Greg Lake info

[Jeff Schotland <kinksfan29@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I was looking on the great music site
www.allmusic.com and found some info on Greg Lake
which I thought might be of interest to everyone.

by Bruce Eder

As a singer and instrumentalist, Greg Lake has
had his greatest success and influence in the
progressive rock outfit Emerson, Lake & Palmer
and, before that, as a founding member of the
original King Crimson. He has also been
reasonably popular as a solo artist working in
more of a hard-rock idiom. 

As a boy, growing up in a poverty stricken part
of the seaside resort town of Bournemouth, he got
his first guitar for his twelfth birthday, as a
gift from his mother, and began taking lessons
from a local teacher named Don Strike, one of
whose other students was Robert Fripp, who became
close friends with Lake. Around the time he was
12 years old, Lake also wrote a folk-style song
that played a major part in his future, entitled
"Lucky Man." 

Lake learned to read music and also to play
pieces by Paganini, among other classical
composers, but his aspirations lay with emulating
the sound of his favorite band of the era, Cliff
Richard & The Shadows, and their lead guitarist,
Hank B. Marvin. Lake passed through a succession
of groups, including a local quartet called Unit
Four, in which he played guitar and sang. He and
Unit Four guitarist David Genes later formed the
Time Checks, and, still lateraround 1967with
another Unit Four member, John Dickinson, was a
member of a band called the Shame, who cut a
single in 1968. He also sang on a record by a
band called the Shy Limbs. 

In 1968, Lake succeeded Mick Taylor as a member
of an outfit called the Gods, whose other members
included future Uriah Heep founders Ken Hensley
(keyboards, vocals) and Lee Kerslake (drums), and
it was there that his songwriting first
blossomed. He left the band just before they
began to record, having been approached by his
boyhood friend Robert Fripp to join the outfit
that he was putting together out of a failed trio
called Giles, Giles & FrippLake joined the
quintet (Fripp on lead guitar, Ian McDonald on
keyboards, saxes, and flute, Michael Giles on
drums, and Peter Sinfield as lyricist) as lead
singer and bassist. 

King Crimson proceeded to carve out a name for
themselves unique in the history of rock music as
the leading progressive rock band of their era.
Their first album, In The Court of the Crimson
King, became the standard for serious progressive
rock albums. Lake, along with the others, was
suddenly a star. That first line-up of the band
only lasted a yearby December of 1969, Giles and
McDonald were tired of touring and opted out, and
Lake refused to continue working with the group,
although he stayed around long enough to sing on
their second album, In the Wake of Poseidon
(1970). 

At the suggestion of Tony Stratten-Smith, Lake
was approached by keyboard player Keith Emerson,
who was in the process of putting together a new
group after three years with his current band,
the Nice. The latter group's main fault was its
lack of a real lead singer, and Emerson saw in
Lakewhose voice had dominated In The Court of
the Crimson Kingthe solution to that problem.
The two eventually recruited drummer Carl Palmer
and formed progressive rock's first supergroup,
Emerson, Lake & Palmer, who were a success from
their self-titled first album, released in 1970,
which closed with Lake's old song "Lucky Man."
The latter became one of the group's few
successful singles, one of their rare attempts to
compete on AM radioit also turned Lake into one
of the most familiar voices in progressive rock,
rivaling such figures as the Moody Blues' Justin
Hayward. Lake's production experience as a member
of King Crimson (who had produced their own debut
album) also served ELP in good stead, and his
songwriting became the creative nucleus for the
group's first three studio albums. 

ELP dominated the charts and the field of
progressive rock right up until 1977, by which
time the entire genre of "art rock" was beginning
to lose popularity. The stresses between the trio
caused them to split up after a tour in 1979, and
Lake embarked on a solo career. Lake organized a
new band with ex-Thin Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore
on lead guitar, Rory Gallagher alumnus Ted
McKenna on drums, and ex-Joe Cocker/Gerry
Rafferty keyboard player Tommy Eyre, and recorded
Lake's first solo album, Greg Lake (1981). 

The sound on that record was very different from
ELP, as it was dominated by guitars, rather than
keyboards, and featured Lake singing in a harder,
more aggressive style. On tour he covered
material going back to the King Crimson days, but
he also regaled audiences with pumping versions
of the new songs. A second album, Manoeuvers,
followed in 1983, but by that time the creative
and commercial bloom were both off of the rose,
and Lake took his first break from music. He
appeared in 1985 as the lead singer of Asia
during that group's tour, but he didn't remain
with the band. 

In 1986, he reteamed with Emerson and drummer
Cozy Powell as Emerson, Lake & Powell, and
recorded an album for Mercury Records, which wass
followed by a world tour. After a stint with
ex-Asia member Geoff Downes and King Crimson
drummer Michael Giles in a group called Ride The
Tiger, Lake reteamed with Emerson and Palmer for
a film that was never finished, which led to
their first new album in 13 years, Black Moon
(1992). 

During the middle- and late-1990's, Lake has
continued to work with Emerson and Palmer, while
pursuing his solo work as well. The latter has
included a 1994 tour of the United States. He had
also done a considerable amount of charitable
work on behalf of missing children, and his song
"Daddy," written in response to one such case,
which ended tragically, achieved national
exposure as a theme for a television series
devoted to the plight of missing children. 



Jeff

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