by Greg Lake
On our days off in Switzerland, Stewart Young and I would go cycling around Lake Geneva together. We had come across Rochat, a shop that sold immaculate handmade racing bikes which were built as precisely as a Swiss watch. We each bought one and decided to take up cycling.
I have always enjoyed spending time with Stewart. By then he had been managing the band for about four years, and he has continued as my manager for the rest of my career. It was his steady hand on the tiller when ELP went through choppy waters. He is very understanding but allows no room for the sort of silly, impetuous behaviour for which rock musicians are famous. If you have got a friendship that endures for forty years – where you become as close as family – you are very blessed, and until this day we have never had a contract. We have never needed one and we never will. Everything is done on trust.
Starting our rides in Montreux, we would cycle along the smooth tarmac path in the valley basin and ride a few miles around the lake beneath the snow-capped mountains. I will never forget the bright sunshine and cold mountain air, the sound of the gentle ticking of the gears and purring of the tyres as we glided among the birds and butterflies, and the delicate scents of the meadow flowers and sedge grasses. If ever there was an experience of absolute tranquillity on earth, then surely this was it.
With faces red and flushed, we would take a break at a little lakeside restaurant in an enclave called Evian, famous for its bottled mineral water. The restaurant was noted for serving a speciality called filet de perch: the freshwater fish, which was caught in the lake, was filleted and fried in butter, then served with French fries and a crisp spring green salad with a French vinaigrette dressing. It was accompanied by the local white wine called Dol and fresh Evian water drawn from the ice-cold waterfall that ran through the grounds of the restaurant. We would invariably finish the meal off with a light dish of wild mountain strawberries called fraise du bois, served with homemade vanilla ice cream. In Evian, this meal was simply considered good local grub, but we found it exquisite.
After resting and chatting a while we would set off again on our journey back through the valley, but this time with the afternoon sun on our back. It is hard to describe the feeling you get after a day out riding like this. It is part relaxation, part reinvigoration and part euphoria. Stewart and I still talk about those rides today almost forty years later, and we both marvel at the beauty we witnessed and the lasting impact it had on us.
That’s the strange thing about Switzerland. It’s almost too beautiful to be true. It was like being a voyeur looking through a window at a magical and surreal fairy-tale landscape.
However, after some time in Switzerland, we got the sense that we were being monitored by the authorities. You rarely if ever see a policeman on the street but you can bet your life that five days before your non-resident visa comes to an end, you will be getting a knock at your door from the man in a long black coat telling you it’s time to leave.
During 1977, we decided to relocate to Montreal in Canada for the rehearsals of the Works tour. Due to its European heritage, it was a city where we always felt comfortable and received an enthusiastic welcome. We began rehearsals in a dark, vast car park beneath the Montreal Olympic stadium, which had been constructed for the 1976 Summer Olympics.
We soon received a phone call from our UK record company telling us that our recording of ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ was climbing fast up the charts. They felt it was going to be a big hit record and asked us to make a video for television. We were deeply involved in rehearsing with the orchestra so our initial reaction was to decline. I said that we couldn’t put everything on hold just to make a video. The record company was disappointed but understood the situation and we left it there.
While this phone call was going on, the orchestra had been stood down for a coffee break. After I hung up, I went upstairs to get some fresh air and a burst of sunlight. I took the elevator up to the ground floor and, as the doors opened, I saw a breathtaking sight. The glorious and futuristic Olympic stadium was covered in a blanket of virgin-white snow, and the Olympic rings were lit up and displayed on huge screens at either end. It was one of those eureka moments. If ever there was a perfect setting for the band to film a video for ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’, then this had to be it.
The following day, we had a stage erected and the road crew moved our equipment up into the stadium for us to film what would become a classic video. The temperature was below zero and my fingers began to freeze and stick to the steel strings of my bass, so we had to shoot it in bursts of just thirty seconds. It was worth it, though. The record company was thrilled with it and, sure enough, the single went on to become a huge hit.
Once the rehearsals had been completed, we prepared to go on tour with the orchestra. We took 145 people on the road – including our own doctor – and we used a convoy of eleven tractor-trailers and four tour buses. I was informed that one of the trucks was dedicated solely to the carrying of spares. It was a gargantuan operation – it was like a travelling city. We had to book up entire hotels.
I was looking for the tour manager Tommy Mohler one day and I went from floor to floor of a hotel yelling: ‘Is Tommy here?’ I noticed in each corridor that there were buckets and buckets with upturned wine bottles in them, and I suddenly realised we were paying for all that. It was an awakening, but huge costs seemed to be part and parcel of ELP.
‘It’s like this,’ I said to an interviewer at the time. ‘Everyone criticises ELP. They say the band has too much fuckin’ money. What we do is reinvest it back into ourselves as entertainment. Anyone who had anything to do with the financing of this project thought we were crazy. Our heads are on the block. It’s not the first time and probably won’t be the last. I’m glad. It’s not just a question of another rock show hitting Pittsburgh. It’s a question of presenting a show again, one magic night.’ I thought we had a responsibility to deliver the best possible entertainment, every single night.
