Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Label: Atlantic Records
Release: 1977
Duration: 87:23
Rating: 3.5/5
»Works Volume One«, the fifth studio project from prog rock legends Emerson, Lake & Palmer, marks the start of their artistic and commercial decline. It came out at a time when the creative juices of the legendary trio were slowly starting to dry up and prog rock had hit the peak of its mass-market success. After a long, grueling tour in 1973 and 1974, when they followed the masterpiece »Brain Salad Surgery« (1973) by headlining the most prestigious stadiums, with a high point at the legendary California Jam festival, where they were the stars of the night alongside Deep Purple, ahead of the likes of Black Sabbath, Earth, Wind & Fire and Eagles, came a two-year break, during which they gathered ideas for the next studio project.
But in 1976, when it was time to record a new studio album, they decided to make a pretty radical and unexpected move. »Works Volume One«, originally a four-sided LP, was split into four distinct parts that, with the exception of the final two compositions, showcase the solo talents of all three members of this legendary outfit. In their urge to prove their individual chops, songwriting individualism started to eat its way unstoppably into the trio, and it increasingly damaged their artistic chemistry from then on, although on »Work Volume One« that’s not yet as obvious as on the later albums.
The first part of »Works Volume One« went to keyboard genius Keith Emerson, with the 18-minute-plus classically arranged orchestral suite »Piano Concerto No. 1«, which features a fairly fruitful but not overly spectacular collaboration between a rock soloist and a symphony orchestra. From a virtuoso and arranging mastermind like Emerson you’d expect something far more spectacular than 18 minutes of following the orchestral tempo on piano, where, amid the mostly romantic-flavored arrangements of the first act, »Allegro Giojoso«, even his lightning-fast improvisations never get a real chance to breathe with full lungs.
The second part of the suite, »Andante Molto Cantabile«, is a lot more dramatic and fiery, but still not fascinating enough for the suite to break free of certain strict academic forms that rob it of its ambient drive. Emerson, a great musical innovator, especially in synthesizer technology, is here, a few shorter and more complex solo improvisations aside, somehow pushed to the side as a keyboard tinkerer and innovator, and he keeps sticking close to the grand piano the whole time. In the third part, »Toccata Con Fuoco«, the central arrangement deserves praise, and it could easily serve as a film soundtrack too. Maybe it was precisely this section that had a major influence on Emerson’s later solo career as a film composer. Throughout the entire »Piano Concerto No. 1«, the influences of various Baroque and Romantic masters of classical music are surprisingly more noticeable than those of the early 20th-century composers Emerson usually liked best. Only at the end of the album, when the two joint compositions come up, does the legendary keyboardist get a real chance to shine in the best light again.
In the second part, bassist, guitarist and singer Greg Lake delivered a bunch of very similar love ballads, layered over orchestral arrangements and acoustic guitar chords, and sadly he didn’t say anything in them that he hadn’t already said in his best days on classics like »From the Beginning« and »Still… You Turn Me On«. Plenty of listeners will lose their appetite for love folk ballads for good after an overdose of saccharine, ‘whining’ creations like »Lend Your Love To Me Tonight« and »C’est La Vie«, which even features an accordion bringing in a few touches of French folk music. On the other hand, the lyrics are relatively good and not overly syrupy at all, since Lake got help from a former comrade from the King Crimson days, the cult lyricist and poet Peter Sinfield. Of all five ballads, »Hallowed Be Thy Name«, spiced up with a pinch of blues, is the best and least sleepy one, while »Closer To Believing« is an almost pathetically tearful effort. It’s true that Lake still had an excellent voice back then and that his acoustic guitar arrangements, with orchestral lushness in the background, are mostly tasteful, but it all somehow gets lost in the excess of lyrical sweetness.
In the third part, drummer Carl Palmer shows off his solo drumming mastery, with more or less success, across six instrumentals. »Enemy God Dances With Black Spirits« contains the main theme from Sergei Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite. On this pompous piece, marked by a warlike drum march and an abundance of fiery orchestration, both of his bandmates helped Palmer shape the orchestral arrangements. The jazzy »LA Nights«, inspired by ELP’s visit to Los Angeles and featuring special guest Joe Walsh (Eagles) on slide guitar and Emerson on keyboards, is also a pretty interesting piece. Besides witty guitar passages, Mr. Walsh also shows off some scat vocals amid Palmer’s jazz-tinged rhythmic meanders. »New Orleans«, also inspired by the American tour, is a short hybrid of funk and, of course, jazz (after all, New Orleans is its capital), on which Mr. Palmer doesn’t hold back on cheeky percussion improvisations.
