by Greg Lake
Following on from the orchestral projects, all three of us felt in need of a break from each other and a time away from the pressures of being in ELP. We had a meeting in New York with the president of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegün, and explained to him our collective decision to take a time away from the Emerson, Lake & Palmer circus. In the meantime, each of us would make a solo album.
It was immediately apparent that Ahmet was not pleased with this plan. He told us in no uncertain terms that under the terms of our contract, we still owed Atlantic one more album and that if we did not deliver this we could be assured that none of our solo projects would ever enjoy the type of support that we had been used to getting in ELP.
This was delivered as a fait accompli.
In spite of the fact that as artists we really did not want to embark on a new album project, we were faced with no other option than to press on and deliver this one last recording.
It just so happened that by that particular time all three of us had established homes in Nassau in the Bahamas, and I also knew that my old friend Chris Blackwell, the president of Island Records, had recently built a recording studio there called Compass Point. It was located on a stretch of the island called Love Beach, which is how we came by the title of the album. We didn’t like the title. The fans didn’t like the title. In fact, no one liked the title except Atlantic. Keith said that he phoned Ahmet Ertegün to try and change it, but was told that titles didn’t matter anyway and Atlantic were going to stick with it.
The cover was a departure too, with a photograph of us smiling with bright-white teeth, chest hair on show and a background of a palm tree and clear skies. It was a shock to most of the fans after the likes of the H. R. Giger cover for Brain Salad Surgery. The cover said commercial MOR, not ELP. We looked like the Bee Gees on holiday.
It felt like Atlantic were trying to force ELP into a commercial gap that their marketing men thought existed, irrelevant of the band or the music. It was an obvious case of trying to force a square peg into a round hole.
It was clear from the beginning that none of us would have really chosen to make this record, but once we had been forced to do it, we all undertook to put our shoulders to the wheel – at least when it came to making the music – and make it as good as we could.
Under the given circumstances, I did not feel at the time that it would be honest or appropriate for me to produce this album so I decided to devote my efforts entirely to the writing and performing. My old friend Pete Sinfield came to the island for a while and we wrote some of the material together – the title track, ‘All I Want Is You’, ‘Taste of My Love’ and ‘For You’. Pete, Keith and I wrote ‘The Gambler’, and we drew ‘Canario’ from Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo’s Fantasía para un gentilhombre, which was written in the 1950s. As was traditional for an Emerson, Lake & Palmer album, we included a long, multi-part piece, ‘Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman’, but unusually Carl and I did not have a hand in writing it. Keith worked on the twenty-minute, four-part piece with Pete. By then, the fact was that Pete and I were coming to the end of our writing partnership.
Keith ended up doing most of the producing and mixing of the tracks, which he was not too happy about. Carl and I left Nassau as soon as we could.
Even though there are a couple of nice things on the Love Beach record, for me at least it is not one of the great highlights of the band’s recording career. However, when I come to think about the circumstances surrounding how it got made, then I hope that we did still at least manage to maintain the long-standing reputation ELP had for making good-quality records.
The album, our seventh studio recording, was released in the United Kingdom on 18 November 1978. We performed ‘All I Want Is You’ on Top of the Pops but otherwise we didn’t really promote the album or support it with a tour. Unsurprisingly, it initially did not do too well on either side of the Atlantic, although it eventually sold enough records to go gold in the United States and silver in the United Kingdom, and its merits have undergone something of a reappraisal in more recent times.
Once the album had been completed, we all went our own separate ways, each of us working on our own individual projects. The band split without even doing a farewell performance.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer, at least for the time being, were no more.
Part Three
CHAPTER 14
Life after ELP
After we had completed the Love Beach album, I set off for Los Angeles to begin a new chapter in my career. Rushing headlong into this was probably a mistake. What I should have done was taken a break away from music altogether for a while, if only to regain my equilibrium and recharge my batteries.
I had a sense of liberation, but also a sense of loss. I think that anyone who has lived through the experience of being part of a stadium-level rock band will immediately identify with what happens to you when that band comes to an end. For so many years, the band has become your entire life. Both your musical identity and indeed your entire personality have been totally dedicated to the band and, when the band is no more, you inevitably feel confused and disorientated. It really does take some considerable time to stop thinking in terms of the band and start rediscovering your own musical identity, and perhaps even your personal identity as well. I can see now that starting to work in LA so quickly after finishing Love Beach denied me the time and space I required to make the necessary adjustment.
When I initially began songwriting in LA, my mind would almost always wander and I would find myself envisaging the finished record with keyboards playing a central part in the overall production. I suppose that I still instinctively imagined Keith Emerson playing a role in shaping the song and the sound. I wasn’t thinking like ‘Greg Lake’; I was still thinking like ‘Lake’ from Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
Of course, the fact was that I was no longer restricted to the keyboard-based structure of ELP, and I was free to follow any musical path I chose. This was probably a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I now had complete freedom of choice, musically, but on the other, this presented the danger of opening up far too many doors simultaneously, which could then possibly result in the album having no coherent or unified direction.
