Keith Emerson RIP

[rahock]

I mentioned earlier about how Emerson never failed to wow the crowd, but after thinking about that comment, I believe it calls for some elaboration. He was freakin' amazing ! I saw ELP their first tour, shortly before the first album hit the stores. Absolutely jaw dropping amazing from beginning to end. His playing , his theatrics , his ability to toss around that stripped down B3 all over the stage and then at the tail end of "Lucky Man" he broke out the Moog stick synth and just mesmerized a packed house with a sound no one had ever experienced before. WOW!! Thousands of great musicians have never done what he could do to a crowd. Even after the thrill of the trick technology had worn off, he still had that ability to captivate an audience like only a handful of the greatest of the great could.
Again, RIP Amigo.
Rick

[lowend1]

Yeah, I had a friend that was a great keyboard player as well. He was a co-founder of the 80s band, Saraya. Not just a talented musician and songwriter either, mind you. A great singer, athlete, automotive body guy and all-around decent human being also.  He put everything into the band, but the record company and management decided he wasn't an essential part after the first album. I think he never quite got past that, never reinvented himself - and we lost him in '06.
It may speak to Uwe's point about keyboard gods - with the decline of the extended solo in many rock genres, the keyboard player was reduced to a support role. I guess you almost have to resign yourself to that spot in the band, unless you're the "musical director" type.
How many kids long to own a B3 these days anyway?
I would like to mention one guy that's kind of new - Eric Safka from the Matt O'Ree Band, based here in NJ. Eric is an old-school bluesy player, but has the "mad scientist" edge as well. He plays a B3 with a MIDI rig stuffed into it and painted in blue sparkle. Through an old Stromberg-Carlson PA amp. They opened for Deep Purple a couple of times here last year.
Here's Eric under the watchful eye of Don Airey and Ian Paice at soundcheck.

[Dave W]

...
I think keyboards lost their way when their equipment became more complex. It seems to me that keyboards were developed more and more to ape the sounds of other instruments. Emerson's Hammond was the sound of rock organ; every bit as raging and muscular as a Les Paul or P bass. Case in point, when Emerson moved over to the plastic synths and midi tones all the balls went out of his sound.

Good point. When it doesn't sound like an organ any more, then you don't stand out.

[uwe]

As I write, I hear a Jon Lord B3 (actually: C3) solo on my office stereo, yes, the Hammond is one of the mightiest instruments on earth. It's a sound that went out of fashion for a while - end of the 70ies, middish 80ies -, but it has returned. It can really fill a room - without sounding obnoxious like guitars sometimes do.

That's a really cute pic of Don and Ian, they're a bit like proud fathers: A young man playing the instrument that determines (and has always determinded) the sound of their band. Lovely, thanks for posting!

Ah, Burn is coming on the stereo, always love it when Lord starts playing the riff in unisono with Blackmore. The "gorgan" as he would call the sound of Strat and Hammond playing riffs together.

[lowend1]

I too am smitten with the sound of a Hammond, so much so that even as a non-keyboard playing musician, I felt compelled to add a clean 1955 M3 to by stable of stuff when one was offered to me in a trade. While I could never justify plopping the electromechanical beast that is the B3 into my living room, the M3 is much less imposing, and will still make most of those glorious noises.

[uwe]

It just sounds "organic" in the true sense of the word, like some archaic mud bubble pond.

[lowend1]

I've always maintained that there were really only three essential keyboard sounds for rock: the Hammond tonewheel organ, the Wurlitzer A200 electric piano and the Hohner D6 Clavinet.

[nofi]

my three would be the hammond B3, fender rhodes 73 electric piano and a baby grand piano. synths need not apply.
the fenders go in and out of style and the wurlitzer has a better sound, but there is something about the 73 that gets me. you could also get that little bass keys thing to set on top of it.

http://willboulware.com/

i went to high school with will and he had the fender rig i described. he quit school at 15 to seek his fortune and happily he found it. what the short bio on his website does not mention was that the first person he met and worked for in nyc was edgar winter.

[uwe]

I've always maintained that there were really only three essential keyboard sounds for rock: the Hammond tonewheel organ, the Wurlitzer A200 electric piano and the Hohner D6 Clavinet.

What was that krautrocky synth that was all over the Floyd's (likewise krautrocky) Wish You Were Here album?

And I did like Supertramp's piano sounds on Crime of the Century, they had Steinways as opposed to Fender electric pianos, right?

Plus I always loved the synth tone here, whatever it is, ARP? That liquid quality of it ...



This is lovely too:

[Alanko]

I would add Vox Continental, Farfisa Compact, Crumar Performer and Mellotron to that list.    I think the Supertramp tone was a wurlitzer with a side-chained chorus pedal or similar.

Wish You Were Here is Krautrocky?!? Maybe the bloated atmospherics of Grobschnitt.  WYWH is a cold album to my ears, probably because of the soaring Moog lines and string synths.

Emerson's trashing organ was an L100. He also used it so that he could have that percussive click on both manuals/parts by playing his C3 and L100 at the same time.

[uwe]

I checked, that was a Hohner D6 Clavinet Floyd used on WYWH al(w)right. He didn't use it before or after (except on those Endless River sessions again that recently came out).

Yes, speaking with Teutonic self confidence, WYWH is four Englishmen's approximation of krautrock/German electronica - think Tangerine Dream -, in a good way. It's small wonder that the album, uhum, eclipsed (pun laboriously intended) even  DSOTM in Germany (WYWH is to this day the most sold album in Germany ever, irrespective of genre), it spoke with our national "Geist und Seele".  I don't find it a cold album, it's just somber and solemn (and has been used in hundreds of German TV landscape and nature documentaries). In comparison, DSOTM sounds like a (very good) pop record to me. Now "Animals" was somber and solemn too, but in a more gratingly depressive manner. WYWH has more "Deutsche Romantik" in it. 

[lowend1]

my three would be the hammond B3, fender rhodes 73 electric piano and a baby grand piano. synths need not apply.
the fenders go in and out of style and the wurlitzer has a better sound, but there is something about the 73 that gets me. you could also get that little bass keys thing to set on top of it.

I always felt that the Rhodes was a little too clean and jazzy for me. The Wurly is a really interactive instrument (again, speaking as a non-player for the most part) - the harder you hit the keys, the raunchier it gets. Still it is a versatile animal, responsible for the classic parts in the Faces' "Stay With Me" and Queen's "Your My Best Friend" among many. One that a lot of people don't know about is Van Halen's "And The Cradle Will Rock" - if you solo the guitar channel (left?), you'll hear an A200 through a Marshall under the guitar. I had a 214 (basically an avocado green A200 designed to be chained with others for multiple classroom users) and it was a lot of fun.

[Pilgrim]

I think the Mellotron should be high on the list of keyboard classics. Many more artists have used it than one suspects.

[uwe]

Indeed, even the guys that really only did one noteworthy song (the "duh-duh-duuuuh"-one), here at 2:22, once they could afford one:




Some others even tongue in cheek, who sez BJH were devoid of self-deprecating humor?

[uwe]

Speaking of Fender Rhodes, that is one coming in at around 0:50 or is it a Wurlitzer? (I always took it to be a Rhodes - after I learned that it wasn't an "angry piano sound"-bass guitar that is!  )



And no, I don't form an opinion whether that is really Marc Bolan playing that rhythm guitar, I just took that vid because it had the best sonic quality on youtube. Groove-wise it could be (minus that big Tony Visconti smother production) and the similarities to Get it on/Bang a Gong are obvious, but I have frankly no idea how Ike would have played something like that.