Why are ELP so hated?

They are a great band. Ahead of their time they had some great stuff in the early 70s.

Highs not that high, but Tarkus and Brain Salad Surgery are great for a lark. I always say that if you only ever heard three minutes of ELP, you might think they were the greatest rock band of all time.

*Cosey

I do like John Peel's comment about Alan 'Fluff' Freeman as 'the man that discovered Emerson, Lake and Palmer when they were just millionaires and turned them into multi- millionaires'. ELP were sort of the ultimate capitalist supergroup although their empire came crashing down with the 1977 orchestral tour which lost about a million dollars per show. Ironically that put them into a position where they became vulnerable and as a result came the much derided Love Beach album and a supposed commercial approach that was more or less forced onto them by the president of Atlantic records. That sealed their fate in the end.

I'm pretty sure Kansas get beaten up on more than ELP (undeservedly so).

Have you ever driven across Kansas? You’ll want to commit suicide halfway across.

It is hard to deny that ELP showed off a lot and had a culture of decadence and excess such as the rug that Greg Lake would stand on to play or Keith Emerson's spinning piano or how they'd brag about how many trucks it took to haul around all their concert gear. The punk movement was in part a reaction against this kind of extravagance and it was championed by critics who thought bands like ELP had made rock and roll inaccessible to the kids and you should be able to play in your garage with cheap guitars and amps.

Also the obvious that Britain's economy was in the crapper in the 70s and you had a bunch of millionaires with spinning pianos and giant walls of synths while a used guitar was a major expense for a working class kid.

Actually, quite apart from all of these, they simply wasted too much time on redundant solos for Emerson and Palmer. Both soloed really well and it is very entertaining to listen to but the opportunity to do something more substantial was wasted.

Among the classic prog acts, Jethro Tull might top ELP in the number of haters in the general population.

I dunno about that since Motorbreath and Aqualung are classic rock radio staples. Ian Anderson's cynical social commentary isn't necessarily for everyone although on the surface it's harder to fault him since he had something to actually say in his music and wasn't a Barnum & Bailey circus show masquerading as a band like ELP.

That too. Carl Palmer had an 800 pound steel drum kit with dragons etched into it, Keith Emerson had the wall of synthesizers, and Greg Lake stood on an authentic Persian rug while performing. They each had their own 18-wheelers to haul around their gear each with the band members' initials painted on the side. It was all just too much.

Their live shows had to have been a ton of fun back in the day and you wouldn't have walked away disappointed. They definitely took self-indulgence and pretension too far with stuff like the triple album Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends and Works Vol I. The critics like Christgau and Marsh as you'd well expect utterly ripped them to pieces and went around holding up the Dolls, Ramones, and Bruce Springsteen as the rock and roll truth.

I think part of the problem with ELP is that they never quite learned to work together as a unit, all three guys were just going off and soloing randomly with no cohesion. Trilogy was the closest they ever came to it.

Not only were ELP an easy target due to their high profile but they had less substance to their music than Genesis, Tull, or Floyd. ELP didn't really have anything to say, it was just stupidity and over the top stage antics for the sake of it.

Judging by live concerts of various prog bands, one notices that Genesis and Yes were very skilled at recreating their studio sound live, Gentle Giant had some interesting medleys, and KC could do challenging improvisations that held the audience's attention. Live ELP concerts do show Emerson and Lake's habit of overly long solos simply to showcase their playing skills. Whether that's good or bad is subjective, but it was something that made it easy for critics to target them.

Also it should be noted that noodling doesn't always translate into good music, for example Frank Zappa could play some impressive guitar solos but there was always an emptiness to them.

They couldn't get any love in the press. Aside from rock critics savaging them, they were also denounced by a large part of the jazz community and classical musicians also found them disgusting. It didn't matter to the record industry though, the band was selling tons of albums and filling out venues like nothing. Rock and Top 40 fans loved them, jazz-fusion musicians admired them.

So long as the money train kept coming, all was well. Once punk happened however, it was inevitably lights out and Love Beach was just a phoned in album to finish their contract with Atlantic after the label ordered them to go in a more pop-friendly direction.

I have a copy of the 1981 edition of the Rolling Stone Magazine album guide and it just utterly rips ELP, Yes, and other prog acts to pieces while worshiping punk and New Wave. I do notice more recent RSM lists are kinder to some prog groups like Genesis and Tull than was the case back then.

One thing about ELP that probably doesn't help is that the band members' personal lives were never especially interesting or made for a good story, and they didn't develop the rock star mythos that Brian Wilson or Mick Jagger or John Lennon had.

Why are you samefagging? This thread is weird wtf

Attached: Screenshot_2019-02-25-02-11-00~2.png (730x77, 13K)