The Baroque-paced »Two Part Invention in D Minor« is Palmer’s take on an arrangement by Johann Sebastian Bach and features some witty cymbal play. »Food For Your Soul« is a completely mad improvisational drum freak-out where, with the help of some exciting woodwind passages, Palmer totally ‘loses the plot’ while messing around with his drum kit. »Tank« is the least interesting achievement of Palmer’s solo offering, as it’s a rework of his instrumental classic that originally came out in 1970 on ELP’s debut, only this version has an orchestral backdrop. Carl’s drum solo is missing from the original, too.
The fourth and closing part of the album, where the legendary trio finally manage to join their songwriting and arranging forces again, is the best of the lot and revives memories of their golden era between 1970 and 1974. »Fanfare For the Common Man«, which also came out as a single and even became a minor radio hit, is a rework of a classic by the famous American composer Aaron Copland. The rock treatment under ELP’s direction is one of their most bombastic and pompous fusions of classical music and a rock band. The opening section, with its mighty fanfares (probably simulated on a synthesizer) announcing the triumphant arrival of the victors, sounds especially legendary. That is followed by a sudden shift into a fiery improvisational section, in the middle of which the cult trio demonstrate their best instrumental virtues in a seriously witty fashion. This is one of the last true classics from their later period, which individual ELP members still gladly perform today in their solo shows. Even Copland himself, who was still alive at the time, reportedly liked this version of his masterpiece a lot, although the jazzy rhythmic nuances in places must have left him a bit baffled.
The other classic of »Works Volume 1« is the ambitious symphonic prog rock epic »Pirates«, built on an Emerson arrangement originally intended as the musical backdrop for the 1980 film ‘The Dogs of War’, starring Christopher Walken and Tom Berenger. Sinfield’s lyrics, in a romantic way, tell of the everyday life of Caribbean pirates and their plundering of Spanish galleons. This sprawling epic has plenty of interesting tempo changes and turbulent transitions through a mighty atmosphere, in the midst of which it’s really not hard to picture an idyllic ocean with today’s more popular than ever Caribbean pirates sailing off on a looting raid. Lake’s singing, and with it the telling of a tense adventure story, is downright phenomenal here, while both Emerson and Palmer are in great form the whole way through, offering witty solo variations that liven up the massive orchestral backdrop. The second half of »Works Volume One«, that is, Palmer’s compositions and the two joint pieces, is noticeably better than Emerson’s orchestral orgy and Lake’s syrupy love ballads, which are far too similar to each other in pulse.
With the solo-minded and rather sprawling »Works Volume One«, ELP alienated plenty of old fans who had believed until then that the legendary trio ran on the musketeer principle of ‘all for one, one for all’. Its musical content proved that the legendary trio had somehow lost that fascinating element of surprise as the great innovators of progressive rock, who had so successfully united two seemingly incompatible musical worlds: classical music and rock. Plenty of fans and critics, who after four years were expecting a new studio masterpiece, were rightfully disappointed when it came out. On the other hand, it was still a good album, in fact their last real studio achievement, and, with the possible exception of some of Lake’s saccharine outpourings, of which, as already said, there are a touch too many, one you can listen to from start to finish without trouble and with pleasure, and on which they hadn’t yet run completely dry. Sadly, that happened on the very next studio project, a much weaker sequel to »Works Volume One« with the highly inventive title »Works Volume Two«, which came out a year later and proved that ELP, as torchbearers of arranging innovation, virtuoso audacity and exceptional artistic daring, were finally done for.
Line-up
Keith Emerson – keyboards
Greg Lake – vocals, guitar, bass guitar
Carl Palmer – drums and percussion
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Joe Walsh – guitar and scat vocals on “LA Nights”
London Philharmonic Orchestra
John Mayer – conductor
Production
Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, Carl Palmer and Peter Sinfield
Track list
CD 1: 41:07
— Keith Emerson —
1. Piano Concerto No. 1 {Emerson} (18:28)
a) First Movement: Allegro Giojoso (9:24)
b) Second Movement: Andante Molto Cantabile (2:12)
c) Third Movement: Toccata Con Fuoco (6:52)
— Greg Lake —
2. Lend Your Love To Me Tonight (4:05)
3. C’est La Vie (4:20)
4. Hallowed Be Thy Name (4:38)
5. Nobody Loves You Like I Do (4:00)
6. Closer To Believing (5:34)
CD 2: 46:16
— Carl Palmer —
1. The Enemy God Dances With The Black Spirits (excerpt from “The Scythian Suite” 2nd Movement) {Prokofiev} (3:21)
2. L.A. Nights (5:47)
3. New Orleans (2:50)
4. Two Part Invention In D Minor {Bach, arranged by Palmer} (1:58)
5. Food For Your Soul (4:02)
6. Tank (5:12)
— Emerson, Lake & Palmer —
7. Fanfare For The Common Man {Aaron Copland, arranged by Emerson} (9:45)
8. Pirates (13:19)
