“We made bad albums”: The two prog-rock records ELP’s Carl Palmer wants to destroy
When Frank Zappa tried to define what prog-rock is, he essentially said that it was rock music but with added bits here and there.
“I would presume that people would accept this definition,” he said, “Progressive rock is anything that doesn’t sound like regular rock. Regular rock is everything that sounds like itself. All songs which sound the same, everything on MTV, everything on the radio, that’s rock. Progressive rock is stuff that doesn’t sound like that.”
Sure, that definition makes sense. It’s essentially a limitless version of rock, something where you have chaotic sounds, different genres or complicated narratives added in order to give the listener something beyond what they would usually hear in the charts. Of course, when a style of music is essentially defined as ‘rock music but more’, it’s very hard to pinpoint the origins of such a sound.
Ian Anderson has an encyclopedic knowledge of prog-rock, and so he’s a good authority to turn to when it comes to attempting to pinpoint where this style originated. He cites a lot of bands in finding the starting point, such as Pink Floyd with Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Cream, and The Beatles with Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. However, he also makes a note of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, their prog-rock trio, of course, but also projects they were working on prior.
“I suppose one of the precursors before it was really being called prog-rock,” he said in an interview with Far Out, “Probably at a time when maybe progressive rock had just being maybe mentioned for the first time in the British music press, it would be the band The Nice, which featured Keith Emerson, who went on to be in Emerson, Lake & Palmer, a true prog-rock band years later. But yes, I would go with The Nice and their first major album, which…name escapes me. That was something that got me fired up.”
With band members making the precursor to prog before they even formed what would become a prog-rock band, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to listeners that Emerson, Lake & Palmer were constantly pushing the boundaries of what they could do with their music. This applied both to the sound of their records and also to the over-the-top nature of a lot of their live shows.
They strived for bizarre concepts, layered sounds, and music which became incredibly difficult to play live without a number of helping hands. Their wide-open approach to creativity meant that there were a lot of musicians and critics who turned their noses up at them, as the band developed what some would call a pretty snooty reputation.
“We were always frowned upon by journalists and even some bands wouldn’t talk to us because they thought we were up our own arses,” recalled Carl Palmer, “But we were setting a standard. We were one of the first bands to do a production, where there was eye candy, a bit of film, Keith hanging off the ceilings… Then the big production became the norm, and we always carried that thing: ‘they’re too overblown, they’re too OTT’. But the music itself stood the test of time.”
However, the band were anything but up their own arses. The three of them were well aware that in their time of making music, they happened upon some good albums and some that were…less so. While exploring the vast landscape that was prog-rock, Emerson, Lake & Palmer weren’t immune to putting out some garbage music, and even the band members would attest to that. There are two albums which Carl Palmer hates so much that he thinks the world would be better off without them, and these are 1994’s In the Hot Seat and 1978’s Love Beach.
“We made bad albums, In The Hot Seat and Love Beach should be melted down and made into flowerpots,” he said, “But how many great pieces of artwork are you going to get to create in your career? I think we managed to do four or five that stand up today, and I couldn’t ask for more than that.”
