Rolling Stone‘s interview series Last Man Standing features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and musicians who are the last remaining members of iconic bands. In some cases, they are the only classic-era member in the current touring lineup. In others, they are the only ones still alive. In either case, the task of keeping the torch lit has fallen onto their shoulders, whether they wanted that responsibility of not.
Carl Palmer remembers exactly where he was when all three of the phone calls came in. The first one — informing him that Keith Emerson had committed suicide after years of mental health struggles — was in March 2016 when he was getting ready to board a tour bus in Bari, Italy. He was at his home in the Cotswolds that December when word reached him that Greg Lake died of pancreatic cancer. And just one month later, he was in London when he found out that John Wetton died from colorectal cancer.
In less than one year, he lost the lead singer of his 1980s prog-rock supergroup Asia, and became the sole surviving member of Emerson, Lake & Palmer. “When you have three people who have played important roles at key points in your career, it’s quite strange to lose them in one blast like that,” he says. “It took a bit of time to get over.”
But that hasn’t stopped Palmer from celebrating the musical legacy of ELP. He’s kicking off another leg of his An Evening with Emerson, Lake & Palmer tour in April where he’ll play drums alongside isolated videos of Greg Lake and Keith Emerson captured at a 1992 ELP concert at the Royal Albert Hall.
“The first three weeks of going through all the footage to make the show was really hard, very difficult, Palmer says. “But after the three weeks, I figured, ‘Well, they would want this. They wouldn’t want holograms.’ After that, I was okay seeing them every day. It was actually comforting, to be honest with you.”
It may seem odd to some that Palmer is continuing on with ELP even after E and L are both gone. But drumming has been at the center of his life ever since he was a child growing up in Birmingham, England. Back them he worshiped jazz players like Joe Morello, Elvin Jones, and Buddy Rich. “The American drummers were the very best in my day when I started,” he says. “We had great players, but you had better players.”
He grew up just 15 minutes away from the Plaza Ballroom, where the Beatles played in 1963. “My dad wouldn’t let me have the night off,” he says, “but I did creep in during the day and watch the people putting their stuff out in the dressing room and setting up the stage.”
He was infatuated by the entire Merseybeat scene, but his parents pushed him toward classical music. “I realized that I wanted to be a rock drummer after hearing the Beatles and other Merseybeat bands,” he says. “I just needed to find a way how I could incorporate classical music, which I have a great love for, with rock music.”
He pulled that off in 1970 when Emerson, Lake & Palmer formed, eventually scoring hits “Karn Evil 9” and “Fanfare for the Common Man” that fulfilled his childhood dreams. But it was a long road to reach that point, and things grew rather fraught once punk hit and ELP seemed hopelessly passé. But while other prog-rockers retreated the comforts of New Age music in the Eighties, Palmer formed Asia and wound up recording “Heat of the Moment” and other MTV-era hits.
Did you see any shows when you were young that left a big mark on you like Cream or Pink Floyd or the Rolling Stones?
I saw the Cream exactly 13 times. I saw them in Germany. I used to be a backing musician for a soul singer called Chris Farlowe. He had a hit called “Out of Time” written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. He chose me as his drummer in London. I was about 16 at the time when I joined him. And I was playing on the same bill as the Cream in Bremen, which is in Northern Germany.
But the first time I saw the Cream was at the Flower Pot club in Birmingham, where I’m from. I was playing in the King Bees and they were on the bill. I just became a huge, huge fan. It was seeing the Cream that made me always want to be in a trio if I could get to that situation.
Watching Ginger Baker play every night must have been incredible.
Yeah. It was really great. My first experience seeing a real rock & roll to-the-wall rock band was when I joined the King Bees, which was a rhythm and blues group. I still had an Elvis Presley-type of haircut and they were looking all very mod-y and stuff. They said to me, “We’d like you to join the band because you play really well, but you don’t look right… We’re going along to see the Who.” We went to see them at Aston University. That was my first professional rock band I ever saw live. It was like, “Ah, this is me. I’m going to do this. I’m sorted.”
Nobody played like Keith Moon.
He was great. I toured with the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. We had that single “Fire.” And we went on a tour of the U.K. with the Small Faces and the Who. I got to see Keith play most nights.
He was a great guy. My bass drum pedal broke once, and I was trying to repair it. And he walked in and his actual words were, “What’s wrong, old boy?” I said, “My spare bass drum pedal is not too good.” He said, “Well, don’t worry about that. I can give you another bass drum pedal. Follow me.”
