Product Description

From The Nice to Emerson, Lake and Palmer—the true story of the man who changed the sound of rock music.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #79759 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781844540532
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
One expects a rock n’ roll memoir to be full of sound and fury, signifying nothing if not the inflamed passions, tortured egos, precipitous climb and calamitous descent of its subjects. Emerson, composer and keyboardist for the Nice and, later, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, gives readers all this: from flag-burnings to overeager groupies, from musical mishaps to drunken, drug-addled excesses, as well as a host of backstage celebrity interactions. (Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, Rod Stewart and a wonderfully catty portrait of Leonard Bernstein as a supercilious old perv are just a few that dot the book’s landscape.) Wildly theatrical onstage, Emerson played Norman Bates to his organs and keyboards, hacking away at them with knives and swords, often leaving them ruined and smoldering in his wake. The problem is that, as narrator to his own life, Emerson seems too, well, nice to rev the engine needed to drive such a book properly. He pulls back when he should barrel full-speed, and his writing lacks the killer incisiveness of his keyboard play. Slow to start, often clumsily overwritten and self-serving, Emerson’s memoir shows little sense of the narrative arc of the author’s life, and so the book trudges on in a litany of events, happenings and episodes that ultimately don’t add up to more than a series of pictures at an exhibition. Emerson seems too self-absorbed to be an acute observer of others, neither does he appear reflective enough to cast light on the shadows of his own life. Fans of Emerson’s bands will relish the scenester details anyway, but others may find themselves wishing he could write with the same brilliant abandon that he applied to his music.
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Review
“Unputdownable! A hysterical, intriguing, and important musical memoir.” -- The Sunday Times

From the Publisher
Keyboard legend Keith Emerson is one of the most important figures to emerge from the thriving rock scene of the sixties and seventies. Fusing rock ‘n’ roll with classical, jazz, and world music, he has set a standard by which others are judged. With Greg Lake and Carl Palmer, he formed the hugely successful Emerson, Lake and Palmer, who, between 1970 and 1977, released six platinum albums. Now, in this insightful and irreverent memoir, Emerson tells uproarious tales of life on the road; tales of the high lifestyle that goes with being a rock star; and, of course, tales of the outrageous, barrier–shattering music he produced. Keith Emerson is now a Hollywood film composer.

Customer Reviews

I laughed, I cried, I was disappointed
At times highly witty, at others merely insipid, these are the recollections of a rock icon. Emo chronicles his childhood and his adventures with progressive bands The Nice and ELP. Most of the stories are rather well known from other biographies, but it's refreshing to read them from his specific point of view. There are some excruciatingly painful memories involving conflicts within the bands and a personal battle with addiction. There are some anecdotes which I feel are inappropriate for public consumption, and better left private between so-called friends.

Overall a delightful read if you are not turned off by repeated references to bodily functions, name-dropping, and drug abuse which was apparently prevalent during his heyday in the 70's. An amusing yet quite sad portrayal of the glory days of the greatest rock keyboard player of all time.

I give it only three stars, because honestly that's how it rates among all the other books I've read. If I were to rate it among books about rock-n-roll specifically, it would get five easily.

Title Says It All
Like the other reviewers here, I was and am a big ELP fan. As soon I heard Keith Emerson's playing, I was dumb-struck by his virtuosity and musical vision, one that, alas, did not play out too well over the years. I eagerly awaited this book, mainly because I wanted to hear what Keith Emerson had to say about his music.

There's a scene in "Spinal Tap" when David St. Hubbins is playing a beautiful piano piece and Rob Reiner asks him what the music is called . St. Hubbins replies "Lift my Love Pump." Well, I think that might sum up this book, and I can't say I wasn't warned by the title.

There are virtues here, however. Emerson has a breezy, conversational writing style that goes down easy, and he doesn't write a self-serving book in the least. The first part of the book, from his childhood to his breaking up the Nice is the best part, funny, and heartwarming. It struck me how much Emerson loved Lee Jackson and Brian Davidson, and the affection for his once and future bandmates mixed well with the stories. I often found myself laughing out loud.

The ELP and after sections are troubled. It's clear Emerson never liked Lake, and had a brotherly and patronizing attitude towards Palmer. But love between bandmates doesn't necessarily make great music, however, after reading this book and listening to the ELP oveure, I finally sensed the coldness that so many critics complained about.

The descent into drugs, the sadness of an abortion caused by miscommunication, the wrecking of Emerson's hand and the subsequent operations all make the second half of the book more than a bit sad. Emerson might have toned his words for this part of the book, but it continues in a breakneck and breezy manner, giving the impression (false I'm sure) that Emerson didn't care about these things.

My biggest complaint, however, is that he hardly discusses the music at all. I would have put up with hijinx and lines of coke with Bonzo better if he had talked about composing Tarkus more.

Still, for a proghead and synthfool like me, Pics of Ex is worth reading, even if the God of the Moog diminishes himself.

Better than nothing
Given the frequent disdain of the musical press for ELP's music, ELP has always been one of the least-biographed musical acts of the rock era. As a fan for decades, I looked forward to this book for many years. I'd certainly rather have the book than none at all, but it was not what I had hoped for. I agree with the other reviewers that it unfortunately gives little insight from Emerson about his music. The pacing is uneven, with a lot of detail about his early years and scarcely any more than a scattered medley of events beyond the end of the 1970's.

The two major things I took away from this book were:

1. Considering Emerson's dislike of Greg Lake, it is a miracle that ELP made any recordings at all or were able to be such a formidable live act.
2. The real center of Emo's existence for many years was not music, but drugs. I suspect that the sketchiness of many parts of this autobiography is the result of Emo's cocaine addiction.

If you love ELP, you will want this book and probably have already read it anyway. If not, you won't gain anything that you've already missed in the music.

The photo section was of extremely poor quality. A coffee table quality book about ELP with good photos is needed and I hope someone will publish one.

It would be fascinating to read an account by Greg Lake of the ELP years as well as the years that followed, but he seems to work about as often as Halley's Comet appears. I think Lake could do a well-structured and well-written book (Emerson hasn't done so here) but as with hopes for any new music from Lake, I'm not holding my breath. I'm afraid Lake will croak before that happens. I hope to be proven wrong. Perhaps Palmer's might be the most fascinating account of all. He might be able to provide the "this is what really happened" version of ELP.

The music exists, and we are fortunate for that. This book and ELP's recent status represent something magical that could have happened but never did.