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The Catalyst interview: Carl Palmer
If anyone has the right to revive the iconic progressive music trio Emerson, Lake & Palmer, it’s Carl Palmer. The precise and poly-rhythmic drummer is the last living member of the groundbreaking British group (keyboardist Keith Emerson and singer/bassist Greg Lake both died in 2016).
How then to explain the concert called “The Return of Emerson, Lake & Palmer,” Feb. 23 (this Friday) at Ruth Eckerd Hall?
It was Palmer’s idea to perform in concert with film footage and multi-track audio from two back-to-back Emerson, Lake & Palmer shows from the Royal Albert Hall in London.
Keith Emerson, left, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer in the early ’70s. Photo: BMG.
Palmer tells the Catalyst that he looked into a hologram production, in the manner of Whitney Houston, Tupac Shakur and Ronnie James Dio, but in the end he decided they looked – and felt – kind of cheesy.
A DVD compiled from ELP’s Oct. 2 and 3, 1992 Albert Hall performances, Palmer remembered, had been filmed with five cameras, and the musicians recorded over multiple audio tracks.
In this interview, Palmer tells fans how it was all done, and what to expect at Friday’s (admittedly strange-sounding) full-tilt celebration of “the show that never ends.”
St. Pete Catalyst: You literally went into the multi-tracks and took the drums out?
Carl Palmer: Yes, because all instruments, including the voices, were recorded on separate tracks. So when you come to the concert, the keyboards, acoustic guitar, bass guitar are all on individual tracks. Which means I could take the drums away, play the drums live, and the drums can be mixed in with the keyboards and the voice as if Emerson, Lake & Palmer were in the room.
They’re playing the same thing every show. What would you say was the biggest challenge in synchronizing everything?
Well, there’s no challenge in synchronizing because it’s all on a click track. I’m only ever cutting through a timeline, or cutting through a visual camera shot – there were five cameras. So all of that is easy stuff. It’s just time-consuming.
You’re not wearing headphones to hear the click track. What if you speed up a bit?
I have a monitor, and a click track, in my mono speaker. I don’t use stereo onstage, to keep the sound level down so not much goes through the microphones, to muddy the sound. It’s not a case of me speeding up, it’s a case of me following the band, Keith and Greg, because we did fluctuate on that night. But my real drums, that I played on that night, are gone. I’m just gonna add to what they’re playing – and I’ve learnt where it speeds up, I’ve learnt where it slows down, I’ve learnt what happened that night. And every night when I hear it, it’s exactly the same.
And it’s being mixed differently every night, because every night there’s different acoustics and there’s a different environment in each room. So you could never get this close to seeing a real Emerson, Lake & Palmer concert, ever, because you see Greg singing, and it’s perfectly in time. It is him – it’s not a hologram, it’s him at his very best. And you see Keith soloing and playing his synthesizers in perfect time.
There’s a lot of technology out there today. Although I don’t know how to personally operate it, I know when it’s right and I know when it’s wrong. I can hear really good, I can see real good, and I know what’s got to be done. I did all of the editing on the visual aspect of this. So we’ve got all the best camera shots.
How many times you figure you’ve done this show now?
Thirty-two times. We’ve not done loads and loads of dates; we just finished two dates in Tokyo. Prior to that we did 12 concerts in America.
Tell me about the shows filmed for the DVD.
It was right in the middle of the beginning of the ‘90s. It was on Sanctuary originally – that’s when we actually made the recording, which was group-approved. It was two nights at the Royal Albert Hall; we chose the best night, which mainly was the first night. I think there was over 70 percent from the first night. And then Sanctuary sold the DVD on to Universal. So the DVD’s not very well-known. It got lost in the wash between the two companies. So we were most disappointed about that.
But in actual fact now it works in my favor, you know, so I’m quite pleased about that.
Were you also working with outtakes from the original shoot?
I had access to everything; when you’re in the concert hall, there are three screens. And I need Keith on something, or I would need some vintage footage on another screen, just to give the whole thing a bit more gravitas, a bit more depth from a show point of view. That’s how I would be looking at the editing, trying to sync it up where the three screens are dealing with all three of us, or maybe there’s Greg both sides, me on the center, all you can do is hear Keith. Then I’d use some vintage footage of Keith on the third screen, maybe of him playing the song we’re performing at the time. It goes on like that. It’s quite complicated, and that’s why it took about 11 weeks.
And you had to remove the footage of you from the ’92 concert, playing?
Yeah, because you don’t want to see me up on the screen. When you see me on the screen, it has to be me there in the hall, where you can see me playing the drums. You don’t need to see a young Carl Palmer up there. You need to see where I am today, playing with these two guys and sounding like we’re a band. I don’t need that visual aspect of me on the screen, from the past.
Then you get the complete marriage, you see. This hasn’t been done before, to this depth, you’ve got to understand that. We’re actually playing as a group together. The keyboards are being mixed live, individual tracks, the main Moog, the Mini-Moog, the GX-1. Same with the acoustic guitar, bass guitar, voice. All of the instruments were recorded one-by-one. It’s all being mixed live with my drums that I’m playing that evening.
What was the thought behind having two other live musicians on the stage?
Because I have about six or seven pieces I play with Greg and Keith, ‘Welcome Back,’ ‘Fanfare,’ ‘Lucky Man,’ ‘Still You Turn Me On,’ you name it, and there’s pieces that I like to play which I don’t have footage of them playing – ‘Tarkus,’ ‘Carmina Burana,’ ‘Hoedown.’ So that’s why I’ve got my band on the stage as well, and we integrate all of the pieces. And there are some pieces where Simon and Paul actually reinforce Emerson, Lake & Palmer!
Is this an emotional experience for you, Carl?
No, it’s not now, to tell you the truth. The first three weeks were like hell on water, because it got very emotional going through all the camera shots. I had a lot of material to choose from, even though I tried to keep it down to the pieces that Greg and Keith had chosen for the video. Occasionally I’d have to dive into the other cameras and see if there was something a bit better for that moment in time that I needed for this show.
To be honest, after about three weeks it was man at work. ‘I’ve gotta get this done to the highest quality; I’ve gotta get this done to a level that I know they would approve; and I’ve gotta get this done where I feel happy to be able to play it every night and feel confident that I can present it to the public.’ And I got to that stage.
And now every night when I play, when I look up and I can see Emerson playing ‘Fanfare,’ and I’m along there with him, and I know his keyboards sound a bit different than they did the night before, because they’re being mixed live, it’s lovely. It’s like playing again with them, in a way.
“The Return of Emerson, Lake & Palmer.” Publicity photo.
