Say it isn’t so. Please. I am friends with the woman who runs his website and it came from that source. This is a death too far for me having met Greg a couple of times. Christmas is cancelled.
“Yesterday, December 7th, I lost my best friend to a long and stubborn battle with cancer. Greg Lake will stay in my heart forever, as he has always been. His family would be grateful for privacy during this time of their grief. Many thanks”
Stewart Young
Oh no, 2016 I hate you.
Oh fucking hell! Enough already!!
https://youtu.be/tJa5sxlvsVg
Very sad to hear. I bet Carl Palmer’s looking forward to 1 January 2017.
2016 the year of The Hex. RIP Greg, this year gets sadder & sadder.
69. Cancer.
The band in the sky just gets bigger and better.
Blimey.
The Mayans were only 4 years adrift, it seems. Very sad to hear this news.
An awful bookend to an awful year.
2016 ain’t over till the fat lady sings.
News just in about the fat lady…..
Surely not Adele?
Frankly, I think it is time that rock revisionists shut it about ELP. Received wisdom is rarely helpful, and when it comes to ELP, has been particularly snide, superficial, and ignorant. I am just waiting for the first smirking idiot to perpetuate the calumnies.
ELP weren’t that bad. Certainly undeserving of that much vitriol. I bought their first album and saw them live in the early days. Then after a while I went off them. Just not really my cuppa in the end.
I preferred Keith Emerson with The Nice, Greg Lake with King Crimson and Carl Palmer with The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown.
ELP would probably agree in retrospect they went a bit too far with their latter albums. Love Beach anyone? The fans demanded they reform for their final appearance at the High Voltage festival in 2010 but, by all accounts, it was dog’s breakfast for the band on the evening with equipment problems.
Greg’s solo tours, in contrast, were much more professional and relaxed. The final tour, Songs Of A Lifetime, was just Greg with guitars and backing tapes plus a Q&A session with the audience. He must have known then he would not be going out on the road again. His latter years were spent promoting the re-mastered ELP and solo recordings and a tour of local radio stations in December keen to chat about IBIFC.
I was in the front row at the High Voltage gig. I think they had a few onstage problems but nothing that would bother the audience. They soldiered on and a good time was had by all. It was the only time I ever got to see them live.
Trilogy was one of the first proper albums I bought with my own money (aside from a few music for pleasure efforts) and so I always have a soft spot for ELP.
What a year indeed.
Here’s the rather lovely letter he wrote to The Guardian a few years ago.
When Greg Lake wrote to the Guardian about ‘I Believe in Father Christmas’
https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/dec/08/greg-lake-letter-to-guardian?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
Thanks for that! Spend too much time on the Guardian site but had missed that. As you said, lovely.
Amazingly, I’m struggling to find people around the office who have even heard of him. I’ve even had to sing a few lines of the Christmas song to get a reaction. What is this strange world we live in?
The civilians have won. They are EVERYWHERE.
Grew up with this terrific band and their music inspired me to explore the world of classical music as well as rock. I still listen to their albums regularly and was so glad to attend their last ever gig together. Keith was an inspirational pianist and showman and Greg was a guy who really cared about things and was unafraid to share his views through his lyricism. He had one of the great voices in prog rock. Their music lives on. Deepest sympathy to Greg’s family and friends at this sad time. It’s been a grim year.
While we can all rightly bemoan 2016’s death squad, it’s just the prelude I’m afraid.
All the greats from that era are in that ballpark where the icy finger will be reaching to tap the shoulder and gather them in. The next 15 or 20 years are going to be like 2016 but worse.
If the Grim Reaper comes anywhere near me he’s going to get kicked squarely in the nuts!
He is nutless. Why do you think he’s so grim all the time?
Not going to start a new thread, but I’ve just heard that John Glenn has died. Horrible news.
It sent me back to this…
Below is a transcript of John Glenn’s ending rebuttal statement delivered during a debate with Howard Metzenbaum that took place at the Cleveland City Club on May 4th, 1974.
At the time of the debate Glenn and Metzenbaum were running against each other in the Ohio Democratic Primary for U.S. Senator. In a speech given a few weeks prior to the debate Metzenbaum stated that Glenn had never held a real job.
Senator Glenn: Howard, I can’t believe you said I have never held a job.
“I served twenty-three years in the United States Marine Corps. I served through two wars. I flew 149 missions. My plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire on twelve different occasions. I was in the space program. It wasn’t my checkbook; it was my life on the line.
It was not a nine-to-five job where I took time off to take the daily cash receipts to the bank.
I ask you to go with me, as I went the other day, to a Veterans Hospital and look those men, with their mangled bodies, in the eye and tell them they didn’t hold a job.
You go with me to any gold-star mother and you look her in the eye and tell her that her son did not hold a job.
You go with me to the space program, and go as I have gone to the widows and orphans of Ed White and Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee, and you look those kids in the eye and tell them that their Dad didn’t hold a job.