He took me out of the building and he had a van, which just carried drum parts because he smashed so much up. He said, “Take this.” It was a Premier 252 bass drum pedal, it had a rubber footplate, very good pedal. After the tour, I said, “Keith, I’d like to give your pedal back.” He said, “No, that’s yours, old boy. It’s on me.” Lovely man.
What was your time like in Atomic Rooster?
Crazy World of Arthur Brown had that Number One single, so we went to tour America. On the way going there, I knew nothing about the music business. When I left America after being there nearly a year, I understood what publishing was about, how the business worked, how agents worked with promoters. I had a real schooling.
I left Arthur because he disappeared to Long Island, and was living in some commune out there. We couldn’t get ahold of him because we didn’t have mobile phones in those days. I came back to the U.K. and I started to think to myself, “I’m going to put a band together.”
Vincent Crane followed me back. He was one of the main writers in the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. And he said, “Yeah, I’d like to be in a band with you.” So I said, “You take care of writing some songs. I’ll organize a van. I’ll get an agent and a manager and I’ll look at all that side of it, but you get some material together.”
And so he did. I managed to get a guy called Robert Stigwood who managed the Cream, and the Bee Gees. I went to see him, told him what I was all about, and he liked my story and he took us on board. I got a bank loan, got a huge Mercedes van, and that was it. We started.
I was in the Atomic Rooster really for about 18 months. I only made the first album and I recorded “Tomorrow Night,” which was the Number One single they had. But I had already had the offer to join Keith and Greg at that stage. So, I left the Atomic Rooster and joined Greg and Keith.
It’s interesting that all of the early prog groups started around the same time, 1968/69, and it was all based in London. What was it about that moment in time and that place that caused that to happen?
It’s hard to say, but you’ve got to understand that the Pink Floyd were kicking it off with that psychedelia-type of approach. And you had Emerson who was adding this classical approach, which was very European, but using contemporary keyboards like the Hammond, the C3, the -100, and later on the synthesizers.
I suppose if I was to ask you, “How did jazz start in America?” It’s lots of elements which came together. We just happened to have invented prog in the U.K. We were very much at that time, the end of the ’60s, beginning of the ’70s, into technology. Everybody wanted to know about everything, and it just filtered its way into the music. Unless you had an intro that was at least seven-and-a half, eight minutes long, it wasn’t a prog piece of music.
Keith Emerson was one of the leaders in that. I went to see him play every Monday night at the Marquee Club because he was doing so much music by Karelia, [Dmitri] Shostakovich, a bit of Bach. He brought it into this modern contemporary sort of style, and I was just bowled over. I thought that’s what I’d like to have a go at at some stage if I could get a band together.
The Marquee Club was an incubator of so much talent.
Yes. Jimi Hendrix first played there when he was in the U.K. This was a historic building, and by the time the developers came in, they just wanted to rip it all out. And it’s right in the middle of Soho, London. It’s monumental as a place, but now it’s some kind of ladies’ hairdressers or something. It’s ridiculous. But it was a great place for music.
When you were first approached about ELP, did you feel hesitation?
Yeah, because you have to understand I’d already taken a loan out on a new truck. I’ve got the band together. We’ve got an unbelievable manager, Robert Stigwood. We were playing all over Europe. We were a cult band in Norway, Stockholm, Oslo, Denmark. We were strong, and we were playing to 300 to 400 people some nights. That was without a hit. This is pure underground. That’s how Keith got to hear about me, via his manager, Tony Stratton Smith, who said, “If you need a drummer, maybe you’ve got to take one from this particular band that’s really happening because this guy’s really good.”
But there is a story in front of all of that. When I was with Chris Farlowe, when I was 16 or 17, I got a call from John McVie from Fleetwood Mac. He asked if I would step in for Mick Fleetwood in Fleetwood Mac, because he had got the flu. I said, “Yes, I’d do that. Do we have a rehearsal?” And John McVie said, “No, just follow me.” So that’s what I did that night. It was a great experience. Peter Green was the leader of the band. It was at Battersea College in the center of London, and top of the bill was the Nice. And that was my first time I met Keith.
So when you joined with Keith and Greg…
I wasn’t the first drummer. The first drummer was Mitch Mitchell [from the Jimi Hendrix Experience]. I was quite surprised that they didn’t take him. I ended up being called up. And the second time I played with the guys, I thought, “Wow, this is magical.”
The first album is pretty extraordinary, and people picked up on it right away.
