History Music / EmersonLakeAndPalmer

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[[caption-width-right:146:The ELP logo.]]%%

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%%[[caption-width-right:146:The ELP logo.]]

[[caption-width-right:146:The ELP logo.]]

* CryLaughing: From "Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression":

''We'll laughter from the skies''\\

* AIIsACrapshoot: "Karn Evil 9: Third Impression" has this as a theme, as it describes a war between mankind and machines. It's not clear who wins, but the song ends with a computer (actually Keith Emerson's voice processed through his synthesizers, although it sounds more than a bit like a Series/{{D|octorWho}}alek) saying it "let [humanity] live" and boasting, "[[BadassBoast I'm perfect. Are you?]]".

* RefrainFromAssuming: It's called "Karn Evil 9", not "Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends". And the section where the mistitling comes from is from the second part of the ''13-minute'' first movement ("impression") of a 29-minute piece. It just happens to lead off the shortest track of the "Karn Evil 9" epic and thus the [[EditedForSyndication easiest to play on the radio.]] It helps that on the original vinyl version parts one and two were split across two sides, so part two lead off side 2. (Not to mention the band rarely played the other 2 2/3 movements during their later years anyway, if at all.) ''Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends'' is the title of their (BSS era) live album, 2 [=CDs=] (or 3 [=LPs=]) long.

* NoodleImplements: The second half of "Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression" features vague descriptions of the strange acts in "the show that never ends", including "supersonic [[BeastlyBloodsports fighting cocks]]", a display of "bishops' heads in jars", a "gypsy queen" performing "on the guillotine" while covered in Vaseline, a performance of Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band", and an act involving "[[BeastialityIsDepraved seven virgins and a mule]]".

* ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything: Greg Lake often referred to life on the road as being akin to being adventuring pirates. This finally manifested as the song Pirates.

ELP's defining traits were complex and difficult songs and ridiculously flashy live performances. The band is not as well known compared to the other big names from the progressive rock era despite its initial success. ELP has been often called pretentious and too cluttered to enjoy partially thanks to the large number of solos and overblown, lengthy songs, and more than one person has been known to declare that they represented the worst excesses of ProgressiveRock. As usual, beware of CriticalBacklash. Despite their perceived shortcomings (which even many of their fans will admit are not entirely off-base), they still have plenty of fans, and have [[DeadArtistsAreBetter become somewhat more popular]] after the tragic events of 2016. The bulk of their reputation rests on their first four studio albums and ''Music/PicturesAtAnExhibition'', a live adaptation of Music/ModestMussorgsky's most famous work which is [[CoveredUp now probably better known to non-classical listeners than the original work]].

* AllDrummersAreAnimals: Carl Palmer was quite wacky both as a drummer and as a person.

* BritishRockstar: Played straight with all of them.

* DeadArtistsAreBetter:
** Keith Emerson has gotten a lot of tributes in the press after his death in 2016.
** Lake has gotten this somewhat too, although he was already better liked among the rock press due to his tenure in King Crimson.

* PrettyBoy: A case could be made for all three in the early 1970s, but Carl Palmer takes the cake. He was reportedly recommended while Emerson and Lake were looking for a bandmate because of how cute he was.

* {{Retirony}}: Keith Emerson had been planning to retire after a final tour before his 2016 suicide.

* MohsScaleOfRockAndMetalHardness: Could get anywhere from a 1 (Lake's ballads) to, arguably, about a 7 or 8 ("The Barbarian", "Toccata", "Karn Evil 9: 3rd Impression"), which is interesting as the band doesn't even use electric guitars much. It's mostly done with Lake's MetalScream and organs/synthesizers. Overall they're probably mostly in 3-5 territory, but, as with many ProgressiveRock bands, they're difficult to classify due to their inclusion of many segments of varying hardness in most of their lengthiest songs. (Some listeners have cited "The Barbarian" as an example of proto-DoomMetal; towards the end, it also contains extensive use of blast beats, which were quite unusual in the early '70s.)

* (Peter Sinfield, as an unofficial member who co-wrote lyrics with Lake)

** The electric guitar on "Still...You Turn Me On" is a bit reminiscent of Music/JimiHendrix, who apparently had been planning to jam with Emerson and Lake, but never got the chance due to his AuthorExistenceFailure.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: The cover of ''Brain Salad Surgery'', by Creator/HRGiger of ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' fame, originally featured an erect penis beneath a woman's chin. Through skilful airbrushing, this was converted into a shaft of light (largely at the behest of ExecutiveMeddling), but the original shape can still just be made out. The album title itself is a euphemism for [[spoiler:fellatio]] borrowed from Dr. John's "Right Place, Wrong Time", as was the album's original working title, "Whip Some Skull on Yer". Giger's cover art was inspired by the latter.

