The Rise of Tarkus
Greg Lake could never be described as someone who was slow in coming forward, especially if he felt he needed to give you the benefit of his opinion. “If you want to play that kind of music, you should play it on your solo album. I’m not really interested in that sort of thing” is what Keith Emerson remembered Lake saying to him immediately after hearing the opening motifs of a brand new piece intended for their second album. Having invited Lake over to his apartment to play him the composition, he hadn’t expected such a stony-faced negative reaction. Already taken aback by Lake’s brusque dismissal of his work, Emerson was astonished further still as the bassist and vocalist got up and promptly left the building.
That astonishment very quickly turned to anger. He’d been inspired to write the piece after Carl Palmer had come up with a knotty drum pattern. Galloping across a 10/8 metre and drawing upon influences as diverse as Frank Zappa and his beloved Argentinian composer, Alberto Ginastera, it felt and sounded like the future to him. To have it so roundly rejected in such an off-hand manner deeply offended him. What had been intended to be a celebratory unveiling to the process of writing and recording of the follow-up to their debut album was now mired with discord and uncertainty. Picking up the telephone, Emerson got straight onto John Gaydon, the ‘G’ of EG Management, telling him in no uncertain terms that Emerson, Lake & Palmer were finished.
Following a small warm-up gig in Plymouth, ELP had arrived on the world stage amid the roar and flash of cannons blasting from the Isle Of Wight Festival in