I thought it was very odd, to tell you the truth, because three-quarters of the first album was Keith playing the church organ, an organ in the Royal Albert Hall. I thought, “Hey, how are we ever going to get away with that?” Sure, we had things like “The Barbarian,” “Lucky Man,” and “Knife-Edge.” But on the second side, it was [the eight-minute long] “The Three Fates” and [the seven-minute long] “Tank.”
I loved it. I didn’t even think, “Would this take off in America?” I didn’t even think about that because I’d been to America, had some success with Arthur. I figured, “Well, Europe’s such a great place. I love all the culture here and whatever. If I don’t go back to America, it’s not such a big deal.” But the album was released in America and it flew out the box.
“Lucky Man,” obviously, opened the door to radio. “The Barbarian” followed as an instrumental, the Bartók piece, and then I think “Knife-Edge” also got an incredible amount of plays. We went over and played, and of course, we were completely different. You had a band that didn’t have guitars in it. It had a guy playing keyboards, L100, C3s, and you had a guy who got a choir boy voice, no blues, no rock, no real jazz. This was like a 100 percent English European. But it hit really big.
The first show was at Plymouth Guildhall. What stands out in your memory about that night?
We got paid 400 pounds, which would be equivalent to about, I don’t know, $500 today, which is quite a lot in those days. The promoter was called Dick Van Dyke, believe it or not. I think there was about 380 people in the whole hall. It was sold out. There wasn’t a woman in sight. There was no females in the audience. They’re all guys with beards and pipes reading newspapers and things. And we thought, “Well, this is weird. I can’t believe that this is just guys’ music.” But yes, it was to a certain extent. And then it started to grow. The second concert being the Isle of Wight.
That day must have been crazy.
Our slot was 45 minutes. Now, we’d heard that there was lots of problems getting into the festival because it wasn’t organized very well. You got to understand this. It was 1970. Nobody knew about security, what you do about getting the police, health and safety. There was none of that. We flew in by helicopter, fully dressed. The crew were already there, had everything set up. We landed at the back of the stage, ran out, played 45 minutes. We just played our asses off, jumped back into the helicopter.
They flew us back to the hotel, which was still on the Isle of Wight. And we were sitting in the restaurant looking at the menu saying, “Oh, what are were going to eat?” We never saw the Who, we never saw Janis Joplin, we never saw Hendrix. That wasn’t the deal. We were in and we were out. And it was sensational.
It’s a shame you missed the Doors, Sly and the Family Stone, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen.
I saw the Doors when I was with the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and I saw Sly and the Family Stone when I was with Arthur at the Fillmore East. I was there during the Haight-Ashbury period. So I saw Grateful Dead and all of that.
Tarkus was pretty ambitious for a second record. A lot of people didn’t get it at the time.
Greg wasn’t very happy with it. He eventually came around. It basically was a drum pattern that I mentioned to Keith, which was in 10/8 or 5/4, depending how you wanted to count it. And I said, “I think this is an interesting pattern. I think where the accents are, you could put a melody.” He said, “Leave it with me.” And he went away and started writing. Greg wasn’t too keen, but then he got very keen and he wrote the song “Stones of Years,” the first song, “Battlefield” is the next one, and it just went on.
That was the blueprint really for prog rock. It was being laid down then and there. Yes, it wasn’t going to get played on the radio, we knew that, in America.
A lot of critics in America didn’t embrace the band in that period. Did that bother you?
Right now, I’m so grateful for being able to work in America and I’m so grateful for the success I’ve had in America. At the time, I didn’t think, “Oh, they don’t like us.” I thought, “This must be just a case of the more you go there, the better it must get for you because the country’s so vast.” That’s exactly what happened. The more we played, the more the penny dropped. And don’t forget, there were other bands coming up. For example, Yes.
We had them on our support for the first five concerts they ever played in America. We’d already been there. They hadn’t. And we were starting to come up. We figured, “Hey, let’s bring a bit of prog over and see how the Americans like it.” The Americans just loved it. They knew what it was all about. It was the record companies and people in radio who weren’t too sure, but the American public immediately got it.
It’s interesting that Americans love prog so much, but there’s very few prominent American prog bands. They’re almost all British, and I guess Canadian.
Rush. They are just sensational, I love them. Triumph was another proggy band from over there. There are some great bands. I don’t know why it ended up that way, but you’ve got so many good bands in America. I love ZZ Top as well. That’s not prog, but I love that it’s a trio because it’s really difficult to play in.
