Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Works Volume 1

This review of the controversial Works Volume 1 by Emerson, Lake & Palmer stems from the opportunity (that a site like DeBaser offers) to comment together on one of the most discussed and damned, and yet most well-known and important, albums in rock history.

When, in 1977, the trio managed to release their new work, three years had passed since the monumental (and excessive) triple live album and four since the last studio album, that Brain Salad Surgery which seemed to have reached the peak of grandiloquence and gaudiness: and indeed - after putting together a sacred hymn, a piano concerto, Lake's usual ballad, a honky-tonk story and a thirty-minute suite - ELP found themselves stuck by their own momentum, incapable of outdoing themselves, tired of one another. At that point, music critics had thoroughly demolished them, and they only planned to work on their solo albums in peace, with all the time needed and out of the spotlight. However, as the trio rested and each began composing, the world was changing: first funk and disco, then punk, swept away all the assumptions on which English art rock had based its empire. Not only progressive rock but also folk rock, singer-songwriter music, glam, and hard rock plunged into crisis in a short biennial span. Particularly, progressive rock paid the heaviest price because it is objectively the most cumbersome genre: predominance of instruments from the classical tradition, long suites difficult to listen to or play, a reference world of pure medieval fantasy, and without having studied music it's pointless, and now instead young people want to play in basements, want to shout their existential and political anger, or conversely, want to dance and go wild without complications in sharps and odd times.

Precisely in the early months of 1977 (any given year!) Atlantic, moderately puzzled by listening to the demos, agreed with ELP that sales would certainly be greater if the works were released under the band's name, in a single double album, reserving one side for each musician and the last for a couple of works recorded together. An elegantly classic and vaguely ominous cover was put together, and finally, Works Volume 1 came out, which might win the award for the most bashed album in rock history, and with the greatest speed.

In perfect Fantozzian countertempo, the three flaunted to the English underclass that was beginning to make noise in the basements, in order: Keith Emerson's Piano Concerto No. 1, 18 minutes of late-romantic style classical music; five ballads by chansonnier Greg Lake, clearly winking at the most antiquated standards of the genre (Edith Piaf, Cole Porter); as many jazz'n'roll compositions, with orchestra and brass band (even an arrangement of the legendary Tank) by Carl Palmer, here in the roles that were of Gene Krupa and Max Roach; finally, a last side hosting a long revisitation of Aaron Copland's Fanfare For The Common Man, originally for winds alone, and... listen up... a 13-minute operetta (trio and orchestra) on the exploits of the Pirates. No less.

Now I must say that I am a progster (this was understood) and I like the album, at least for the most part, but I admit that it is in no way rock... there is no rock here even by mistake, not even where Joe Walsh comes to help Palmer (LA Nights)... in this album there is well-crafted classical music, jazz for big bands, romantic ballads in the style of the '30s, '40s and '50s (Hoagy Carmichael, Frank Sinatra), operetta like Al Cavallino Bianco and only one "canonical" track, instrumental and not too driven. An album you might listen to if you were a fan of Gil Evans, in short (but Evans had already converted to Hendrix's arrangements, fancy that).

Imagine what happened... the album was mocked and fiercely spat upon by critics, shattered and burned in public (in London), pointed to for eternal hatred and indicated as the legitimization of the nascent violence of punk, "see, it was needed, damn it." After all, it was needed, had they been allowed to continue, they would have placed a sacred oratorio and at least an opera within a year... instead, the three took the hit but not too much, offered the second volume (a suicide, more or less) and went bankrupt in a failed tour, with 80 orchestral members and half-empty stadiums. Even I admit that they went heavily looking for it.

Thirty-odd years later, one can reflect on the musical material and find valuable insights, or at least I do, but it is not rock music and was not even meant to be brought to stadiums; and yet they began singing jazz standards from the 20s and playing ragtime and Mussorgsky with the orchestra, and they took all the tomatoes and "f-you"s in the universe. However, the fans did not abandon them completely and the album has gained a historical nobility making it a classic in sales among ELP's records. They were not sorry, but I say they wouldn't do it again.