Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / When Emerson, Lake & Palmer Brought A Tank On Tour [Highlight From Episode 352]

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When Emerson, Lake & Palmer Brought A Tank On Tour [Highlight From Episode 352] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here's a clip from a recent episode of booke Ton Rock.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Bruce Peg is the author of Welcome Back My Friends,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: of People's History of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. So let's
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: talk about some of the wild stage sets from ELP.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: On the tour to promote the Tarkas album, there was
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: a full sized tank armed with cannons that fired palostyrene
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: balls into the audience.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: You've got it, Yeah, absolutely, it was a it was
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: a markup of that armored Dillo. Armored Armadillo. I think
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: that's the joke for it up on the stage and they,
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: you know, they it would just fire these little styrofoam
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: balls at everybody. And I've heard I heard stories of
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: people having to get there, have to clean out Emerson's
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  Speaker 2: organ After one particular show where there was so many
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: storyphone boys, it wouldn't work and they had to spend
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: a few minutes vacuuming out the organ. So yeah, I mean,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: and again, you know, you've got to put this into
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: into perspective. I think, you know, this is the early
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventies. You know we're not talking uh, you know
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Taylor Swift, massive arena shows with the Pirate Technics and.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: And and Kiss isn't even around yet. We don't even
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: have you know, they're not even on.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: The radar at this point, you know. And and so
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: you know, and I think you know this band was
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Taylor made for arena shows, because once you get into arenas,
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: you've got to put on the bigger show.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: The other thing that.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Came came through in some of the stories was their
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: sound too. These the the the Mzey Compartment, along with
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Pink Floyd, were pioneers of quadraphonic sound back in the day.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: And uh so you would have those last notes of
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Carnieval nine on the on the album where it just
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: it's kind of like this grinding, whirring sound, and they
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: would put when they finished that particular song, it would
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: go round the auditorium, around all the speakers. So you know,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: this is stuff that again, we just take it for
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: granted now, you know when we go to see shows.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: But back back in those days, that stuff blew people's mind.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Emerson was like Jimmy Hendrix on the Keys, right, I mean,
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  Speaker 1: just phenomenal musician, but also a great performer, Wasn't Emerson
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  Speaker 1: and Jimmy Hendrix didn't. They didn't have a possible band right.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Brian Jones too.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure about Brian Jones, but I know that
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  Speaker 2: there was some talk about Hendricks because that was that
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: was the point when he was trying to search for
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: new avenues, and the story goes that they did possibly
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: jam together.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I imagine that.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Oh Lord, that would have melted people's faces, no doubt
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  Speaker 2: about it. Yeah.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Man, the music, the music on fire, the guitars on fire,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the keyboards are on fire, No where to go? Chapter
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: two titled The Greatest Show in Heaven, Hell or Earth
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: November nineteen seventy three to August nineteen seventy four. Now
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: this is when ELP reached the height of their fame
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: and you yeah bomb this. They released the album Brain
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Salad Surgery in seventy three, number two in the UK,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: eleven in the US and here's what you're right quote.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: After a two month tour of the US in Canada
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  Speaker 1: to finish the year, the band went on to play
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  Speaker 1: over seventy shows from mid January to mid August nineteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy four, including two more tours of the US, with
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  Speaker 1: a headlining spot in front of two hundred and fifty
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  Speaker 1: thousand at the California Jam in April and four nights
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  Speaker 1: at Wembley Arena in London that same month. To play
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: the ever larger arenas in stadiums, the band scaled up
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  Speaker 1: their shows. So just when you thought that the shows
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: couldn't get bigger and better, right, talk about what the
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: band did on stage for those shows, because this is
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: where we get the levitating piano.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: That's right, Levetine piano, the massive artwork at the back,
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  Speaker 2: as well of the brainsallad surgery cover.
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  Speaker 1: Whose idea was all that is that? Keith Emerson or
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the band as a whole.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: I think the band as a hole probably did that
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  Speaker 2: because they, like I said earlier, they were aware that
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: they had to do things. Everything had to get bigger,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: everything had to get bigger at this point. You know,
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  Speaker 2: I was, I was a young kid. I was never
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  Speaker 2: I couldn't make the back in England in seventy four,
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  Speaker 2: and I couldn't make the the Wembley show simply because
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: I was fourteen years old and couldn't you know, talk
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: my parents and let me go down to London to
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: see it. You know, you know, from from my little
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: perspective in Leicester where I was born and raised, playing
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  Speaker 2: playing Wembley was just like the Pinnacle. I mean, nobody
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  Speaker 2: got to do that and uh so so yeah, these
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  Speaker 2: are just everything just scaled up. But you know, everything
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  Speaker 2: gets to a point where it can't get any bigger
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  Speaker 2: and they found that out later on.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. The full episode is available wherever you
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: get your podcast