I do think the jam bands borrowed elements of prog, even the Grateful Dead. There was this sense of, “What if we make the song really long and put in different sections?”
I think you’re absolutely right there. And I think people had more time then to listen to music and their attention spans were longer. And that’s very important. It’s not like today where it’s got to be instant.
Many fans feel that Brain Salad Surgery was the peak of the group. Do you agree?
Yes, I do. As far as the creativity, I would say that was the pinnacle of it. We didn’t play all of that ever on stage, but yes, that was the pinnacle. I do one of the comedic type songs from that album, “Benny the Bouncer.” I did that as a bit of fun.
You guys took a few years off in the mid-Seventies just as prog was reaching its peak of popularity. Why was that?
We had been hitting America and touring so hard. We’d done it. We were kind of washed out and we wanted a bit of time off. We took too much time off and I don’t disagree with that, but about the time we figured, “Let’s just kick back for a year.” That goes to two, nearly three years. And then we came back with the orchestra, which probably wasn’t the right thing to do. We should have come back as a trio and introduced the orchestra as some form of growth. But hindsight’s a marvelous thing, isn’t it really?
I spoke with Greg in 2013. He said to me, “It started to fragment when they made Works Volume 1. It was a good album, but it wasn’t ELP. It was Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer with an orchestra…it wasn’t a record that reflected the chemistry of ELP. It reflected the individuals apart from each other.” Do you think that’s fair?
I do. “Pirates” was a magnificent piece. It featured ELP. There’s a whole 20-minute piece of music. But the album was a concept we thought might be something we could all tie into. The reason for it being is we wanted a big piece with an orchestra. We wanted individually to play with an orchestra. He could do his acoustic songs. He could do a piano concerto. I could play whatever I wanted to play with the orchestra. It was the beginning of something, though it didn’t really come to fruition.
The punk movement broke out around this time. What did you think about that music?
The punk movement was great. What was happening here socially with the amount of young people out of work, short of money, not enough entertainment at reasonable prices, concert tickets were too high, a bit like they are today, nothing really changes. I think a lot of people got knocked off their perch. A lot of bands decided to stop because punk was coming in very hard. The Clash were right up there. And we all know the Damned. The Sex Pistols, obviously. We were a little bit affected by it, and it sort of hurt a bit towards the end of it. Bands like Deep Purple never steered away, just carried on being Deep Purple, which is probably what we should have done.
We should have just stuck at it, but we didn’t. You have to understand that ELP, as a group, they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Instant success, instant karma out there, instant new art form, instant everything. So anything that came in our way, we weren’t like a normal group that’s ready to take a knock. We couldn’t fight back. A band really is a gang of guys and we weren’t a gang enough because we were three individuals. We made great music, but we couldn’t take a knock as a group. We took it very personally, and we shouldn’t have done.
The critics really ripped on Love Beach. What do you think about that one in hindsight?
Love Beach really was a complete disaster for me. There’s a couple of big things on there. There’s a piece by Joaquín Rodrigo called “Canario,” which is a lovely piece of music. When we did Love Beach, we’d already broken up. Ahmet Ertegun, the president of Atlantic Records, said, “Oh, go back and have another go.”
To tell you the truth, we were absolutely shattered. So, we said, “Let’s do it in the Bahamas. Let’s do it in Nassau.” That was the first mistake. You can’t write a prog album when you’ve got fishermen bringing in conch and salmon or whatever they bring in and barracudas and sand and sun. You can only write a prog album if you’re stuck in the traffic jam on the Brooklyn Bridge. You know what I mean? That’s where that shit comes from.
Making that album wasn’t a career move. And then the album sleeve, we looked like the Bee Gees on the front. How can you call an album Love Beach that’s a prog album?
Did you have any idea Asia was going to blow up as big as it did?
I knew that I was with other people who realized how much America had changed and how much the corporates were involved with American radio. And it was very difficult to get a prog track played in daylight time or in drive time. It’s going to happen, yes, but it’d be three in the morning down in Paris, Texas, or Nacogdoches. It’s not going to be in New York City.
David Geffen was really the sole driver. He said, “Guys, I get the prog thing. That’s why I want you all together because I think you can make this happen, but we will need to break into radio and I won’t be able to do it with “Time Again,” “Sole Survivor,” “Wildest Dreams.” I need something a bit more radio commercial.”
John Wetton, who was a great tunesmith and a great writer said, “I’ve got a couple of pieces. We’ll record them and see if you like them, David.” And we did. And “Heat of the Moment” went to Number One straight away. The rest is history.
