Books on ELP

Pictures of an Exhibitionist
by Keith Emerson (Author)

From Publishers Weekly
One expects a rock n’ roll memoir to be full of sound and fury, signifying nothing if not the inflamed passions, tortured egos, precipitous climb and calamitous descent of its subjects. Emerson, composer and keyboardist for the Nice and, later, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, gives readers all this: from flag-burnings to overeager groupies, from musical mishaps to drunken, drug-addled excesses, as well as a host of backstage celebrity interactions. (Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, Rod Stewart and a wonderfully catty portrait of Leonard Bernstein as a supercilious old perv are just a few that dot the book’s landscape.) Wildly theatrical onstage, Emerson played Norman Bates to his organs and keyboards, hacking away at them with knives and swords, often leaving them ruined and smoldering in his wake. The problem is that, as narrator to his own life, Emerson seems too, well, nice to rev the engine needed to drive such a book properly. He pulls back when he should barrel full-speed, and his writing lacks the killer incisiveness of his keyboard play. Slow to start, often clumsily overwritten and self-serving, Emerson’s memoir shows little sense of the narrative arc of the author’s life, and so the book trudges on in a litany of events, happenings and episodes that ultimately don’t add up to more than a series of pictures at an exhibition. Emerson seems too self-absorbed to be an acute observer of others, neither does he appear reflective enough to cast light on the shadows of his own life. Fans of Emerson’s bands will relish the scenester details anyway, but others may find themselves wishing he could write with the same brilliant abandon that he applied to his music.
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The Sunday Times
“Unputdownable! A hysterical, intriguing, and important musical memoir.”

Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Metro Publishing, Limited; New Ed edition (March 1, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1844540537
ISBN-13: 978-1844540532
Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 1 inches

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Endless Enigma: A Musical Biography of Emerson, Lake and Palmer
by Edward Macan (Author)

Book Description
Throughout the 1970s, no style of pop music was more controversial than progressive rock, and no progressive rock band was more controversial than Emerson, Lake and Palmer. The group’s imaginative fusion of rock, jazz, and classical motifs with cutting-edge technology, breathtaking virtuosity, and monumental stage shows made them hugely popular on both sides of the Atlantic — and gave rise to a host of detractors. In Endless Enigma, Edward Macan argues that ELP was an important contributor not only to progressive rock, but to 1970s rock in general. Besides a magisterial band biography, Macan provides a comprehensive critical examination of the band’s music and, in particular, its best albums, such as Brain Salad Surgery, which addressed technology's role in fostering societal alienation and totalitarianism. His analyses are so perceptive, precise, and detailed, that listening to the recordings in conjunction with his comments opens new avenues of thought about the band and its music.

Paperback: 704 pages
Publisher: Open Court (July 17, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0812695968
ISBN-13: 978-0812695960
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.8 inches

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Emerson, Lake & Palmer - ELP (Songbook)
by Keith Emerson (Translator), Keyboard Transcription by John Carlin (Translator), Keith Emerson (Foreword, Author), Greg Lake (Author)

Book Description
Keith Emerson's Foreward begins, "The music in this book has been compiled to be usedas a basic guidance to the music of E.L.&P." The keyboard transcriptions by Emerson and Carlin with tablature were intended for advanced keyboard players. Contents: benny the bounce the endless enigma (part 1) the endless enigma (part ii) jeremy bender the sheriff take a pebble trilogy

Publisher: Warner Bros Publications (1977)
Language: English

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