1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 238. Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Pictures At An Exhibition (1971)

 

Thinking about it, I’ve mentioned before the triumvirate of British Seventies Folk-Rock (Pentangle, Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span) and the triumvirate of British Seventies Hard Rock (Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath); there’s also a triumvirate of British Seventies Prog-Rock (King Crimson, Yes, and ELP).

This is a live album, where ELP tackle Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition, using modern electric instruments and, at times, pretty much rewriting the whole movement to suit. There’s a lengthy adaptaption of the Nutcracker (Tchaikovsky, of course, but what’s one Russian composer to another eh?) as an encore.

A big shame with this endeavour is that Greg Lake’s marvellous voice doesn’t get much of a look-in apart from on The Gates Of Kiev, where he performs in more growly rock elements than the pure soaring vocals that he did with King Crimson; it feels a lot more like Keith Emerson’s baby - “Hey guys, let me show off on a Hammond organ for 45 minutes”. That said, Lake does some nice acoustic guitar work on The Gnome, and the Baba Yaga section has all three musicians going for it so frenetically that it made me feel slightly nauseous from vertigo.

I think, in part, due to the dated sound of the electronic organs, it feels much more of its time compared to similar pieces by, say, Sky, that were done at around the same time; it’s okay. I preferred Tarkus. See my comments for Fragile by Yes; prog-rock can often turn into “Hey, look, I’m a classically-trained musician playing rock. Aren’t I terribly clever? Hear my baroque twiddles, paeons.”