--> "I once spent three years at an Emerson Lake and Palmer concert...and that was just the drum solo.

''[[PainfulRhyme Someone get me a ladder...]]''

* SnowySleighBells: Greg lake's solo hit, the seasonal ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXvN9ldVBxo I Believed In Father Christmas]]''.

* SnowySleighBells: Greg lake's solo hit, the seasonal ''[[Music/EmersonLakeAndPalmer I Believed In Father Christmas''.

-->It is a shame that we really can't perform it the same way it is on the album. There's a lot of double-tracked vocals. Greg's playing electric, bass and acoustic guitar on it. If we had really thought about it, and we ourselves, had wanted to release it as a single, then we would have considered these points, and possibly re-arranged it so we could have done it some way on stage. Now we come out and people want to hear it. Greg performs it as an acoustic piece and I guess it's rather disappointing to some people because they want to hear the recorded version. There we were, in the position of it having been released and us not knowing that people want to hear it, and the way it was done on the album being impossible for us to do on stage.

* AlbumTitleDrop: Usually averted with their albums. ''Brain Salad Surgery'', the name of their 1973 album, [[SubvertedTrope is mentioned in their similarly named song "Brain Salad Surgery"]], [[DoubleSubversion but that song isn't included on the album]].
** Well, ''Pictures at an Exhibition'' has a voice clip of one of them dropping the title of the piece.

* TheBandMinusTheFace: The band "3" without Greg Lake.

* CrapsackWorld: "Black Moon" takes place in a world that's barely alive after years and years of chemical pollution. Before that, "Knife-Edge" from their first album: "Will you still know who you are/When they come to who you are?".

* DeadArtistsAreBetter: Keith Emerson has gotten a lot of tributes in the press after his death in 2016.

* DisguisedInDrag[=/=]{{Naughty Nun|s}}: "Jeremy Bender", in which the title character decides to become a nun one day and dresses up as one, yet all the other nuns are getting suspicious about his... odd behavior. [[spoiler:At the end, [[UnsettlingGenderReveal one of the nuns discovers who the "nun" really is, and that is Jeremy]]:]]
-->[[spoiler:Digging a sister, "she" was a "mister".\\
Shouldn't have kissed her, but he couldn't say no.\\
Wanted to leave her, couldn't believe her;\\
So he packed up his suitcase and decided to go.]]

** Arguably played straight with the band itself, given two members died within the space of nine months.
* EpicRocking: Taken to its extreme.
** Significant examples include "Take a Pebble," "Tarkus," "The Endless Enigma," "Karn Evil 9," "Pirates," and "Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman." The crowner, though, would have to be their version of ''Music/PicturesAtAnExhibition'', which, apart from a gap between sides, consists of continuous music for about thirty-four minutes. (Their version of "Nutrocker", included as a bonus, extends the album's length to about thirty-eight minutes.) Live versions of "Karn Evil 9" also tended to be about thirty-four minutes long (see their King Biscuit Flower Hour appearance for an example).

* {{Filler}}: ''Love Beach'' is a filler '''album''' made because of a contract mandate.

* GameBreakingInjury: Emerson's RSI (repetitive strain injury). He was no longer able to play some of the band's songs properly or at all. Didn't stop him from trying, with mixed results. Emerson's anxiety over his ability to perform for an upcoming tour is believed to have been a factor in his suicide.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Ths cover of ''Brain Salad Surgery'', by Creator/HRGiger of ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' fame, originally featured an erect penis beneath a woman's chin. Through skillful airbrushing, this was converted into a shaft of light (largely at the behest of ExecutiveMeddling), but the original shape can still just be made out.
** The album title itself is a euphemism for [[spoiler:fellatio]] borrowed from Dr. John's "Right Place, Wrong Time", as was the album's original working title, "Whip Some Skull on Yer". Giger's cover art was inspired by the latter.

* InTheStyleOf: "Are You Ready Eddy?" is an AffectionateParody of Music/LittleRichard, based on "The Girl Can't Help It".

* [[IronicEpisodeTitle Ironic Song Title]]: "Lucky Man", the tale of a prominent young man who goes to war expecting fame and glory [[spoiler:and [[DownerEnding gets killed instead]]]].

