gallery Of The Greats" for both categories. The same poll also saw Emerson take "Best Rock Organist" for the fourth time and "Best Lead Synthesist".[139]
In March 2010 Emerson received the annual Frankfurt Music Prize for his achievements, awarded in Frankfurt on the eve of the annual Musikmesse fair.[140]
In September 2013 Orchestra Kentucky of Bowling Green gave Emerson their Lifetime Achievement Award in the Arts and Humanities "for his role in bringing classical music to the masses".[79][141]
In 2014 Emerson was inducted into the Hammond Hall of Fame by the Hammond Organ Company.[55]
In popular culture[edit]
On the UK surreal television comedy series Big Train, Kevin Eldon portrayed Emerson as a Roman slave fighting his enemies with progressive rock.[180]
The long-running comic-strip character Keef da Blade in the Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, student newspaper Lachesis (1970s)[181] is based largely on Emerson, the character's name being presumably a reference to his trademark stage antics with knives.