“Only Time Will Tell” soon followed. That was big. “Sole Survivor” even was a radio hit. I think we ended up selling five million copies. I didn’t think for one minute it would be as big. And I figured people would frown about the group because he had three prog musicians from quite big prog bands playing bubblegum songs, really. But they were good songs.
The timing was pretty great because MTV had just hit the airwaves.
Yes. You had to be on it. It was perfect. But I didn’t enjoy making those silly videos. Some of them were quite good, “Don’t Cry” with us charging through the desert. It’s embarrassing. But hey, we all make mistakes, don’t we?
Did you feel a lot of pressure to make another “Heat of the Moment” when you went back into the studio to make Alpha?
Yes, huge. And it’s that old story. You write your first album and it takes nearly 28 years, and the next one you’ve got to write in 28 minutes. I thought the first three albums were good. There’s no doubt about that. I liked them all for what they were. After that, I think we lost the plot when we did the Frontier releases [staring with Phoenix in 2008]. I thought we got a bit middle of the road. I actually said to the group that I didn’t want to record anymore, but if they wanted to go on the road and tour as the original Asia, I would join them, but you get a different drummer to play on the albums. I didn’t really want it because it was a bit too weak for me.
When Emerson, Lake and Powell happened in 1985, were you unable to take part because of Asia?
Yeah, which was a bit sad. I said I could do it, but I needed them to wait at least four weeks. I’d already signed a record contract with Geffen Records, and I was already in the middle of recording that Asia album. It was basically finished. There were some drum repairs that I needed to do, and there were some mixes which I needed to be part of. So I said, “If you give me four weeks, I think I’ll be done.” Keith and Greg didn’t want to do that. They said, “No, we want to go now.”
The next minute, I get a phone call and it’s [drummer] Cozy Powell. Because he’s a friend, he says, “Carl, what’s going on here?” I said, “Cozy, I can’t do it straight away, and they don’t want to wait. Go and do it. It’ll be great. You’ll really enjoy it.”
Cozy said, “Are you okay with that, Carl?” I said, “Do you want me to be brutally honest with you? The reason why I’m okay with it is at the end of the day, I don’t lose out because I’ve got 17 albums, whether they be re-releases or repackages or whatever, of product with these guys. I know it’s all going to be promoted again and you’re going to be out there helping me promote it. I’ll still be making money, you’ll be making money, and the group will be together in some form. What’s not to like?”
It’s bizarre that his last name started with P, so they could still bill it as ELP.
I don’t know what to actually read into that. I think they went after who they thought would be the best English drummer they could pick up. They could have had Simon Phillips. There’s a few out there. I’m sure they could have found other names, but I think Cozy suited them. It went well. He made them sound a bit heavier and it worked.
The original trio became active again in the 1990s. Was that an enjoyable time?
Yeah, I enjoyed the reformation. I thought it was great. They were both performing really well and I was very, very happy with it. It didn’t last as long as what I hoped. It went to about 1998. It wasn’t the comeback that you see today with bands like Black Sabbath who are huge, because maybe ELP wasn’t that big anyway in the beginning.
But at the end of the day, it was great fun doing it. When we broke up in ’98, I knew that wasn’t going to be the very last concert. I knew there’d be more to come. And in 2010, we played a big festival in London.
Why did you go through all that rehearsal to just play one show?
We couldn’t do any more, basically. The group was over. I think there were a few health issues. It wasn’t something that I thought we could do. I’m sure everyone has got their own story. But I didn’t think it was something that could have carried on. I think we’d done what we needed to do, and I don’t regret it ending then. It was a nice place to do it in London to pay back all of the fans. I’m sure we could have gone on, but it was just very difficult because we weren’t being offered a tour. It was a festival in Austria, something in Germany. And there’s lots of space and time in between, which with a band like ELP, it needs to be working every day almost to keep the chops up. So it was a bit difficult. I think basically it was a decision, it was time to end then.
When I spoke to Greg in 2013, he seemed a bit frustrated by it and said that, “We just did the one show. If we did five or six more, we could have been formidable.” He wanted more.
Yes, he did want more, but the shows were a good three to four weeks in between. We had offers and they were too far away and we’d have to spend so much money carrying on to rehearse just to keep it together. ELP couldn’t just drop in and play a day after not playing together for five weeks. It didn’t work like that. With the technology and everything we were using, it just didn’t work. That’s not the band. When we first got together, we rehearsed five days a week every day for about six months.