In the end, I discovered that the answer to this dilemma, and therefore the key to my own musical identity, lay in the reason I began to play music in the first place: the magic of the guitar. I had played some guitar when I was with ELP, but it was rarely the focus of the writing and I had often played bass instead because it suited the collective sound. When the band dissolved, I started to discover the true magic of the instrument – and its importance to me – again.
From that point forward, I was no longer bound to use synthesisers or have obligatory keyboard solos, and would now be able to return to a more eclectic way of writing and recording, rather in the same way as the first King Crimson album had been made. But this time, I would usually have a guitar, not a bass, in my hands.
Shortly after arriving in Los Angeles, I rented a house in Benedict Canyon and it was there that I first met up with the American songwriter Steve Dorff. Steve had recently co-written ‘I Just Fall in Love Again’ for an album by the Carpenters, which became a hit for Anne Murray in 1979. He has written dozens of country hits, and has become well known for composing film and television themes – he’s been nominated for a hatful of Grammy and Emmy awards.
I began to work with him on a song that he had co-written called ‘Let Me Love You Once Before You Go’, which he wanted me to record. We would often work up at the house preparing the arrangement and discussing how we would set about recording the song and so on. In the end, W. G. Snuffy Walden from Stray Dog, who had been signed to ELP’s Manticore label, did the guitar solo on ‘Let Me Love You Once Before I Go’. Snuffy went on to win an Emmy for writing the music for The West Wing.
Shortly before Steve Dorff and I collaborated, Steve had been working on the soundtrack he had written for the Clint Eastwood film, Every
Which Way but Loose, using Toto to perform most of the backing tracks. He felt that they would also be the perfect musicians for me to work with on the new record. My friend and co-manager at the time, Alex Grobb, whom I had got to know in Montreux, also knew the band well and so we set up a date to record Steve’s song along with two other songs that I had written.
Being in a band like ELP, you play more or less the same ten or twenty songs with the same couple of people for ten or twenty years, and you don’t get much exposure to other musicians, other forms of music and other ways of doing things. It’s a wonderful thing when a current of fresh air blows and you feel a wholly different influence, another style.
During the Toto sessions, I was stunned by their musicianship and how incredibly fast they worked; each member of the band was a master in his own right. I will never forget watching the late and great Jeff Porcaro on drums – everything he played just seemed effortless and his ‘feel’ is undoubtedly among the best you will ever hear. (Just take a listen, for example, to ‘Rosanna’ or ‘Africa’ by Toto to hear the master of feel at work.) One of the things that I immediately noticed about Jeff’s playing was just how little he used his cymbals. When I asked him why this was, he told me that, in doing so many recording sessions in Los Angeles, he had discovered that the overall production sounded much clearer and cleaner without the constant hiss of cymbals going on throughout the recording. He was absolutely right because the fact is that cymbals occupy a very similar frequency to certain elements of the human voice and this conflict causes all sorts of problems when it comes to balancing and perspective in the final mix.
Steve Lukather was another wonder to behold. Watching his fingers glide effortlessly across the fretboard was, and still is, an unforgettable experience. David Paich, the keyboard player, songwriter and producer, is simply a genius. Last but definitely not least, the legendary David Hungate on bass is also outstanding. All in all, Toto are about as good as it gets when it comes to musicianship.
I spent another couple of months writing in LA and living the Californian dream. This was all well and good, I suppose, but LA exists in its own bubble and after a while I began to feel rather cut off from the rest of the world. I think that perhaps this might have had something to do with the fact that the time difference between the West Coast and the United Kingdom is so drastic, and also that, being a European, I began to suffer from some sort of cultural deficiency.
In any case, I decided to return to England to live a more rural life in Dorset, where I had recently bought a mill house along with a beautiful stretch of the River Allen.
Having enjoyed my recent experience with Toto, I was reminded of just how important it was for me to have my own band, and so this was another motivating factor for me to return to the UK.
As soon as I arrived back home, I immediately started work on building a recording studio at the mill. I soon realised that was going to take some considerable time to complete so, while the work was ongoing, I continued recording at Abbey Road in London in 1980–81.
For my debut solo record, I wanted to pay tribute to Bob Dylan by recording one of his songs. I had always been a huge fan of Bob and his songwriting, and I felt that this was as good a time as any for me to pay my respects. The only thing was that I did not really want to do one of his big hits, but rather something less well known. Just purely by coincidence, Tommy Mohler, one of my tour managers at the time, used to work for Bob. He asked him if he had any unreleased material that I could record. Bob explained that he didn’t have any completed songs, but that he did have one song that was halfway written and that he would be more than happy for me to complete it. The title of the song was ‘Love You Too Much’. As a result, I share a co-writing credit with the legendary Bob Dylan (plus Helena Springs). Having finished the writing, I began to record the track at Abbey Road.
