Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Trilogy (1972)

In my review of the triple live album, Welcome Back My Friends, I described "much of Trilogy" as being filler. Perhaps that was unduly harsh, but it was noticeable that only one piece from the album was, just three years later, in the live set, that rushed through apace.

EDIT - on checking, The Sheriff was also on that live album, albeit in a medley with the execrable Jeremy Bender

In that review, I mentioned my teenage fandom of ELP, and subsequent moving on, but let's give Trilogy the onceover.

It opens, as you'd expect with something grandiose, bombastic, including an extended piano solo in the middle of the ten plus minutes, The Endless Enigma, while not the band's high point, one which is eminently listenable despite Greg Lake's mangling of the tune towards the end. From The Beginning is a Lake ballad, ending in a Moog solo, which was apparently, just an improvisation by Emerson - never played live, since the song featured in Lake's solo spot, and something which had to be transcribed for him a couple of decades later when he was asked to play it again. The Sheriff is a throwaway cowboy song, with an excuse for some honky-tonk Scott Joplin style piano as a run out.

Starting the second half, only Hoedown (an Aaron Copland piece) ever really became a band favourite, a listenable little tune, followed by Trilogy, which feels like a continuation of Endless Enigma - starting with a piano ballad, before segueing into a full blown synth rock piece. Living Sin is mercifully, the shortest piece on the album, an attempt at a grubby rock song, comfortably the least appealing thing on the album. The album concludes with Abaddon's Bolero, a listenable dance tune a la Ravel, a repeating theme rising to a crescendo.

On this re-release there's a live version of Hoedown, backing up the suggestion that little of the album stuck in the live set - done much faster, and with some noodling about by Keith Emerson in the middle.

It does feel like the least convincing of the early albums, but nothing close to the horror show of 1978's Love Beach, where the trio seemed determined to cement a legacy of prog dinosaurs who had run out of ideas. There's enough to enjoy for those partial to 1970s prog, without ever approaching classic status.

Link to full album

3* - not the band's high point, but a few decent tunes to delight elderly prog fans