Customer Reviews

Pictures of an Exhibitionist: From the Nice to Emerson Lake and Palmer - The True Story of the Man Who Changed the Sound of Rock

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

At times highly witty, at others merely insipid, these are the recollections of a rock icon. Emo chronicles his childhood and his adventures with progressive bands The Nice and ELP. Most of the stories are rather well known from other biographies, but it's refreshing to read them from his specific point of view. There are some excruciatingly painful memories involving conflicts within the bands and a personal battle with addiction. There are some anecdotes which I feel are inappropriate for public consumption, and better left private between so-called friends.

Overall a delightful read if you are not turned off by repeated references to bodily functions, name-dropping, and drug abuse which was apparently prevalent during his heyday in the 70's. An amusing yet quite sad portrayal of the glory days of the greatest rock keyboard player of all time.

I give it only three stars, because honestly that's how it rates among all the other books I've read. If I were to rate it among books about rock-n-roll specifically, it would get five easily.

Like the other reviewers here, I was and am a big ELP fan. As soon I heard Keith Emerson's playing, I was dumb-struck by his virtuosity and musical vision, one that, alas, did not play out too well over the years. I eagerly awaited this book, mainly because I wanted to hear what Keith Emerson had to say about his music.

There's a scene in "Spinal Tap" when David St. Hubbins is playing a beautiful piano piece and Rob Reiner asks him what the music is called . St. Hubbins replies "Lift my Love Pump." Well, I think that might sum up this book, and I can't say I wasn't warned by the title.

There are virtues here, however. Emerson has a breezy, conversational writing style that goes down easy, and he doesn't write a self-serving book in the least. The first part of the book, from his childhood to his breaking up the Nice is the best part, funny, and heartwarming. It struck me how much Emerson loved Lee Jackson and Brian Davidson, and the affection for his once and future bandmates mixed well with the stories. I often found myself laughing out loud.

The ELP and after sections are troubled. It's clear Emerson never liked Lake, and had a brotherly and patronizing attitude towards Palmer. But love between bandmates doesn't necessarily make great music, however, after reading this book and listening to the ELP oveure, I finally sensed the coldness that so many critics complained about.

The descent into drugs, the sadness of an abortion caused by miscommunication, the wrecking of Emerson's hand and the subsequent operations all make the second half of the book more than a bit sad. Emerson might have toned his words for this part of the book, but it continues in a breakneck and breezy manner, giving the impression (false I'm sure) that Emerson didn't care about these things.

My biggest complaint, however, is that he hardly discusses the music at all. I would have put up with hijinx and lines of coke with Bonzo better if he had talked about composing Tarkus more.

Still, for a proghead and synthfool like me, Pics of Ex is worth reading, even if the God of the Moog diminishes himself.

Although occasionally Keith's humor shines through, there were many, many moments when reading this book, that the writing style as well as the prevailing subject matter reminded me more of the sexual obsessions of some 16-year old than a grown man having learned valuable lessons in life. You will find an abundant amount (an overdose) of sexual/alcohol/drugs related stories, to such an extent that it starts to act as a depressant, leaving me to wonder how anyone can find personal fulfillment and happiness in such a shallow murky scenery. It's as if the music serves simply as a background for sensual escapism with drugs, sex and alcohol in the spotlight. I know for some rock stars this is a reality, but somehow I had expected more of Keith.
In his book Keith manages to paint a two dimensional picture of himself, almost like a caricature, lacking emotional depth and maturity, displaying the writing skill as well as focus of interest of an adolescent.
On top of that the eighties and nineties seem to have brought nothing meaningful to Keith, since he writes only a couple of words about this period in his life. Maybe his attention span came to an abrupt end when he reached the mid-seventies and decided to call it quits.
All in all a book with no literary merit, with the emotional/intellectual depth of a puddle, leaving perhaps as the only plus-point Keith's honesty, which, unfortunately, when you combine it with his writing skill and focus of interest does not paint a very flattering picture of him as a man.
Interesting for fans only.

Given the frequent disdain of the musical press for ELP's music, ELP has always been one of the least-biographed musical acts of the rock era. As a fan for decades, I looked forward to this book for many years. I'd certainly rather have the book than none at all, but it was not what I had hoped for. I agree with the other reviewers that it unfortunately gives little insight from Emerson about his music. The pacing is uneven, with a lot of detail about his early years and scarcely any more than a scattered medley of events beyond the end of the 1970's.

The two major things I took away from this book were:

1. Considering Emerson's dislike of Greg Lake, it is a miracle that ELP made any recordings at all or were able to be such a formidable live act.
2. The real center of Emo's existence for many years was not music, but drugs. I suspect that the sketchiness of many parts of this autobiography is the result of Emo's cocaine addiction.