By the time we came close to finishing the recording, my instincts told me that there was something about the overall production that was missing. What I could hear going on in my mind was a blistering rock guitar part that would lift the excitement level of the track so high that it would help underpin the title, in the sense of almost being ‘too much’.
On a good day, I am not too bad a guitar player myself, but what I could hear in my mind was a guitar part that I knew would be something far beyond my own capability, so I asked my managers if they knew anyone who could possibly fit the bill.
Within an hour, I got a phone call back from Stewart Young, saying that he thought that Gary Moore would be a good choice. Of course, I knew of Gary’s previous work with Thin Lizzy, and he had just had a big solo hit with ‘Parisienne Walkways’. He had a reputation for being a great player – one of the very best – so I asked Stewart to see if Gary would like to play on the record.
The next day we were back in the studio and Gary had been booked to play the session. I will always remember him walking into the control room in Abbey Road in a long black leather coat, carrying his guitar case and looking just a little shy.
As soon as we had exchanged greetings, Gary plugged in his guitar and, without even taking off his coat, he immediately put on his headphones and started to play.
I asked him if he would like to come into the control room and take a listen to the track but he said that he would rather just play along in real time. Luckily we had the good sense to record the first take; as is so often the case, it was a good thing that we did as this is the actual guitar part you hear on the record today. Gary’s track was done in one single pass having never heard the song before.
To be honest, we were all absolutely floored by his performance and, when the track finished, everybody in the control room instantly stood up and applauded.
I knew right then that I had found the right guitarist for my band.
During my career, I have always considered myself to be very fortunate to have worked with some of world’s greatest musicians and the band that I formed during the Abbey Road sessions was no exception.
Apart from Gary, we had the one and only Tommy Eyre on keyboards. Tommy is probably best known for his work with Joe Cocker and the Grease Band – he played the Hammond organ on Joe’s version of the Beatles classic ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’. He also played with Gerry Rafferty on ‘Baker Street’ and recorded an album with the legendary guitarist John Martyn. Strangely enough, shortly after working with me, he became the musical director of Wham! and apparently had a hand in hits like ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’, ‘Freedom’ and George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper’. Tommy was a truly wonderful musician and an amazing character. Just like Joe Cocker, he grew up in Sheffield and radiated that same warm, ‘salt of the earth’ personality that people from that part of the world are so famous for.
On bass, we had Tristram Margetts. I had known Triss for many years from back in my old home town of Poole in Dorset, and he and his brother had been members of Spontaneous Combustion, whose debut album I had helped to produce in the early 1970s.
The drummer was Ted McKenna who for many years had played with the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, with whom Tommy had also played for a while. Ted was a terrific player with a great instinctive feel. My old bandmate Michael Giles from King Crimson days also helped out on drums.
Apart from the core band and Toto, we also had the good fortune to have Clarence Clemons from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band come in to play the sax solo on the song ‘Someone’. Every time I hear him play that solo, even to this day, it still makes the hair on the back on my neck stand up.
One of the wonderful things about playing with such great musicians happens when it comes to leaving the studio and performing live. When I made the Greg Lake solo album and heard some of the breathtaking performances that occurred during the recording, I simply had no concept of what could possibly be done to improve upon them. However, the answer soon became apparent when we started to perform these songs live, starting at the Reading Festival at the end of August 1981. It was then that I came t
o realise that the performances on the record were simply one facet of what these magnificent players were capable of achieving.
Night after night, I would hear Gary play his solos in a slightly different way and always better than he had done on the previous night, and Tommy would instantly respond with a seemingly endless stream of musical imagination in the form of responsive chord inversions along with wonderful melodic inventions. For me, there is almost no better feeling on earth than to play music with a band of great musicians.
We recorded Gary Moore’s ‘Nuclear Attack’ for the album, and apart from the Steve Dorff song and the Dylan track, I wrote the other songs such as ‘It Hurts’ and ‘For Those Who Dare’ either by myself or with Tony Benyon, with Tommy contributing to a couple of tracks. When I listen back to these recordings, both in the studio and live, all I can say is that I am extremely proud of them and eternally grateful to all the musicians who helped to make them what they are. I should also express my deep gratitude to all of the recording engineers and other contributors who worked so hard on the record and made it all come together.
The album, simply entitled Greg Lake and produced by me, was released by Chrysalis records on 25 September 1981. In terms of sales, at least when compared to the early days of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, it did not do that well. However, with the benefit of hindsight, I think that if any solo artist today had similar initial sales figures, the champagne corks would immediately start popping. I think that Chrysalis simply expected to cash in on ELP’s success and carry on as if nothing had happened. Unfortunately, this was a rather naive assumption because, as far as the record-buying public are concerned, a band is one entity and a solo artist who may have come from that band is quite another.
I persevered, despite feeling that Chrysalis were not really interested in working hard with me to make sure the music was heard and promoted in the right way. My second solo album, called Manoeuvres, was released in July 1983. All the band members, including Gary Moore, had faith in what I was doing and were happy to reunite to work on the album.