There was a wonderful sense of camaraderie and excitement as the tour kicked off. The young musicians who made up the orchestra were the top classical players emerging from the best music academies in the United States, and each one was dedicated to making this show as good as it could possibly be. We could all feel that we were a part of something unique. This bond became profound as the tour went on.
For me, the orchestral tour was a challenging departure from performing as a three-piece band. Instead of locking up with Keith and Carl as before and playing instinctively off each other, we were now under the control of a conductor. We would often find ourselves having to adjust the tempo in order to stay within the feel being set by the orchestra.
Also, the audience reaction was different now. Perhaps the sense of formality that inhabits – and inhibits – standard orchestral shows made the audience reserved or maybe, like me, they sensed that something had changed because the band itself was not in full control of the music.
We did achieve some spectacular moments, such as the performance at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal and the shows we played at Madison Square Garden, but the response was sometimes held back compared to the raw excitement we were able to generate on our own. We were not just playing orchestral pieces from Works, but giving the full treatment to pieces from throughout our career, including ‘Tarkus’ and ‘Pictures from an Exhibition’.
On Sunday 12 June 1977, we were performing at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa. I was standing backstage waiting to do the sound check when Stewart came over to me and whispered into my ear that he needed to speak to me urgently. We found a quiet place away from all the noise and hustle and bustle, and sat down together. I could see by the look on his face that something was wrong.
There was a brief moment of silence before he looked me in the eyes and said: ‘We have to stop this tour.’
He explained that the tour expenses were costing over $300,000 a week. The concerts were selling out, but we were going to lose millions. Just one or two
cancellations had thrown the whole finances off-kilter.
Stewart informed Keith and Carl and, after a brief discussion, we decided to be honest straight away with the orchestra and everyone else involved in the tour. We told them we would only be able to hire the orchestra for a few individual dates at large venues later in the tour. The atmosphere was sombre as the news spread. We all felt a deep sense of loss. Despite my misgivings about using an orchestra, we had become something of a family again.
A little while after the announcement, a few of the musicians came to Stewart’s room with tears in their eyes. They told him that the orchestra had held a meeting and that they had been having such a great time on the tour that they had all agreed to continue playing without any fees: they just wanted food and lodging. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do that as the musicians’ union, the American Federation of Musicians, would not allow it.
We continued as a trio and the orchestra did not return until we went to New York for a three-night stint at Madison Square Garden, starting on 7 July 1977. Keith once said: ‘The second night at Madison Square Garden was the best gig of the whole tour for me. I finished playing my piano concerto with this splendid orchestra, and I received a standing ovation that must have lasted three minutes. Greg bounced on the stage and hugged me in front of 14,000 people. After all the hard work and arguing he hugged me! That meant a lot.’
On 26 August, we played with the orchestra for the final time. We were back at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal and there was so much pressure on us. There was only time for one orchestral rehearsal, and we had not played together for a while so everybody was rusty. We also had serious technical difficulties trying to incorporate the first ever digital multi-track tape machine into the live PA mixing desk. In the end, we had to record the whole show on a two-track stereo machine but we were still able to capture a great recording of the band with the orchestra we had assembled for the Works tour.
The Montreal show was sold out, with over 80,000 fans helping to bring the band and its performance to a whole new level of excitement. Having that wall of beautiful sound behind us again made for an intense evening of music. We incorporated rock treatments, unplugged acoustic numbers and traditional classical arrangements – so in a way it encapsulated our career together. For many in the audience, it was overwhelming. Fans have told me they cried during some of the more tender moments in the show; and songs like ‘Knife-Edge’ from the Emerson, Lake & Palmer debut album were more powerful than ever before because of the orchestra.
Whenever I am in Canada, I run into people who were there and they always say it was the most magnificent live concert they have ever attended. For me, it remains one of the most memorable shows of my entire career.
For the second half of the Works tour, from late 1977 and into March 1978, we toured as a three-piece for financial reasons and argued quite a lot. I don’t think any of us really enjoyed it, even though the fans did. Something was missing.
One side effect of going on tour with the orchestra was that it meant that I would have another chance to see the King of Rock and Roll, though sadly this was very much towards the end of his life.
A short while ago I received a letter from Danny Markus, an old friend who lived in New York and worked for Atlantic Records, which included his reminiscing about the time our paths crossed with Elvis – and the letter also gives a large clue as to why our orchestral tour lost so much money. In 1976, in the year before the tour, Stewart Young was staying in Danny’s second bedroom, as many Atlantic managers did, while he was in New York.
One night the phone rings in my apartment. The voice at the other end says, ‘This is Colonel Tom Parker,’ in a relaxed gravely southern voice. ‘May I please speak to Stewart Young?’ The Colonel dials his own calls. I made a note. Every second, when you are on with him, is a learning moment. He is the manager of all managers. He was the master of perception being everything.
