RIP Keith Emerson

[David Root]

Of Emerson Lake & Palmer. Killed himself owing to a major health problem. He was 71. Nerve trouble made it very difficult for him to play piano.

[rp]

I do thank ELP for finally making me gag on Prog when I was a kid, right around the time a cuz came and stayed w/ us for a summer and turned me onto On The Beach & Blood On The Tracks, Blues, Funk, before that I was a typical indoctrinated suburban Led Zep, Black Sabbath, Yes, & Prog kid. But man, I really balked at ELP! You know what you get when you mix Rock with Classical music - bad Rock and worse Classical. So Emerson moved me onto real Rawk & Roll, Garage, and just in time for Punk, which was grand.

Later I discovered the early Nice stuff, some of that is good. Listening to now in fact. Sort of a back handed tribute. RIP

[DenDanger]

ELP was one of my favorites of the era. Keith was a genius on the keys.
And what a showman, even playing the keys backwards.
And I think classical and rock does work. Just one of many flavors of music.
RIP Keith Emerson

Denny

[Leo_Gnardo]

ELP was one of my favorites of the era. Keith was a genius on the keys.
And what a showman, even playing the keys backwards.
And I think classical and rock does work. Just one of many flavors of music.

Definitely an amazing band, especially at the outset. I saw ELP half a dozen times from May 71 to Aug 72, all before spinning drum risers & floating pianos crap. They just played their asses off! It was always a treat to watch 'em wander off the set list, play "Take the A Train" or "Tea for Two", unexpected oldies drove the crowd wild. Another magic time at NY Academy of Music Emerson took a piano trip thru the great jazzers, seemed like 20+ minutes of tasty Monk & Mingus mayhem with a big scoop of Brubeck for good measure.

What the obits fail to mention, Keith was suffering from intestinal cancer 2010 on, and that's no picnic. Besides, his hands were starting to fail, he couldn't keep up with his former self. Too bad he couldn't develop a frame of mind to just relax & work at whatever speed he could, slowly if necessary. Add to the tragedy, music he didn't get around to composing, I'm sure he had wonderful things in mind. Now we'll never know.

[Structo]

Sad

RIP Keith and thanks for the music.

[Charlie Wilson]

Yeah that hit me hard hearing about Keith Emerson's death. ELP was my favorite band back in the mid seventies and I remember as a 12 year old kid having my mom take me to see them at the Forum. They performed "Pirates" with a full orchestra and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD9C1az9ZYc I quit playing guitar for about 5 years and studied classical piano inspired by Keith. My piano teacher, who was head of the UCI piano department got kind of irritated with me asking him to play the intro to "Take a Pebble" and pluck the piano strings. Greg Lake says that Keith had depression and maybe self medicating issues since the end of ELP and that he wasn't surprised this happened. What makes me angry about this is that apparently people were making twitter posts that he should stop playing because he was not playing at the level he did in the ELP days and Keith took those very personally. RIP Keith.
CW