Why Keith Emerson Was Important

will you please welcome on stage emerson lake and keith emerson was a founding member of emerson lake & palmer who died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound on march 11 he was 71 years old instead of focusing on his death let's focus on his life and how important some of his decisions were for the face of all music let's begin where he did when he bought his first hammond organ at the age of 15 the Hammond would become one of Emerson's signature instruments possibly only out signature buy another one that I'll get to soon in 1967 emerson co-founded the nice an early progressive rock band that blended aspects of rock jazz and classical the nice particularly benefited from Emerson showmanship as he was known to stab his Hammond with swords and ride out like a surfboard one date a record store in 1969 Emerson heard this that switched-on Bach by Wendy Carlos than Walter Carlos it was an album recreating classic Bach pieces using only Moke synthesizers immediately emerson wanted to know what those sounds he was hearing were and how he could make them himself he learned that it was a moke synthesizer and he borrowed its friends for a nice gig in which he presumably caused heads to explode with his Moog only rendition of strauss's also sprach zarathustra named after the most righteous work by the man with the most righteous stache friedrich nietzsche a song that was made popular by stanley kubrick's then recently released film 2001 a space odyssey wow that was a whole mouthful of nerd although artists like the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel had used mugs on some songs emerson became the first musician ever to tour with one and also to shoot rockets off of one in 1970 emerson co-founded prog rock supergroup Emerson Lake & Palmer with Greg Lake former bassist and singer of King Crimson and Carl Palmer former drummer of the crazy world of Arthur Brown and atomic rooster with the LP Emerson was specially commissioned by mogh to tool with new prototypes of new since not yet available to the public their eponymous debut album was a mishmash of hammond organ laced jazzy classical influenced prog rock and also started a tradition on ELP albums to have at least one Greg Lake Pend ballad performed primarily on acoustic guitar lucky man The Ballad in question became Emerson Lake & Palmer's most famous song and this is important because it ended with this what you just heard was Emerson playing his recently purchased Moog modular synthesizer to perform a solo sounds pretty standard to us but this was one of the earliest if not the earliest instance of a synthesizer being used basically in place of a guitar on a record that soundbite proved to piano players everywhere that with this crazy new instrument they could be just as captivating and basically as cool as the bass guitarist out there Emerson was the first musician to play lead keyboards of course Emerson was part of a group of musicians that are often banded together and really making the keyboards cool Rick Wakeman comes to mind as well as Tony banks but they both usually played alongside fantastic guitarists Emerson had no such luxury occasionally greg lake would pick up an electric guitar on stage notably for the first impression of carnival nine most of the time it was up to Emerson to lead the band and did he ever over the next few years ELP released some of the most enduring and beloved albums for piano players bassists and drummers everywhere starting with Tarkas and moving through pictures at an Exhibition trilogy and ending with brain salad surgery all released within a span of less than five years throughout this time Emerson remained a hero for keyboardist everywhere Emerson Lake & Palmer began to decline in popularity during the late 70s and the members pursued other projects with occasional reunion what you're hearing and watching right now is material from their last reunion at the high voltage festival in 2010 since at least the mid 90s Emerson was struggling with nerve damage in his hands they made it considerably more difficult to play the piano as effectively as he once was able to it's believed that this is why he took his life but there very well may be new developments as I'm reading this very early after his death as many of you know I recorded a cover of Space Oddity after David Bowie died and I was considering doing something similar for Emerson but then I remember that any ELP song worth playing would be too difficult for me to even play on the piano the closest thing I have in that regard is a drum cover of targets that there's a link in the description too even though that's more of a tribute to Carl Palmer who was thankfully still alive and well as you may have noticed I have quite a fondness for my mug prodigy which is really just a dumb down Mini Moke and that's completely thanks to Keith Emerson I made this video not out of obligation but because I wanted to explain to anyone who is unaware just how important Keith Emerson was to piano players which translates to how keyboards are viewed by general audiences as well as how they're played it's very likely that music might sound quite different today at Keith never tour with his gigantic Moog modular synth back in 1970 thanks for watching everyone and I hope that I don't have to do another video like this for a very long time rest in peace Keith you you

Channel: Kenny Talarico

Views: 470,061

Rating: 4.8846407 out of 5

Keywords: keith emerson, elp

Id: lbMyuNNuZt8

Length: 6min 47sec (407 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 13 2016