Emerson, Lake & Palmer must be the biggest group in the world. It's not just that all their albums are chart sensations. What really makes ELP a dinosaur potentate is the sheer scale of the noise they emit. With ELP we're swatted into the new age of totally Technologized Rock. This is robot music mixmastered by human modules who deserve purple hearts for managing to keep the gadgets' reined at all.

The sight of the massed ELP arsenal would chill the follicles off H.G. Wells. Synthesizers, donchaknow, up the bung: "keyboard wizard" Keith Emerson's has not only its requisite computer but very own TV set. Carl Palmer has the world's first synthesized drum kit, which (but natch) he himself conceived with p'raps a little help from Keith's personal friend Rob Moog (inventor of samenamed instrument). This martial array of percussion also includes a libertine bell and two Arthurian-table sized gongs upon which a Chinese dragon cavorts leering in phosphor. As for Greg Lake, he mostly just switches tween his guitar and bass, but he's got enough amplification behind them two mantas to blow the Pentagon to Patagonia.

If there is an energy crisis, these guys amount to war criminals.

Even they don't know how much of this shit they're carting around with "em. I tried to pry the techfax outa one of their roadies, but he mumbled so mungish that when I transcribed the tape all I could make out of the murk was: "28,000... amperes. .. voltage..,

I went, I saw, I drowned. There was no choice. Arenas are arctic huge, but ELP have finally met the challenge of the arena and emerged the huger gnats. Three limos, three dressing rooms. Three egos exploding tight as a rapa-\ cious cyclotron and slick as Gorgo's dildo. Backstage the equipment crates clog the hallways like mainlined boul-' ders. It takes the roadies five hours to set up, five more to pack up later. watts.. . ousand more as well. .. plus which... urrrrhhhhh. .." Living in cybernetic caves. Elsewhere' I glean tottings of over 200 separate pieces of equipment, worth over a hundred grand. Including of course a brand new moog, which is only one of the 13 keyboards Keith packs for the road. After all, his nickname is Fingers.

You can readily comprehend the anticipation of meeting anybody who could churn it out so relentlessly. Those old stories of Keith Emerson actually stabbing his poor piano with a knife were enough to make you wanna shake the hand of such an impudent little devil. He flashed nary a dagger this night, but more than compensated when he vaulted off the stage waving what looked like a theremin around, nearly decapitating several coeds and a rentacop to forezak of supra-WHIIINE! Reclambering onstage, he capped even his own show by wiping his ass with it: WZZEEEEEE!

So you can further imagine our tragic letdown when we got back to the dressing room and learned that Keith had refused to talk to us at all; something to do, it seemed, with a CREEM review of previous ELProduct which Keith had apparently taken personally.

"Yeah, Keith took the review heavy, man," sighed ELP shepherd "The Big M." "He didn't wanna do photos or nothin"." Historically footnoting, the review in question was Alan Niester's assessment of Pictures at an Exhibition,' which perhaps offended Keith by a comparison of the acquisition of his albums to bubble-gum card collecting: "Thus, since I've been into Emerson for so long, take it from me, you heard one Emerson album, you heard "em all.., [But this album] shows Emerson at his best. As for these other guys, Lake and Painter, forget "em, they're no more important than Davison and Jackson were in the Nice. All Emerson really needs is Emerson."

Which sure shows where that pianopounder's head is at: that review was not only favorable, but even went so far as to paint said keyboarder an even loftier genius than he must concieve himself, shunting L&P off to the sidecar. Some people just don't know how to accept worship gracefully, but that's okay, because L&P are such good sports they overlooked the insult and not only consented to be interviewed but were genial as chowder to boot. Glad to see there's class somewhere in this band.

A beamy sod is Carl Palmer, in his charcoal silk chinee pullover and matching jammerbottoms. Friendly and attentive, he looked straight at me and smiled guilelessly all the way through the interview. He's straight-A and true-puce, as is Greg Lake, who with his baby fat beamer and dutchboy bob looks like a deejay I know.

However I'm paid to be. skeptical; prying at the scabs of their real motivations, I wondered oh-so-idly whether they thought of this dream scam they were in as more of an artform, than a) business or b) entertainment. Hell, Alvin Lee and Deep Purple both as much as admitted to me that they were only in it for the bucks on separate yoric occasions.

"It's principally entertainment, I think," said Greg Lake, shooting me down as ingenuously as I've ever been twisted. "It's not art in the same way as painting a picture." Oh. "We're very conscious of playing our performances as close to the way they were written and the record was made as possible. That's what the people come to hear."

Up the people, I say. Did Beethoven give two armpit-farts for the people? And ain't you guys supposed to be in some sense student-heirs of the Classical Tradition whatever that is? Name droppers at court tell me Keith had ten years of music lessons when wee, which may be the only reason he didn't stay in his career as bank teller. What'S more, Niester was right: the Nice were at least 80% pure treadle for Emersonic virtuositisms with a concretely classical cast. But they never became the popular sensation that ELP are, which maybe was / why in 1970 Keith jettisoned ListDavJack, and culled Greg from King Crimson and Carl from (kak, gug) Atomic Rooster so this ostensibly supergroupie triumvirate could begin plotting their ascendance.

