Emerson, Lake & Palmer, King Crimson’s Greg Lake Dead at 69
One of the major figures of the Seventies prog movement, Lake passed away on December 7th after battling cancer
Greg Lake in Bologna, Italy in 2012. Photo: Roberto Serra / Iguana Press/Flickr: Il Fatto Quotidiano/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Founder member of seminal prog band King Crimson and one-third of influential trio Emerson, Lake & Palmer, guitarist, bassist and singer Greg Lake died yesterday, his manager Stewart Young confirmed. The statement added, “I lost my best friend to a long and stubborn battle with cancer. Greg Lake will stay in my heart forever, as he has always been. His family would be grateful for privacy during this time of their grief.”
Working with fellow King Crimson brain Robert Fripp, Lake and the band crafted one of progressive rock’s masterpieces, In the Court of King Crimson, in 1969. Although he left rather quickly to form Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP), King Crimson’s second album In the Wake of Poseidon (1970) also featured vocals by Lake. He said in a 2013 interview with Rolling Stone about the Seventies prog movement he spearheaded, “I think there was some sense of some sort of a quantum leap happening. But I have to be honest with you, it wasn’t so much like we sat down and planned it that way.”
Joining hands with drummer Carl Palmer and keyboardist Keith Emerson, ELP became one of the foremost name in the Seventies prog rock scene, based out of London. Lake, born in Bournemouth, rose to enormous fame with the trio. Their first five studio albums reached the Top 10 in the UK, and seven of their albums were certified gold in the US. This included everything from the self-titled debut album in 1970, to 1973’s Brain Salad Surgery, which featured the now-famous eerie artwork by H.R. Giger.
Despite the early tumult that caused him to leave King Crimson and later, the dissolution of ELP in 1979 (they later reformed for Black Moon in 1991), Lake remained positive about any thoughts of a reunion with ELP. He recalled in a 2013 interview, “I must say, in defense of ELP, although we did some extravagant things ”“ though they look tame and restrained by today’s standards ”“ but at the time we had 140 people on the road with 11 tractor trailers. We had our own doctor and all these crazy things. But for us, it was not just trying to be as loud and as big as we could. We were always trying to go one step further, one step bigger. In the end, it became a huge production, but it wasn’t gratuitous. It was linked directly to the music. It wasn’t just production for its own sake.”
News of Lake’s passing comes in the same year as Emerson’s death in March after a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
