Keith Emerson

Career

Emerson began his professional career playing in John Brown's Bodies in the Worthing and Brighton area, where members of the T-Bones, the backing band of blues singer Gary Farr, invited him to join their group. After a UK and European tour with the T-Bones, the band split, and Emerson joined the V.I.P.'s, a band he described as a 'purist blues band'. His flamboyant stage style emerged when a fight broke out during a performance in France; instructed to keep playing, he produced explosion and machine gun sounds with the Hammond organ, stopping the fight.

His bandmates asked him to repeat the stunt, and at the next concert he played the organ back to front. In 1967, after soul singer P. P. Arnold asked him to form a backing band, Emerson created the Nice with Lee Jackson, David O'List, and Ian Hague. After replacing Hague with Brian Davison, the group developed a strong live following, centered on Emerson's Hammond organ showmanship and theatrical abuse of the instrument, including hitting it, beating it with a whip, pushing it over, riding it across the stage, and wedging knives into the keyboard.

These actions produced musical sound effects such as explosion-like sounds and feedback. Emerson's show with the Nice has been cited as a strong influence on heavy metal musicians. Away from the Nice, he participated in the 1969 Music from Free Creek 'supersession' project with Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, performing with drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Chuck Rainey on a cover of Eddie Harris's 'Freedom Jazz Dance'.

Instrumentation

Emerson used a variety of electronic keyboard instruments, including two Hammond C-3 organs rebuilt and customized by Al Goff of GOFF Professional: the 'Pictures at an Exhibition' C-3 and his 'Tarkus' C-3, which he played and toured with until his death. He preferred two GOFF Professional Leslie 122 speakers for their vacuum tube amplifiers and classic tube-amp sound. He also owned and played Hammond organs and synthesizers by Moog Music, Yamaha, and Korg, and occasionally used pipe organs, a grand piano, a clavinet, and briefly a Mellotron.

During his ELP years, he toured with a large amount of gear, taking thirteen keyboard units to a December 1973 show at Madison Square Garden and later traveling with a large Yamaha GX-1 that required eight roadies to move it. Initially a piano player, Emerson obtained his first Hammond organ, an L-100, after hearing jazz organist Jack McDuff and becoming frustrated with broken piano hammers. Around 1968, he added a second Hammond organ, the more expensive C-3, placing the two organs sideways and facing each other so he could stand between them and play both while facing the audience.

He preferred the C-3's sound as 'far superior' and used the L-100 to 'throw around and make it feed back' by placing it close to onstage speakers and using a fuzzbox.

Pieces based on other works

Emerson occasionally covered or sampled other musical works in his compositions. Permission to use pieces was sometimes denied, as when Gustav Holst's daughter refused official permission for rock bands to perform 'Mars, the Bringer of War'. However, several composers granted permission. Aaron Copland approved ELP's version of 'Fanfare for the Common Man', though he expressed uncertainty about how the modal section connected to his music.

Alberto Ginastera enthusiastically approved Emerson's electronic realisation of the fourth movement of his first piano concerto, which appeared on Brain Salad Surgery as 'Toccata', stating, 'You have captured the essence of my music, and no one's ever done that before.' Other credited works include 'America, 2nd Amendment' from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein, 'Diary of an Empty Day' from Symphonie Espagnole by Édouard Lalo, 'Azrael Revisited' quoting Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp minor, 'Ars Longa Vita Brevis' from Bach's third Brandenburg Concerto, 'Intermezzo from the Karelia Suite' by Sibelius, 'Pathetique' from Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, 'She Belongs to Me' by Bob Dylan, 'Country Pie' by Bob Dylan, and 'The Only Way (Hymn)' incorporating Bach's Organ Toccata in F and Prelude VI.

Some pieces were uncredited on US releases but later credited on British re-pressings, such as 'The Barbarian' based on Bartók's Allegro barbaro and 'Knife-Edge' based on Janáček's Sinfonietta. 'Rondo' derived from Dave Brubeck's 'Blue Rondo à la Turk' was uncredited, and 'America, 2nd Amendment' quoted Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 uncredited.

Songs composed by Emerson (alone or with contributions from others)

Emerson wrote a wide variety of pieces in different musical styles, from pop rock songs like 'Flower King of Flies', 'The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack', and 'Happy Freuds' to complex pieces incorporating baroque, contemporary, and jazz influences that anticipated the progressive genre, such as 'For Example' and 'Five Bridges Suite'. During the 1970s, his compositions for ELP included hard rock songs with jazz flavor like 'Bitches Crystal', 'A Time and a Place', and 'Living Sin'; country or stride piano pieces like 'Jeremy Bender' and 'Benny the Bouncer'; and adventurous instrumentals like 'The Three Fates', 'Tank', and 'Abaddon's Bolero'.

The more structured epic tracks 'Tarkus', 'Trilogy', 'The Endless Enigma', 'Karn Evil 9', 'Pirates', and 'Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman' are all Emerson's compositions. As a soloist, after his 'Piano Concerto' he recorded orchestral works in the early 1980s including 'Inferno', 'Nighthawks', and 'Orchestral Suite to Best Revenge'. Later decades brought piano pieces such as 'The Dreamer', 'And Then January', 'Outgoing Tide', 'Broken Bough', and 'Soulscapes', as well as orchestral pieces 'Glorietta Pass' and 'After All of This'.

The Keith Emerson Band album includes the long suite 'The House Of Ocean Born Mary' co-written with Marc Bonilla. A list of his early compositions includes 'Winkle Picker Stamp', '56 Blues', 'Flower King of Flies', 'The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack', 'Tantalising Maggie', 'Dawn', 'The Cry of Eugene', 'The Diamond Hard Blue Apples Of The Moon', 'Daddy Where Did I Come From?', 'Little Arabella', and 'Happy Freuds'.

Did You Know?

• Emerson acquired his first Hammond organ, an L-100 model, at age 15 or 16 on hire purchase and a loan from his father.
• ELP's record deal provided funds for Emerson to buy his own Moog modular synthesiser from the US, which was a preset model with fewer leads and punch cards.
• Emerson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on 11 March 2016 at his home in Santa Monica, California.