In the mid-80s, when Carl Palmer was off conquering the world with Asia, Greg Lake and Keith Emerson had to find a drummer to fit the template of a resurrected ELP.
Who was on that list – Simon Phillips? Neil Peart? Jeff Porcaro? Ian Paice? In the end the job went to big-hitting ex-Jeff Beck/Rainbow/Whitesnake man Cozy Powell. It was a decision made on merit.
“He’s such a good technical drummer and such a good performer,” Lake noted at the time. “Though it escaped no one’s notice that Powell’s surname helpfully began with a ‘P.’”
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Whatever the reasoning, the union proved to be short-lived, producing just one album, 1986’s Emerson, Lake & Powell. But as shown in this three-disc reissue – comprising the original record bolstered by a pair of extra discs featuring live and unreleased material – it’s stood the test of time well. And it’s a much better testimony to ELP’s legacy than the original incarnation’s risible swan song, Love Beach.
Hearing this incarnation thundering through versions of Tarkus, Pictures At An Exhibition and the exemplary Pirates is a joy
Especially good is the opener The Score and the strident The Miracle, while the handful of extras here – loopy instrumental The Loco-Motion and jazzy Vacant Possession, which clearly should have made the original album – are the work of a band finding their feet and having fun doing it.
Better still is The Sprocket Sessions disc, a set of rehearsal tapes that originally slipped out as a bootleg. Hearing this incarnation of the band thundering through versions of Tarkus, Pictures At An Exhibition and the exemplary Pirates is a joy.
The third disc, a live one, sadly rubs salt in the wound, bringing as it does the nagging realisation that the trio managed only one North American tour before falling apart, as detailed in Prog editor Jerry Ewing’s very good liner notes.
With Lake and Powell at each other’s throats most of the time and their management fired halfway through, the band called it a day the minute they came off the road. The more things changed, it seemed, the more they stayed the same.
On the evidence of the live disc, the split is a very real shame; the band were playing at full tilt to an uproarious US crowd. Lake’s voice is excellent – especially on a soulful From The Beginning – and Powell really makes his presence felt on the rumbling version of Holst’s Mars, The Bringer Of War before levelling the first three rows with a medley of Karn Evil 9 (1st Impression), America and Rondo.
File under ‘S’ for ‘Sadly Short-Lived Supergroup.’
Emerson, Lake & Powell: The Complete Collection is on sale now via Spirit of Unicorn Music.
