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Chapter 1: From the beginning
In 1971, my hometown had NO FM stations, and we had one - count 'em - one AM station
that played everything from Johnny Cash to Three Dog Night. I remember the first, and only, time I heard this station play
"Lucky Man." I had dropped my mom off at work and was going to school11th grade :) Oops! I just told my age! Oh
well :) Anyway, the DJ's at this station seldom announce the artist or title, so it got my attention when the DJ said, "Here's
'Lucky Man' by Emerson Lake and Palmer."
I had never heard of the band or the song, so I was intrigued because
I had never heard anything like it before. Living in a small town in northeast Texas, I had never heard the music of King
Crimson or The Nice. Of course, EVERYONE knew "I am the God of Hellfire", but I didn't know that Arthur Brown's
Crazy World included a drummer named Carl Palmer. I am ashamed to say that I wouldn't buy the album on the strength of that
one song, but even at 16, I knew that buying an album because of ONE song is a good way to become a dog-catcher :)Little did
I know! I remained curious about this band, partly because I had never heard of them, partly because I really liked the song,
and partly because I never heard it played on the radio again.
Then in the spring of '72, my world changed! I was
discussing music with a guy from Cincinnati and it turned out that we liked a lot of the same artists for the same reasons.
He told me how much he liked TARKUS and I told him about hearing "Lucky Man". He said, "You ain't heard nothin'
yet! Go get TARKUS!" So Erik Baker, wherever you are, THANK YOU! You changed my life and didn't know it!
I
had had TARKUS for quite a while before I ever found a picture of these guys! The album cover was no help. Interesting art
work, but no photos. Then I found this:
I was devasted! Keith and Greg looked like Mafia hitmen and poor Carl was stuck in the middle, looking stuck in the middle!
My first reaction was, "No way these three could have made this fabulous music!!!"...once again, little did I know
:)I went straight to the source and asked their record company for a pic! Fortunately, they sent me THIS:
Now THESE guys I could live with :) Well, not literally, but you know what I mean :)
Chapter 2: Take a Pebble
I was in Columbia Record Club at the time I met Erik...back in the good ole days when you got a free album for every
one you bought at regular priceand postage and handling was a quarter!!!! I had earned some free record certificates, so I
found the number for TARKUS, taped my quarter to the card and they sent me back this incredible album! I had never heard anything
like it! I was blown away and knew I had to have more. I knew there was an earlier album, so I went back through Columbia
catalogs and ads till I found the number, taped another quarter to another card, and sent it off.
The day it arrived
I was home from school, sick as a dog with the flu. I saw the postman walk up on the porch with the box but I felt too bad
to go out and get it. When my mom came home for lunch, she brought it in, slung it on the turntable and made a mad dash out
the back door :) My dad had speakers wired up all over the house, so I was able to listen to it from my sick bed (a little
sympathy here, guys :) I laid there listening to "The Barbarian," thinking...yeah...yeah...that sounds just like
TARKUS...big deal:)
Then all of a sudden, everything changed! There was a totally different sound! What was this?!?!?!?!?!
I sat up!!! I GOT up!!! I went into the living room and sat in my rocking chair and listenedoh, man, did I listen!!! By the
time "Take a Pebble" was over, I had tears streaming down my cheeks. I had never had a piece of music affect me
that way. I had to play it another four or five times before I could listen to the rest of the album. Remember the bumper
stickers that were around in the 70's that said, "I found it?" well, I don't know what IT was, but I knew that I
had found it...a song that touched something deep in my soul that was waiting to be touched.
I think we all go through
life with lots of little nameless holes in our souls that we don't know we have until something comes along to fill one up.
Maybe that's the whole pointthe joy of these discoveries and the joy of the sharing that follows. To this day, "Take
a Pebble" still has the same effect on me as it did the first time I heard it.
This song became such a part
of my life that without realizing it, I knew it note for note. One night, my boyfriend and I had gone to the movies - Nicholas
and Alexandra, I believe - and there was a long line at the box office. It was bitter cold, so he offered to go get the tickets
while I waited in the car. While he was gone, I kept hearing this odd sound. This theater played music between showings, and
when I cracked the window to see if I could figure out what this sound was, I realized that I was hearing the bass line of
whatever they were playing inside. It was "Take a Pebble"! I was distraught! They were playing my song but I wasn't
in there to hear it! Strange thing, thoughI didn't need to be in the theater to hear it. It was playing in my head! The song
is long enough that, by the time he came back with the tickets and we got into the theater, it was still playing and I hadn't
missed a measure!
