Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / When the Music Slipped Away: Keith Emerson’s Story [Highlight From Episode 352]
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Here's just a part of a recent episode of book
- 0:02Speaker 1: Don Rock. Bruce pag is the author of Welcome Back,
- 0:05Speaker 1: My Friends, of People's history of Emerson Lincoln Palmer. The
- 0:08Speaker 1: band reformed in ninety six. You said, is that what
- 0:11Speaker 1: it was in sometime in the nineteen nineties ninety four?
- 0:14Speaker 2: I think it was. But yeah, yeah, right around that
- 0:16Speaker 2: time they come up with what I think is a
- 0:18Speaker 2: really good album. It's very overlooked, Black Moon and in
- 0:23Speaker 2: the Hot Seat, which is the last of the albums
- 0:26Speaker 2: that they did. It. It's all right, there's some good
- 0:29Speaker 2: stuff on there. It's a great version of Dylan's Long
- 0:31Speaker 2: Black Coat on there, a man on the long black coat. So,
- 0:35Speaker 2: I mean, there's still a viable force, but you know,
- 0:39Speaker 2: you can tell at that point there's rather than trying
- 0:42Speaker 2: to push the music, they're more responsive to the sounds
- 0:48Speaker 2: and the technology of the time. So you know, Emerson's
- 0:54Speaker 2: not kind of wailing on the Hammond anymore. He's more
- 0:58Speaker 2: subdued with the the kind of sampling type keyboards and
- 1:02Speaker 2: and that that were ubiquitous in that time.
- 1:06Speaker 1: Well, that was due to his physical ailment at that time.
- 1:09Speaker 2: Right, That's that's a little bit later.
- 1:11Speaker 1: That was later.
- 1:11Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so yeah, and he had Yeah, he had
- 1:15Speaker 2: carpor tonnel, which was you know, he he had various
- 1:20Speaker 2: surgeries on it, and it was a huge source of
- 1:24Speaker 2: depression for him because he just could not play. Uh.
- 1:28Speaker 2: You know. The sad the sad thing about Keith Emerson
- 1:32Speaker 2: is that he was a phenomenal writer. He could write,
- 1:36Speaker 2: He could also you know, he could have also gone
- 1:38Speaker 2: on to a wonderful uh career as a as a
- 1:42Speaker 2: studio musician, session musician, those kinds of things. But he
- 1:47Speaker 2: loved to play, and he couldn't accept the fact that
- 1:50Speaker 2: he just physically could no longer do what he was
- 1:54Speaker 2: so great at earlier, and that is, you know, perform
- 1:58Speaker 2: on stage.
- 2:00Speaker 1: When they tour with Jethro tal they shortened they were
- 2:02Speaker 1: on the opening slot, a shorter slot, so that would
- 2:04Speaker 1: make it easier on him. Yeah. I just amazed. See
- 2:08Speaker 1: he never recovered from that carpal tunnel, not really. No. Yeah,
- 2:13Speaker 1: and it's just tragic because he took his life in
- 2:15Speaker 1: twenty sixteen.
- 2:16Speaker 2: Yeah, that's correct.
- 2:17Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 2:18Speaker 2: Yeah. You know somebody that I interviewed, now I can't
- 2:22Speaker 2: really go into it because it was told off the record,
- 2:24Speaker 2: but they you know, they said that he was just
- 2:26Speaker 2: at the point, you know, he was just so distraught
- 2:31Speaker 2: at everything that was happening so and physically, and I
- 2:35Speaker 2: just I think, you know, he was he was a perfectionist.
- 2:39Speaker 2: I think he was always, you know, trying to try
- 2:42Speaker 2: inter be absolutely perfect on stage and often, and I
- 2:47Speaker 2: just don't think he could accept that any longer.
- 2:50Speaker 1: Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.