MLF-117A

INTERVIEW WITH KIETH EMERSON OF EMERSON, LAKE AND PALMER. CU OF EMERSON. CU OF KEYBOARD. PRE INTERVIEW CHAT
Murray Lerner 0:02
Okay, that should be enough. You're gonna start off the white right? up to speed or one second while we're while we're performing. Let's just stay here. Okay speaking. You do about 10 or 15 seconds of Rondo and then turn and I will start asking you questions.
Keith Emerson 0:22
Yeah, well, I could start by talking if you want, but it's
Murray Lerner 0:26
okay. All right. All right. That's a good idea.
Keith Emerson 0:28
So you've only
Murray Lerner 0:29
right, well, let's wait. Let's get him. started here. Okay. Okay. Center underneath the like, keep going, keep going, keep going. Keep going. Okay. Yeah, look at me when? Okay, right. It's yeah. I see what you're doing. I can start with

EMERSON PLAYS PART OF RONDO. CU OF HIS HANDS ON KEYBOARD.

EMERSON ON KEYBOARD

MORE KEYBOARD PLAYING

MURRAY TALKS TO CREW OFF CAMERA ABOUT SHOOTING ANGLES. CREW MEMEBER COMES INTO SHOT TO ADJUST EMERSON'S MIC. MURRAY GETS THE SHOT HE LIKES BETTER. EMERSON PLAYS MORE KEYBOARD.
Murray Lerner
I ever want to go back I'm going to roam around that kind of movie can't have it's can't be fast. Fast when we were shooting okay, it was I wanted to start over there and I wanted to come out of white and play that's what we said. So let's do that. No No we didn't do that but here's the thing let's let's try that again. I hate to do anything over and very painful but let's do that let's start over there be on white

CAMERA ZOOMS IN ON EMERSON WHO APPEARS TO HAVE JUST DONE A LINE OF COCAINE.

BACK STAGE CONVERSATIONS

Murray Lerner
yeah. Yeah, let's just try that. If you could give me more music before the cannon.

Keith Emerson
All right.

Murray Lerner
Before you before and then turn to me. Not yet. Keith, Let us get ready. Let us start rolling. No, no, no What are you gonna turn to me about?

Keith Emerson
Oh, okay. What do you want to stay? Ready?

Murray Lerner
You just go in through him? Go ahead

Keith Emerson
let's do it again. So

Murray Lerner
we're gonna go into the way between these two

Keith Emerson
ready? You already. Especially the last quarter, the great gates of Kyiv. And the cannons went off and everybody woke up

Murray Lerner
all right. I'm sorry. Our timing was way off. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna stay wide till he finishes. When he talks you're gonna go in between him and what you're telling me to go in with he's still playing? No, I didn't. motioning. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. Okay. All right. Once more, please. Yeah, I wasn't. I was trying to get you to Natale, stop. Yet

Keith Emerson
something like that anyway. And then the cameras went off and brought everybody to pieces

Murray Lerner
okay, we'll live with that timing. Okay, let me ask you something else now to get more fundamental about the, your feelings. You will come into this festival as your first gig essentially. Am I correct? Does that have any major importance? Of course you'd had nice and you'd been used to gigs, but what were your feelings about being at such a huge festival from a point of view of your career and you weren't nervous at all about the crowd?

Keith Emerson
No, I feel happier playing in front of 40,000 people. And when I feel like playing in front of 20 It's easier. Because when you look out there, it's just a sea of faces. And you know, you just that they're probably involved in other things, you know, probably where they're gonna get the next hamburger from or a drink or whatever. So it's, it's all a big picnic atmosphere. So, you know, when you play concert halls, you're very aware of the degree of attention. Which is going on?

Murray Lerner
Or the what are your feelings about an audience when you play? I mean, do you think about them? Or are you playing for yourself?