Carl takes up the tale: "When we first came together, we went musically for something that we thought was different at the time, which Keith had involvement with — classical music. The first piece of music we ever played together was "Pictures at an Exhibition." And the reason for learning that was that we could all be together on the same musical plane, to see how we got into things as a band."

Why not "Pressed Rat & Warthog?"

"It would have been foolish to pick a rock song by another band to learn, so we took a whole work, and learned about instruments and the way they're used to do different things in orchestras. And out of our band we tried to make a mini-orchestra sound."

But why? Everybody knows Classical-Rock (alternating w. — Jazz) Fusions never really work.

Perhaps what really paved the astroturf for ELP was 2001, that dippy cozzed collegiate smoker flick: not only did it star a computer that could kick ass on Keith E."s in a microsputum, but crafty Kubrick saw sure the soundtrack was fattened with all the glorioski Classicorn any rube could swallow. "Also Sprach Zarathustra," and Keith Emerson heard the word just like he was Joseph Smith shoveling off the tablets. By the time Kubrick got to Clockwork Orange, thereby installing Beethoven in the prostate projection chamber of next-up fad of trendy androhoodlum, the insidious befoulment of all that was gutter pure in rock had been accomplished. It's worse than eclecticism, it's eugenic entropy by design, and Emerson and cohorts are more than mere fellow travelers.

When most people get ready to make with the R-C Fusion they generally approach it by way of "upgrading" rock. Whereas, I said, I get the feeling that ELPs are after just the opposite. And 1 admire the piss outa them for it! What could be more fun than tromping up and down Moussorgsky's spine for 45 minutes or so?

No go. Mr. Lake: "To be serious it's not necessary to be miserable. We don't sit there with long faces, but we're serious about the work we do. And you'd probably be inclined to get a more conservative vibe off a band like ours than somebody like the Who perhaps."

You guys are simply not cooperating at all. What is all this brickwalled orthodoxy?

"We've tried to play things like "Pictures" in the way we play our music, more snappy and dynamic than it could have ever been conceived Moussorgsky didn't have electronic instruments."

Better, but still hardly the stuff of legend. I'm glad you got the gonads to claim improving the old dead geek, yet you speak in tones of such pope-sucking reverence. Don't you realize that the traditional and still unchallenged viewpoint among the real Mentholatum classical-fans is that the one thing which totally destroys the sensitivity and signification of any piece of classical music is loud amplification?

Greg: "That's often true. Depends, doesn't it, how well the adaptation is done. I've heard lousy orchestras, too; that's my answer to that."

Yekh, but you're doing all this stuff on your terms, on your ground. With an audience fulla ravenoid quaalude freaks or worse. Something's gotta be compromised.

Lake holds the floor: "It depends what your criteria of judgment is. If they can enjoy "Pictures at an Exhibition" by us, it's just as good as them enjoying "Pictures" by Moussorgsky. In fact, a lot of people get to hear it that never would otherwise. So for the little bit you compromise, you also open the door for a lot of people."

I never in my mottled career saw anybody walk the line between utter insult to established canons and incongruous regard tor those same canons so ingenuously. "I would also like to say at this point," added Carl, "that there were certain problems with that song, the band went into great discussion about certain parts that we didn't even like that the composer had written. I'm not afraid to admit it or say it."

You must have gotten a lot of flak from purists, though. For "disrespecting" the classics, I mean. You know what I mean.

Palmer slices the guppy again: "Not really. 1 played the piece to a professor at the Guild Hall in London. He told me that for three people, having to deal with electronics and things, he admired it.

"We've had it happen other times. There was a piece called "Toccata," by Alberto Ginastera, he's a Brazilian composer, and his was the greatest credit we've ever had. We recorded it, and took the tape to Brazil to ask him to hear what we've done with his music before we released it, because you have to have the guy's approval. And he said: "That's the way it should have sounded." "

This is getting more disgusting by the second. So you got patted on the head, so what? How in the name of all that's crass can you possibly sit there and tell me that while stabbing your pianos and wiping your ass with theremins you're simultaneously on a goodytwoshoes mission to bring Good Music to the rabble?

The most insufferable snob, the most hateful patronization, is the one that's unaware, the guileless shiv. "We hope if anything we're encouraging the kids to listen to music that has more quality." Carl, if it makes a difference at this point. These guys have been android gangbrainbanged by their very axes. "We don't come along to educate them. We come along to entertain them, and if they're ready for it, they take it."

A lot of musicians, I say, (thinking I'm drowning them in irony) have a condescending attitude. Zappa, say.

"Most bands have a condescending attitude," sez Carl, "because when you're playing something you believe in anyway, you're trying to make every one else believe in it. American musicians seem to have that attitude. Every American jazz musician I've met has been arrogant, maybe a little bigheaded. It's just the nature of your country that makes you this way. I don't think jazz musicians in this country have presented their music any different in the last 30 years. They still wanta do club dates, but they wanta get across to the mass, they want people to buy their records. When you go to the Village Vanguard in New York, you see somebody like Charlie Mingus playing up there. He's got the most diabolical sound onstage, he's trying to amplify his bass by putting it through a 12 inch speaker! And then they're expecting new listeners to come in and say, "Yeah, this cat's great." You go to see a jazz artist and you're disappointed, it's not there. All the instruments are acoustic, they don't get a good sound, it's not a good club..."

