Emerson Lake, Palmer Biography

Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP) were an English progressive rock group. In the 1970s, they were extremely popular, selling over 30 million albums and headlining huge concerts.

The trio consisted of:

The band formed in 1970. On two occasions in 1969, The Nice and King Crimson shared the same venue, first on August 10, 1969 at the 9th Jazz and Blues Pop Festival in Plumton, England and on October 17, 1969 at Fairfield Hall in Croydon, England.

After playing at a few of the same concerts, the two tried working together and found their styles to be not only compatible, but complementary. They wanted to be a keyboard/bass/drum band - such a thing had never been done before, but they felt it was possible - and so searched out a drummer.

Interestingly enough, Jimi Hendrix was considering joining the group; the British press, after hearing about this, speculated that such a supergroup would have been called "Hendrix, Emerson, Lake & Palmer", or HELP. Before settling on Carl Palmer, they approached Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience; Mitchell was uninterested but passed the idea to Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix, tired of his band and wanting to try something different, expressed an interest in playing with the group. Due to scheduling conflicts such plans were not immediately realized, but the initial three planned on a jam session with Hendrix after their debut at the Isle of Wight Festival, with the possibility of him joining. Hendrix died shortly thereafter, so the three pressed on as Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Greg Lake made this comment on ELP's discussions with Hendrix:

"Yeah, that story is indeed true, to some degree...Mitch Mitchell had told Jimi about us and he said he wanted to explore the idea. Even after Mitch was long out of the picture and we had already settled on Carl, talk about working with Jimi continued. We were supposed to get together and jam with him around August or September of 1970, but he died before we could put it together."

Their first four years were a creatively fertile period. Lake produced their first six albums, starting with Emerson, Lake and Palmer (1970), which contained the hit "Lucky Man". Tarkus (1971) was their first successful concept album, described as a story about "reverse evolution". The March 1971 live recording (Newcastle, UK) of the band's interpretation of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition was issued as a low-priced record, the success of which contributed to the band's overall popularity. The 1972 album Trilogy contained ELP's best-selling single, the understated "From the Beginning".