Keith Emerson
It's sometimes good to look out the audience to see maybe one person that is really attentive than direct you're playing towards just that one person. That that helps a lot. You know, but we've been ELP played all over the world we've played to, everywhere from Japan, to Scandinavia, to Italy, Belgium, Germany, South America. And sometimes, you know, the people don't speak the same language, but they know the songs. With our performance at the Isle of Wight, it was a question of while they were very aware of the fact that this was apparently a supergroup, made up from gray, Greg from King Crimson and Carl from the crazy word of Arthur Brown, and myself from the nice. So there was a lot of expectations. And as I said earlier, we we'd already been voted by the Melody Maker as Britain's brightest hope. So they were there was a lot of expectations. And I think we upset a lot of people to the extent that this wasn't King Crimson, it wasn't a nice and it wasn't certainly wasn't the crazy word of Arthur Brown. I mean, certainly the critics slammed us for that, you know, because we broken up three very special bands and a In fact, we carried that burden with us for all of our career actually. Whenever we played England I never saw one good review actually, they were all you know, it was always pompous and to grand to to this too clever. But I know we rode through it. And and that's why we became such a international event really, I suppose when I say event You know, the music was, was the event. That's really what we concentrated on that and, of course, an element of showmanship because I felt that that was very necessary. In order to put our music across to people, which didn't really understand what we were going for, that the fact that we utilize a lot of classical music, we utilized a lot of jazz. We were very collective in the way that we presented our music. And it's very good to know now when I meet certain people, when, who came to the Isle of Wight Festival, and went back to college, and their music teacher would say, Well, I want you to listen to Emerson Lake and Palmer's version of pictures and exhibition, and then they play resources version. Or they played the piano solo original, and then they play the ravel orchestration. And this sort of it turned the young audience on to, you know, appreciation of classical music.

Murray Lerner
What, I have two questions that come out of that. The first is, why did you know you felt the need for showmanship? What did you feel about the relationship of the showmanship to the musical quality or intrinsic musical feeling?

Keith Emerson
While I it was fun. It was also dangerous. I think I've had more accidents on stage than I've ever had. Riding motorcycles or flying aeroplanes or scuba diving, but you Yeah, broken nose broke ribs falling off the stage and on all that stuff that? They did. I just felt it was way of augmenting the music, you know,

Murray Lerner
you don't think it contradicted the music?

Keith Emerson
No, not really. That accented it and it made it more profound. I mean, that was my way of thinking, you know? Because I mean, for instance, you know, the, what we're looking at here is that's locked, it takes about three people to lift this up. And probably another three to lift that guy up. So it's not very portable. It's not like being a guitar player, when you can sort of roam around and check the audience out. You know, like you're kind of static with keyboards, you're stuck you know, it's like it's a piece of furniture here.

Murray Lerner
But didn't you get around that by twirling

Keith Emerson
Oh yeah, yes, I did that I had a piano later on. Which span round that was fun. I enjoyed all that.

Murray Lerner
But at the Isle of Wight who didn't have coordinated display didn't have a spinning bottom I don't think he just drew it around and you

Keith Emerson
yeah but on a played it back to front of this guy's not on but anyway.

Murray Lerner
You I think we should get it on if we can. Can he. Will,

Keith Emerson
can you put this keyboard on?

Murray Lerner
I thought he was doing that what will you Sorry. Okay.

Murray Lerner
You were saying at the Isle of Wight you played a number of instruments at the same time but you were you really you didn't have the thing technically set up to throw that piano around Did you you just did it

Keith Emerson
No I had to I had the smaller version of this guy the Hammond it was never 100 And that was probably situated over here and yeah it was a good thing to throw around you could also play it back to front you know if you wanted to cetera et cetera

Murray Lerner
What do you feel when you're playing and getting into that showmanship? I mean, it's amazing that you can control both That's amazing to me. The critics by the way, were split on that. i Some did like it and some didn't. Yeah, when I read the Isle of Wight

Keith Emerson
as I I suppose it was a certain amount of just wanting to make a piece of furniture part of myself like the guitar play could make the guitar by himself I guess basically frustrated guitar player for but throwing a 315 pound Amador going around the stage is not easy. You know, I'm no, I'm no heavyweight. There's one funny story one of the road crew got fed up fixing it it up to Hammond because every night he had to repair it, put new keys in. And so he reinforced it with wrought iron. And he said, Oh, you can throw this anywhere. It won't. It won't smash up. It'll make my job a lot easier. Okay, great. So I jumped over it. And I was laying on the stage with this. The Hammond organ on top of me. And playing back to front. And when it came to sort of pushing the hammer off of me, I waited, it weighed twice as much as what it used to weigh. Because of the reinforcement. It was very Spinal Tap actually because the road is had to come on and sort of like heave it off. And I sort of crawled out from underneath

Murray Lerner
with the Isle of Wight and to get back to that it was your major launching pad I guess. Did you feel that at the time? And I mean, everything I've read about you says fame made famous at the Isle of Wight was that So from your point of view?

Keith Emerson
No. I wasn't that delighted with without performance? Until I saw some takes after either. Yeah, it's not too bad. I don't know why. I was just so self critical. But after ELP's performance of the Isle of Wight, I just wanted to get off the island and which I did, and I was back in London. By the time the who went on stage. I think the who was on stage about one o'clock in the morning and now I was I was home in bed by then.