Saturday 9 August 2014

Lucky Man (Emerson, Lake & Palmer, 1970)

This is the first single released by Emerson, Lake & Palmer and obviously comes from their self titled debut album. It's the archetype of all the band's ballads, featuring the guitar and the warm vocal interpretation of Greg Lake, a rich drum work by Carl Palmer and  keyboard variation by you know who. The most extreme prog band had in fact a special taste for plain and sweet ballads like this one, usually written by Lake.

One of the many different art covers of the 7" single.

And "Lucky Man" has also its own peculiar story and some related legends. The singer composed this track when he was just a kid and this has been confirmed many times by the author himself. Emerson wasn't fond of such a folk song and only accepted to put it into the album when he was allowed to add the final synth solo, but Keith declared that he wanted to record it more carefully, and that the released version was just a first try. Maybe because of these quarrels, the choice of this track as a single was made by the band's manager without asking the musicians' advice(another legend?). Well, I do think he did very well.

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