Ok, I admit it! I am partial to Greg. Between the voice, the songs and pix like this, I didn't stand a chance :)
Chapter 3: ELP DREAMS
I guess I've had my normal share of "psychic" experiences. Thinking of someone,
then seeing them unexpectedly, that sort of thing. I seldom have dreams that come true, but over the years, I have had several
dreams relating to ELP that, in some way, have come true. In each case, I had no prior knowledge about the event about to
take place. So it wasn't a case of my hearing about something, then dreaming about it. These are clear cases of precognisance.
Taken individually, they don't mean much, but when I think about the unlikelihood of ALL of them together...well it does make
an impression
DREAM 1: TRILOGY
Although I had not heard anything of a new album about to be released,
I dreamed that one had, and it was an ELPer's ultimate dream...a boxed set!!!! THAT part of the dream didn't come true, but
on the cover of the box was a watercolor painting of a forest, mostly tree trunks with lots of foliage at the top. Open the
"Trilogy" jacket. What's on the inside? A forest...mostly tree trunks with the foliage at the top :)
DREAM
2: PIRATES
Shortly before the release of "Works Vol. 1" I dreamed that Greg was in a Douglas Fairbanks
style movie with castles and corridors and period costumes. All I remember about it is seeing Greg come out of a door at the
top of a stone staircase in a blue brocade costume with a plumed hat, brandishing a sword. It had a very "Count of Monte
Cristo" feel to it. Then, on "WORKS" came the ultimate swashbuckler: PIRATES! Greg has said that he and Peter
Sinfield are both history buffs and that they worked to make that song historically accurate. I wonder if they wore period
costumes while they worked? now THAT I'd like to see :)
DREAM 3: PEOPLE MAGAZINE
Around the time
"Works Vol. 1" came out, all I knew about Keith's personal life was that he was married and that his home in England
had burned. I had never heard anything about whether or not they had children, or where they were living after the fire. I
dreamed that I walked into a 7-11 store and went over to the newsstand. There was a magazine with Keith on the cover. It was
not a music magazine, but something like "Parents." He was holding a baby girl about 8 or 9 months old. I can still
remember the layout: copy on the left hand side and a montage of photos on the right. I don't remember anything in the article
itself, but the photos I remember quite clearly. They were of Keith and his blonde-haired sons on the beach and on their boat.
It was obviously a tropical setting with white beaches, palm trees and very blue sky. The captions talked about how Keith
and his boys enjoyed diving and deep-sea fishing. Not long after that, in the summer of '77, People magazine ran an article
on ELP and guess what? It said the Keith has two sons, and that they had moved to the Bahamas and that they DID enjoy going
out in their boat, diving, deep-sea fishing, skiing, etc. There was also a picture of Keith with his older son, Aaron...who
just happens to be blonde!! I don't know what happened to the little girl on the cover :) Who knows...he may have that little
girl yet :)
DREAM 4: LOVE BEACH
This one is hilarious :) I dreamed that I bought a new ELP album and took
it home to listen. How many ELP albums prior to "Love Beach" had a photo of the band on the front cover? NONE. Well,
this one did. And what a photo!!!! The three of them were sitting on a sidewalk in front of some strange structure that was
a mass of colored pipes, looking like they had been on a week-long drunk, scruffy and in dire need of a shave. It was a scream!
What was really striking about it was the pipes behind them, mostly green with some blue and red ones every once in a while.
(Later in the day, I began trying to figure out what the building might be, and I think I must have been thinking about Le
Centre Pompidou in Paris. It's a modern art museum and all the pipes are on the outside of the building. Some of them are
painted colors.) Well, about a week later, I went into a record store in the mall, just to look around, not expecting to find
a new ELP album. This store displayed new albums in wire racks on a pegboard wall at the entrance of the store, but I didn't
look at them. I just went back to the racks and started browsing through them. I was at the back of the store and glanced
up to the front in the direction of that wall. What caught my eye? A jacket that was mostly dark green and peacock blue with
a splash of red...LOVE BEACH!!! And not only were the colors right, there WAS a photo of them on the cover...looking much
cleaner, though :)
CHAPTER 4: MY ONE AND ONLY ELP CONCERT (see next page: ELP and Me Part 2)
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