So this was business and the Colonel was on the line. I brought the phone over to Stewart. He is a tall, good-looking man with financial skills and tough negotiating positions but he isn’t much of a talker. It sounded like Elvis’s manager was dealing the cards. Stewart hung up and briefed me on his call. Seems Elvis will be on tour next summer [1977] and they need the Louisville Fairgrounds on one of the nights ELP had booked it for their orchestra tour.
I had seen drawings and Polaroids of the ELP set. They were planning to take a seventy-piece orchestra from city to city. The usual way to do this would be to pick up musicians in each town and rehearse them at sound check for that evening’s performance, which saved a lot of money in transportation and hotel rooms. Sinatra worked this way. He just brought a rhythm section and his band leader.
ELP saw it differently. It would be baseball stadiums for the most part and there would be complex sound issues and logistics. When the road manager walked up to the hotel front desk there would be 125 rooms under his name. Buses with drivers for the orchestra, trucks with drivers with the staging, ELP with an airplane. This is going to blow the audience away, I thought. No one had ever toured America like this. Maybe one or two dates or a sit down. Not forty-five cities. Few would take this financial risk even in those days. ELP did and it was costly. But what price art?
The date the Colonel was interested in was smack in the middle of this tour. It was a routing issue as Louisville fit right into Elvis’s schedule. The Colonel asked what he should give in return for having ELP’s intricate set pulled back on the stage for one night. Not torn down. Just pulled back if possible and covered.
‘Elvis doesn’t need the set,’ said the Colonel. ‘He is the set.’
The Colonel would pay expenses. But what else?
We tossed ideas back and forth but really in a situation like this, manager to manager, all that was necessary, Stewart said, was a row of seats and a guaranteed audience with the King.
And what British band, any band for that matter, would turn down meeting Elvis Presley? ELP would love that and most likely they will need some entertainment themselves in the middle of putting their tour together.
The following July it all came together. The Best Western in Louisville was not the best hotel in town but it was right across the way from the Fairgrounds. And Elvis was staying there. We saw him go through the lobby out to a car on the day of his show. We saw the scrum that surrounded him as he moved about in public. It was one of the Colonel’s tricks to build mystique which he had learned during his carnival days.
Even though I could hit a golf ball and strike the venue from the hotel, we took three limousines to the show. We had our own row near the front. As soon as we sat down the house lights dimmed and the Elvis Presley Band started a medley of the King’s hits. Then Elvis came out and our row gasped. He was bloated. I couldn’t make out a word he was singing. It was like Dean Martin playing the drunk. He forgot some lyrics on the second song. On the third song he came to the front of the stage, stuck out his belly, patted it on the top and made some crack about a baby. I covered my face because I feared that the buttons and other hardware were going to come flying off that white jumpsuit he was wearing.
After the fourth song started we all looked at each other down the row. Without saying a word we stood up simultaneously – Keith, Greg, Carl, Stewart, their road manager, bodyguards, and their Atlantic representative – and headed back to our waiting cars and the hotel. We walked out on the King that night and, though I have seen ELP over the years, separately and together, we have never discussed that show.
As I read Danny’s account, I could vividly recall that sad feeling as I watched Elvis in such bad shape, struggling to perform on our stage. The strangest thing was that the audience behaved as though nothing was wrong and that it was simply the Elvis they had always known and loved. That was probably the most tragic aspect of it.
A month after this show, on 16 August 1977, I was in Las Vegas, sitting in the back of a car outside my hotel. As usual in Vegas, the hotels were so busy you had to wai
t before unloading your bags. Suddenly, the driver turned around to me.
‘You’ll never believe what I’ve just heard come over the intercom,’ he said. ‘Elvis is dead.’
Just as the initial shock subsided I looked out and saw the lights along the strip getting switched off. Las Vegas without the lights is an eerie and depressing place indeed. People came pouring out of the casinos, looking shaken, many in tears. It was as though there had been an earthquake or some other kind of catastrophe. All the casinos were closed down that night as a mark of respect. It felt at that moment like Las Vegas would be changed forever.
The United States had always been a place of great joy, optimism and possibilities for me, and part of that stemmed from the second Emerson, Lake & Palmer tour and seeing Elvis in his charismatic prime at Lake Tahoe in 1971.
Eight years later, I had witnessed the King’s fall from grace, while my own band ELP was in both a creative and a financial mess. It felt like the end of an era.
CHAPTER 13
Outro: Loveless Beach
I believe that the orchestral project ultimately led to the demise of ELP. Prior to the orchestra and Works Volume 1, ELP were a multiple-platinum-album-selling act, performing in stadiums and arenas all over the world, inspiring a whole new generation of musicians. After the orchestral project, we were supposed to pare back our stage show and the innovative recordings dried up. To me, it seemed that the flame of ELP that had ignited so many audiences throughout the world had begun to die.