How was the Asia reunion when it was all four of you again? Was it fulfilling again to be back with the original lineup?
Yeah. It lasted for a very brief period. Steve wanted to not do it for too long, and he wanted to go back and concentrate on Yes. Basically, he said, “The energy that I’ve got to play, I’d rather give it to Yes,” which I completely understood. We brought other people in, but it had got quite fragmented by then. It was over. And then John [Wetton] died and Geoff and I went out without Steve with another guitar player and another singer, Billy Sherwood.
We supported Journey for a while. And that was okay, but when something’s over like that, you can’t keep on hashing it back together. And Geoff, he’s back out again. He’s got a form of Asia, which I wish him the best of luck with. I haven’t seen them play yet, but I’m sure it’s great. There’s another Asia too. John Payne is out there and has been out there since day one. So, it’s all a little bit confusing, but I wish them a lot of luck with all of that.
Learning about Keith’s death in 2016 must have been pretty devastating. Did you talk to him much in his last years?
Yes. Keith and I spoke a bit more than what I did with Greg, for no real reason, it just turned out that way. When I got the news that Keith had committed suicide, I said, “Are you sure?” But it was coming from a good source. I was very saddened to hear it. I didn’t know that Keith had such a mental illness, to be honest. I don’t think anyone knew.
And then Greg died later that year.
Keith was in March and Greg was in December. Obviously, I didn’t know that Greg was that ill because, as I mentioned to you earlier, we hadn’t spoken. I heard he didn’t want people to know how ill he was. And to be honest with you, that whole period, 2016, March, December, and then leading into January 2017 when John Wetton died was incredibly difficult.
I knew John was ill. John Wetton and I were always talking and I used to go down to his house in Bournemouth. I knew there was a problem. I didn’t know the severity of it, and I thought maybe he was going to get better. And then I got the call saying John had finally passed. He was at home when he died. But I think I saw him about three weeks before he died. I’d gone down to see him and he looked well to me. It took a bit of time to get over. I don’t have many friends in the music business, but I could say John Wetton was a true friend.
Before Greg and Keith died, some fans didn’t quite get why you were willing to play the music as Carl Palmer’s ELP Legacy, but you weren’t playing it with the actual guys.
I played it with my band afterwards because they weren’t really ready to play and go on tour. That wasn’t on the curriculum, to tell you the truth. And it was very difficult. I still wanted to play the music. I still wanted to represent the music. Greg actually came to concerts that I had with my band, and came to the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. Keith came to several of them in L.A. in Calabasas. That’s the way it was. They didn’t really want to carry on. They could have carried on with another drummer, but they didn’t want to.
You got to understand, when music’s that intense. When you combine our two periods, that’s about 16 years. That’s a hell of a long time, though it wasn’t consecutive years. It’s a long time. And we created a lot of great music, which I’m so pleased about and so grateful for, and with the blessing of the Emerson family and the Lake family, enables me to do what I can today.
Are you open to one day doing more Asia shows with Steve and Geoff?
I don’t think Steve wants to do it, as far as I know. I’ve not spoken to him about that. Who knows? I know that Geoff is doing this acoustic thing. I don’t know if he’s changing Asia again, but I know he’s doing some acoustic tour. This doesn’t involve a drummer. He’s got a very good drummer [Virgil Donati] playing with him at the moment.
In a couple of years time, I’m going to want to do what I call a Lifetime in Music tour. And I’m going to call it the Celebration Tour. And I’m going to want to have a band, whoever is from Asia is available and wants to join me. And I’m going to want to play at least a 55-minute set of all Asia music with all the videos. And I’m going to want to cut that into my ELP set, but it’d be slightly longer.
Do you ever think about retirement?
We’re very lucky in the arts. If you’ve got your health, you don’t have to retire. You can just reduce the amount and be more selective about what you do. But I know from a touring point of view, I would like to do the Celebration Tour so that I can play Asia music, I can play ELP music, and it’s all in one.
And it would be great if Geoff Downes came along as a guest, if Steve Howe came along as a guest in the Asia segment, it’d be lovely. I just would like to represent the music in the best way possible using the videos of the old group too, if I can get permission for that, just so I can have everything as real as possible so people can see in my lifetime, what I’ve done. I don’t know if he’ll be alive at the time, but I would bring on somebody like Arthur Brown. And I’d play “Fire” with Arthur Brown. Why not? I’ve had a very, very lucky, very successful musical career.