TURN TO PAGE 74.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 44.

I was stunned, but I managed to mutter something about how those clubs are where most scuffling American jazzmen, lacking either the money or propensity for gimmickry necessary to channel their music through ten thousand monster amps, are forced to play-

"No, they don't have to play there, those are places they make themselves play-"

-because of the racial, social and aesthetic conditions prevailing in this country, where quite naturally the watered-down and contrivedly "palatable" floats the marketstream better than the uncompromising-

people like Buddy Rich rdanage to get out and play bigger places. I'm sure that if I were a jazz musician I would never let myself get restricted."

I'm sure that if you were a "jazz musician" you would be white, and no matter how many whooping teenies you could marshall you'd still have to learn how to improvise on some level beyond the sort of hackneyed rock progressions, scales and Hollywood-burnished cops from the most obvious classical sources, i.e. you'd have to somehow progress as a musician way past the level of Heaviness you've attained in your present affiliation.

Keith Emerson never played an interesting solo in his life. Hell, might as well admit it all the way, they're not even solos, they're just some guy racing all over a keyboard like Liberace trying to play Mozart behind a Dexamyl OD. To make the crucial distinction that trained fingers might as well be trained seals unless there's a mind flexing behind them.

But that's beside the point, finally. Because this success saga has nothing to do with reality. None of this ever had anything to do with music, either, and even less now than ever before, as the emphasis shifts with subtle firmness from "show" to "spectacle."

So who cares anyway? That's what I asked Lake and Palmer, referring to their incredibly elaborate stage setting even more than the histrionics that go on within it, which in fact are fairly low-profile except for Emerson. Do you, I wondered, think you're more theatrical now, and why so?

Palmer: "No, not really. That may be an elaborate set to you; to me it's very basic, it's what I need to perform the way I-pCrform. My drums are not just a piece of engineering, they're set up medically correct for my body to function the right way behind that drum set, which is just something I have to take into consideration now."

Oh, kind of like a splint, you mean. That's cool. So where, speaking from the driver's seat, do you draw the line between music and pure effect?

"There's only one kind of effect we do that involves electronics. That's with Keith's synthesizer and the computer at the end of the show. And that effect is created by synthesizers, but music has been written around; it, or rather music has been written and that effect was added, because it gave a visual thing as well as an audial thing."

Okay, your grandeur is established — but isn't there a point at which you do all this stuff merely for crowd reactions?

"No," insists Carl. "I do it because I like to be in front. In what I do. On that stage right now I've got a hand-built drumset that's engraved, and I've got the first percussion synthesizers. I don't do things for the reaction, I do them because I like to be the first, whether I believe in it 100% or not. If I'm doing it, someone else does."

Yeah. But don't you ever find that you reach a point where whatever emotional content the presentation might have is overrun a,nd washed away by the force of sheer technology?

Greg Lake: "Good question. No... no. Because we choose the places in which to express the emotions, and the places in which to express the technique, hoping one doesn't interfere with the other."

But don't you get a feeling of sterility?

Carl: "No, never. We're working much too hard for that. We've taken time off to come back with a different show. We had about four tours prior to the layoff, and we needed time to rethink what we wan ted. to do. We also wanted our own record label [Manticore], we wanted to get things more businesslike. All these things take time. We're really not into coming in £nd saturating a market and taking out the money."

Ignoring for the moment that the reply was not an answer to the question, you may have noticed that these fellers speak most cogently when they speak as businessmen. There is absolutely nothing of the desperately egocentric'artist." Their rap in this area reminded me more than .anyone else of Dick Clark: "We come back very fresh. We'll be around for years to come, we don't need to cash in. As musicians we can't be rushed either. So with all these new sounds it takes time to utilize them, you can't just shove them in."

So who could ever say that this band is sterile, that they're not forever forging ahead? If you can't have real quality, why not go for..quantity on a Byzantine scale, why not be pompous if you're successful at it? Who needs to feel anything when you can move with the flow of the current? Does NASA have a soul? Does it need one? Don't you kinda admire it precisely for its sleek unfeeling lunar inhumanness? And since the only thing that really counts is the hardware, as these boys will almost admit, why bother with personalities in this story at all? Why not just publish an itemized list of the contents of their arsenal with accompanying charts and diagrams? So of course I asked "em: How much equipment you trundling around the country on your bearers" heads? How many amps? I couldn't even count "em, I said.

"It's got beyond my understanding * as well," admits Greg. "I don't know the total capacity of it."

Oh well, no matter. It's just good to see you extending yourselves; so many rock bands are so lazy.

Yeah, I can dig that, I really feel for you guys. And of course I want you to know how much all of us out here appreciate the way you've borne up under all that pressure to create such enduring masterpieces as "Benny the Bouncer." But don't worry, readers: they'll be back before we know it with another mind-bolting album and soldout tour to match. If they don't blow a circuit or drool in one of their manifold sockets.