You go with me on Memorial Day coming up and you stand in Arlington National Cemetery, where I have more friends than I’d like to remember, and you watch those waving flags. You stand there, and you think about this nation, and you tell me that those people didn’t have a job.
I’ll tell you, Howard Metzenbaum, you should be on your knees every day of your life thanking God that there were some men – some men – who held a job. And they required a dedication to purpose and a love of country and a dedication to duty that was more important than life itself. And their self-sacrifice is what made this country possible.
I have held a job, Howard!”
Definitely a fan here, still love those early Crimsons and the first 4 ELPs, Emerson having “composed” Bartok and Janacek notwithstanding. Later ELP? Just look at the cover of Love Beach to know it’s not worth bothering about, so I didn’t. And of course IBIFC is one of the truly great seasonal songs, don’t know if I can bear to click it now.
Sad news to end (maybe) a sad year.
Worth the read, folks
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/prog-rock-pioneer-greg-lake-punk-is-not-a-form-of-music-its-a-fashion-statement-20130305
I got into ELP around 1982 when they were as unfashionable as unfashionable as could be.
My mates older brother had Works Volume 1 and I loved the band side (Fanfare and Pirates)
In a WHSmith sale I picked up Pictures at An Exhibition for £2 and The Best Of ELP for £3
I loved every track on that best of so started to track down anything I could
I remember going to a record fair and getting both volumes of Works,Brain Salad Surgery and a live bootleg tape,all for £10!! (remember this was 1983 and the polar opposite of cool)
Never got to see them live which is a shame
R.I.P Greg
Great talent in KC and ELP, a consummate side man really as he was always surrounded by virtousi but none of those bad would have sounded like they did if he hadn’t been there. Another great loss. This is starting to piss me off.
So sad. Emerson, Lake and Palmer were my introduction to serious rock music, still revisit them now and again. Sadly, as bad as this year has been i doubt if 2017 is going to be any better…it’s pretty sobering to have to accept that your ‘fave’s’ latest tour may be the last chance you have to see them.
Very sad. We’ll never see his Persian rug again. No, that’s not a euphemism. Greg had a $10,000 Persian rug onstage to cover the rubber mat he used to alleviate electric shocks from the microphone
And that guitar in the video in the OP is a beautiful acoustic hand-made by Tony Zamaitis. With the heart-shaped soundhole it’s very similar to a Zamaitis guitar made for DONOVAN.
Carl Palmer’s rug lives on.
Pun intended.
So basically what you’re saying is that DONOVAN invented both progressive rock AND the Christmas single?
It’s starting to look that way.
Ah Jesus, just scrolled this far down on the site and seen this thread. Too too sad.
RIP Greg.
Record collectors note: The debut ELP LP (Island ILPS 9132) was one of the last three titles on Island’s legendary pink label released in November 1970;
I saw their debut appearance at the IOW festival in late August 1970. They didn’t even have a record out at the time, but they were all big names from The Nice, King Crimson and Atomic Rooster, so their reputation went before them.
http://i.imgur.com/s5HOPfO.jpg
We are not worthy.
Of course he did. That’s why we love him.
As an impressionable grammar school teenager, clutching the latest Melody Maker, I was a fan of ELP without hearing a note of their music. They just looked so cool at the time.
I’ve seen clips of their IOW performance on Youtube – what stands out for me is the way that Lake and Palmer keep their eyes almost permanently fixed on Keith Emerson.
I have the first four ELP albums, but I think tonight I shall pull out my copy of “In The Court Of The Crimson King – An Observation By King Crimson” and crank up the volume (not too loud though because the wife will be at home, so…)
With Keith in his Bacofoil suit, kind of like a proto-Gary Glitter, but not nearly as deeply unattractive or ill-fitting
Not to mention his rather spiffy leather titfer! Not sure Carl Palmer should have de-vested himself though. There’s definitely some overhang…
Note the scratches, dings and other signs of heavy use on the side of Keith’s Hammond, following years of abuse in The Nice
Carl “de-waistcoated” himself during his drum solo when I saw him in 2002 with the Carl Palmer Band
Confusion will be my epitaph. Isolated vocals mix.
Greg plays here with Bongo. He also played bass with Bongo’s son on the Who’s Real Good Lookin’ Boy.
https://youtu.be/-HX_Tw-r6H0
There’s a great story behind the guitar Greg is playing with Ringo there. As I said above, in the OP clip he’s using a beautiful acoustic with a heart-shaped sound hole made by luthier to the stars Tony Zamaitis.
Although it looked great Greg was never happy with the sound it made and one night in the dressing room he jumped on it in a fit of pique, smashing it to pieces.
Later he got Gibson to make him a signature model of their top of the line J200 acoustic (the “Elvis” model) but with unique inlay and in a nod to the ill-fated Zamaitis, a heart-shaped sound hole . That’s the one in the Ringo clip.
I’m not sure if they made more than one of what became known as the Gibson Imperial J200.
The Who recorded with Greg after he and Rog got on well in Bongo’s band. Rumour has it that, unsurprisingly, Pete didn’t exactly hit it off with the IBIFC hit maker