* LettingTheAirOutOfTheBand: Done with tape manipulation at the end of "Knife Edge".
** When Steven Wilson remixed the album in 2012 he couldn't recreate the effect digitally, so it's only on the original mix (the remix lets the session run on until the band just stop).

* RefrainFromAssuming: It's called "Karn Evil 9", not "Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends".
** And the section where the mistitling comes from is from the second part of the ''13-minute'' first movement ("impression") of a 29-minute piece. It just happens to lead off the shortest track of the "Karn Evil 9" epic and thus the [[EditedForSyndication easiest to play on the radio.]] It helps that on the original vinyl version parts one and two were split across two sides, so part two lead off side 2. (Not to mention the band rarely played the other 2 2/3 movements during their later years anyway, if at all.)
** ''Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends'' is the title of their (BSS era) live album, 2 [=CDs=] (or 3 [=LPs=]) long.

* UnpluggedVersion: "Lucky Man" was inevitably performed at concerts as a stripped-down, guitar-and-voice ballad. Emerson once mentioned his disappointment that they could never reproduce the studio performance in concert:

** According to Emerson in his autobiography, it came from an exchange between him and Carl on stage. Greg liked the phrase and borrowed it. Contrary to some claims, The song is a romanticised vision of the relationship between the fans and the performer. On one hand, the audience looks up, and sees a star, an icon, from something ordinary; on the other hand, the performer, in spite of the stress and hardships of touring, is motivated and elated by the energy and response from the audience.

ELP's defining traits were complex and difficult songs and ridiculously flashy live performances. The band is not as well known compared to the other big names from the progressive rock era despite its initial success. ELP has been often called pretentious and too cluttered to enjoy partially thanks to the large amount of solos and overblown, lengthy songs, and more than one person has been known to declare that they represented the worst excesses of ProgressiveRock. As usual, beware of CriticalBacklash. Despite their perceived shortcomings (which even many of their fans will admit are not entirely off-base), they still have plenty of fans, and have [[DeadArtistsAreBetter become somewhat more popular]] after the tragic events of 2016. The bulk of their reputation rests on their first four studio albums and ''Music/PicturesAtAnExhibition'', a live adaptation of Music/ModestMussorgsky's most famous work which is [[CoveredUp now probably better known to non-classical listeners than the original work]].

** Arguably played straight with the band itself, given two died within the space of nine months.

** His equipment didn't escape unscathed either. Even without his RSI, he wouldn't have been able to cover The Nice's "Rondo" as he used to. He played the rapid glissandos in the piece by slapping his open palm across the keyboard. His Hammond L-100s withstood this for quite a time, possibly with running repairs, but eventually it appeared that he didn't have a single L-100 left where all the higher keys on the lower manual weren't broken off, with repair or replacement no longer being possible.
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Ths cover of ''Brain Salad Surgery'', by Creator/HRGiger of ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' fame, originally featured an erect penis beneath a woman's chin. Through skilful airbrushing, this was converted into a shaft of light (largely at the behest of ExecutiveMeddling), but the original shape can still just be made out.

* MesACrowd: The inner gatefold for the Creator/{{Hipgnosis}}-designed cover for ''Trilogy'' has multiple Emersons, Lakes and Palmers posing in a forest.

** And the section where the mistitling comes from is from the second part of the ''13-minute'' first movement ("impression") of a 29-minute piece. It just happens to lead off the shortest track of the "Karn Evil 9" epic and thus the [[EditedForSyndication easiest to play on the radio.]] It helps that on the original vinyl version parts one and two were split across two sides, so part two lead off side 2. (Not to mention the band rarely played the other 2 2/3 movements during their latter years anyway, if at all.)

[[quoteright:146:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ELP.gif]]
[[caption-width-right:146:The ELP logo.]]

Although their band name is commonly shortened to "ELP", [[IThoughtItMeant they should not be confused with]] rapper Music/ElP.

* {{Bookends}}: "Tarkus" starts with a riff that plays out in "Eruption" (where Tarkus was hatched from an egg), and the riff repeats at the end of the song after "Aquatarkus" (where the protagonist becomes after being [[EyeScream blinded in his fight with the Manticore]]) to give off a "buried, but not dead" vibe.

* AIIsACrapshoot: "Karn Evil 9: Third Impression" has this as a theme, as it describes a war between mankind and machines. It's not clear who wins, but the song ends with a computer (actually Keith Emerson's voice processed through his synthesizers, although it sounds more than a bit like a [[Series/DoctorWho Dalek]]) saying it "let [humanity] live" and boasting, "[[BadassBoast I'm perfect. Are you?]]".