Lucky Man

Greg Lake

Constable, £20

Review by Keith Bruce

LIKE any responsible lapsed fan of the progressive rock of the 1970s, I have passed on my copy of Keith Emerson’s autobiography to someone whose devotion to the work of Emerson, Lake and Palmer has stayed more constant than my own. But my memory of it is of a pacey read, indubitably the work of the man himself in its hectic and less-than-grammatical style, and its pitch a rock-god mix of outrageous self-justification and unconvincing self-deprecation.

Given that the keyboard player was the showman of ELP – although drummers who can trot out the incredible list of hardware that Carl Palmer trucked around may contest that – and Greg Lake was the still centre of the trio on bass, guitar and vocals, it is perhaps no surprise that his autobiography is a more sober affair. In an era of excess, Lake came across as a more sober chap. While others flashed dubious taste in firearms, fast cars, pyrotechnics, and groupies, Lake’s famous indulgence was a Persian carpet on which he stood to play. In Lucky Man he reveals the less-than-exciting practical purpose behind this foible (it covered hazardous cabling) and confirms: “yes, my carpet really did cost $6000.” You may find yourself thinking: “Was that all?”

The truth of the Lake story is in the title, and he knows it. Lucky Man is perhaps the song for which he is best known, and was included, he relates, as a last minute filler on the first ELP album, having been written when he was 13 years old. The recording’s memorability is, he acknowledges, not the song but the solo Emerson plays on a prototype Moog synthesiser that had just been delivered to the studio.

Here’s the man himself on the sequence of events that catapulted him into the big money league at the start of the 1970s: “Personally, I’m not really convinced that I have any great talent or that I have ever had any specific plan – I just want to entertain – but we were in the right place and at the right time. I’m just a lucky man.”

It is hard to disagree. Lake had come into the orbit of the talented and inventive Emerson after a stint in the company of Robert Fripp and his cohorts in the first incarnation of King Crimson, whose debut album In the Court of the Crimson King is probably the first classic of prog, and still much revered even if guitarist Fripp produced much superior music later in the decade. Although Lake’s vocals are all over In the Court of the Crimson King, and its associated “hit” 21st Century Schizoid Man, the inventive music is the work of others, and that role of sideman-thrust-into-the-spotlight pretty much sums up Lake’s career. It is perhaps to his credit that he demonstrates such keen appreciation of the fact.

Nonetheless, there are things about Lucky Man (the book) that are harder to forgive. Lake trots out old stories as if they are gems of wisdom, including the hoary old “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice!”.

It is also hard to believe his cloying vague grasps at some sort of Christian faith, involving – in quick succession – his presence at the birth of his daughter and the inspiration of the Western Front carol-singing and No-Man’s Land football match at Yuletide during the First World War. But he does of course Believe in Father Christmas, as his one perennial solo hit tells us.

The scarcely-believable tale of its recording involves a stripper being brought into the studio by the producer to cheer up the grumpy musicians of the orchestra – an idea that, unsurprisingly, misfired badly with the women in the band. But the truth is that Keith Emerson once again provided the inspired ingredient that made I Believe in Father Christmas a hit, by adding a sample of Prokofiev to the mix.

Keith Emerson died in March of last year by his own hand, and Lake has his own tilt at speculating what brought him to that, although depression that progressive muscular degeneration in his right arm impeded his playing ability seems to have been an acknowledged contributory factor.

Lake’s counter-argument that “he was seventy-one years old, so it would have been more reasonable for him to retire at that point with both dignity and respect intact” seems just a little heartless.

Lake wrote his memoir in the knowledge that he was suffering from inoperable cancer, from which he died last December. And Lucky Man is assuredly confirmation that he did so in full knowledge that he had been very fortunate to enjoy the life he had. That alone, perhaps, makes his words of witness worthwhile.