If you love ELP, you will want this book and probably have already read it anyway. If not, you won't gain anything that you've already missed in the music.

The photo section was of extremely poor quality. A coffee table quality book about ELP with good photos is needed and I hope someone will publish one.

It would be fascinating to read an account by Greg Lake of the ELP years as well as the years that followed, but he seems to work about as often as Halley's Comet appears. I think Lake could do a well-structured and well-written book (Emerson hasn't done so here) but as with hopes for any new music from Lake, I'm not holding my breath. I'm afraid Lake will croak before that happens. I hope to be proven wrong. Perhaps Palmer's might be the most fascinating account of all. He might be able to provide the "this is what really happened" version of ELP.

The music exists, and we are fortunate for that. This book and ELP's recent status represent something magical that could have happened but never did.

As a teenager, I had been entranced and excited by Keith Emerson's music. As a forty-something - a keyboard player and still a fan of his music - I was disappointed by this book. As other reviewers have said, there is scant coverage of the creative process. Sadly, KE seems to think that the reader will be more interested in what are now banal and commonplace anecdotes about drugs, sex and private aeroplane piloting than about what made his music so special. He might have got away with it if he could write well, but he can't. A big disappointment - for complete-ists only.

Ok, so Keith Emerson is not the most highly polished writer in the cosmic universe. And sure, there are parts of his story which are sewn together rather disjointedly. Looking at it overall it seemed to me there were days where he wrote brilliantly and days where the results were average. I'm certainly no authority but I'm of the opinion if he could have gone back and revised the writing from those average days to the polished brilliance found elsewhere the results may have been a best seller. What you get is an honest and open account of one of the music world's great artist and performer's life. I've read other reviews that did not approve of all the road story details this book contains. Not me. When I read a biography about any person from any walk of life I want it all, real, and the way it truly was. Mr. Emerson guides you through it all with a revealing look behind the scenes of his professional and personal life, and yes, there are some interesting, startling, and amusing insights. If you're looking for behind the scenes Emerson, Lake, and Palmer info and dirt there's enough here to satisfy. He raises well found criticisms about Greg Lake's sometimes caustic behavior but then on the other hand he intimates how much of a truly good person Carl Palmer is. He also relates stories that could only originate from one of rock's elite members such as being on tour with Jimi Hendrix, and the Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett, his not so friendly rivalry with the band Yes, or motorcycling with Ringo Starr as a passenger. I am pleased to have read this and recommend you do the same.

This is an excellent book written by the most important, talented and influential keyboardist of our time. Being a huge Emerson, Lake and Palmer fan from the beginning (no pun intended), I was delighted to come across this book. Keith Emerson has a great sense of humor and writing style and the 324 pages go by quick and effortlessly. He takes you on a wonderful journey from his childhood days of piano lessons, through his early bands, through the Nice, and finally ELP and beyond. This is required reading for all musicians and music lovers. I highly recommend this book! ELP forever!!

Fans of ELP and Keith Emerson will definitely want to read this. A thoroughly engaging, often hilarious account of Emerson's success story from his humble beginnings, through his struggling years with early bands, on past his first major success with the Nice, beyond his wild days of stardom with ELP, and back to his ironically humble present-day existence as a struggling artist in L.A. I enjoyed hearing about Emerson's personal encounters with Jimi Hendrix, the members of Led Zeppelin, Ian Anderson, and other rock luminaries. Also described by Emerson, and previously unknown to me, is the intense rivalry that existed between a newly established keyboard icon Emerson and up-and-coming British keyboardists Rick Wakeman and Patrick Moraz. I would have also liked to know Emerson's "take" on other notable keyboardists of his era, especially Tony Banks and Elton John, and I would further have been interested in Emerson's reaction to copycat band Triumvirate, who themselves put out amazing music, but whose cuts on the Pompeii album sounded a little too close to "Trilogy," "Third Impression," etc. Quite shocking, too, is the apparent dislike Emerson and Greg Lake had for each other throughout their time working together in ELP. Most interesting is the tidbits concerning some of the songs- how Emerson still cringes when he hears "Lucky Man" because he had played a better solo to the ending in the studio, but it mistakenly didn't get recorded, or how the Nice recorded an initial scratch track of "America" in the studio which was to be built upon, but instead an overzealous manager RELEASED the track to radio and pressed it to vinyl BEFORE the Nice could return for their follow-up studio session! From a literary standpoint, this book sorely lacks an editor; there are places where there is no continuity- Emerson's relationship with his wife and family is interwoven into the Nice and ELP years, but suddenly Emerson is living alone in L.A., with no prior mention of any type of separation from his family; similarly, Pete Sinfield, whose co-writing was integral to ELP throughout their career, isn't even mentioned until near the very end of the book; and there are also occasional grammatical errors, incomplete sentences, etc. However, my 5 star rating is solidly based on content, and this book certainly delivers! If you are an ELP fan like myself, this is a must-read.

I only learned of this book recently. It managed to fly right under my radar until I stumbled upon it almost accidentally. It remains in print and easy to get ahold of, for any of the rest of you who might have missed it before and might be interested now.

In the 70s, I was very much an ELP fan, one of the biggest in my circle of friends, and those records still bring back lush memories of bonding with a best friend; of lounging in hormonal bliss with a boyfriend one Saturday afternoon, dissecting and discussing Karn Evil 9; of my mother accompanying me to a show on the '77 Works tour; of simply spending time alone absorbing the artful complexities of the music. Sure, I delighted in Greg Lake's beautiful, romantic ballads and Carl Palmer's incredible drumming, but it was Keith Emerson who captured my attention and imagination the most, to the point I scoured dusty record store bins for anything by The Nice. It wasn't just his proficiency, speed, and improvisational and writing skills, all of which he certainly has in spades, but his way of combining seemingly disparate styles and elements of rock, classical, and jazz into a new kind of wild and accessible whole.

After the Emerson, Lake and Powell album, I largely lost track of Keith's career, which I was pleased to learn has continued to this day. Beyond his having a new album out, the latest news is not so good, though. Last week he canceled both his Keith Emerson Band tour and (yet another) ELP reunion tour that was planned for late in the year. Ongoing problems with focal dystonia and nerve damage in his right hand are making concert level performance impossible right now. I certainly hope he is able to recover enough to play live in the future, for his own sake as well as the fans'.

This book, Keith's autobiography, opens as he is about to enter the operating room for a procedure to repair nerve damage affecting his right hand. As he is going under, he flashes back to some high points of his career, and thus leads us into the story of his life, from his earliest memories on through to what was the present at the time of publication.

He goes into great detail about his upbringing and formative experiences as an only child from a poor family, who grew up socially always a step behind, inconsistent and largely unmotivated in academics, but with an undeniable love and gift for music, though he was not really a child prodigy. He developed his skills through obsessive hard work and dedication. This book is not just about ELP. In fact, they don't even form until halfway through the book. He discourses at length his years with The T-Bones and The Nice, offering snapshots of life in Swinging London, post-Beatles residency Hamburg, and the hippie world of the late 60s and early 70s, none through a glamorizing lens.

Half tell-all, half very interesting descriptions of the music and the creative process, Keith presents a very human, emotionally honest self-portrait, liberally laced with his own brand of humor. He recounts hilarious misadventures both on and off-stage (including one about his first attempt at getting his pilot's license, and another about trying to adopt a rescued "tame" fox). As you might expect in sections about shared living quarters and life on the road amongst a bunch of guys, there are plenty of bathroom humor pranks and sexual escapades. But it's not all funny stories. There are moments that genuinely made me wince. Things can turn from laugh-out-loud funny to scary or sad, sometimes as quickly as one sentence following another, which makes for quite a rollercoaster. He admits he has done a lot of stupid things, sometimes out of naivete, sometimes owing to admitted character flaws. He also suffered hurts he didn't deserve.

Above it all shines his sheer love for music, for playing music and performing it for others, and how his attentions and intentions regarding it could both uplift and damage relationships. He will lose some readers in the more technical passages, but he doesn't stay in them too long at a time. And there are fun facts sprinkled throughout, like the origins of that enigmatic "someone get me a ladder."

Technically speaking, it's not the best-written book, but it's not bad. He jumps time in places and it's sometimes a little disorienting. There are some dangling questions that it seems to me could have easily been answered with a line or two. The ending seems a little rushed and compressed. But I enjoyed the story so much, and found so much within its pages that resonated with me, that I can mostly overlook the flaws.

And yes, there are photos -- two sections of quite nice black and white ones, beginning with his parents' wedding picture and moving up through his life and career as far as 2003.
Jen Grover, Tone and Groove

Unlike some 'rock star' autobiographies this one may actually be written by the man in the photo on the front cover. If so he's done a fine job as this is an easy and entertaining read.

The book starts in 1993 when Keith Emerson had to have surgery on his right-hand, and then goes back to the 1940's when he was born. All the expected topics are covered music, drugs, personal life etc and you can tell from the writing that he regrets some of the excesses at the height of his fame.

There are some great musical stories in this book. My two favourites are his meeting with Rick Wakeman (who he considered to be his main competitor as best keyboard player in the 70's), and a whole chapter is devoted to his appearance on Oscar Petersons show in 1975.

The 1980's to date are covered pretty briefly, which is a shame, but it doesn't detract from what is overall a fine book.