Lucky Man - Emerson, Lake & Palmer (1971) 10/4/21

When Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake and Palmer was just 12 years old, he asked his mom for a guitar for Christmas. She said they were too poor to afford it.

Greg was disappointed, of course, but then: a Christmas miracle! Under the tree on Christmas Day was a brand new guitar!

Greg was a quick learner, and in short order, he could play quite well--so well, he was able to sit down and write what later became a "Great Song of 1971!"

Skip ahead a few years to 1970. Emerson, Lake and Palmer were recording their debut album, and they came up short on material. Greg sheepishly offered up the song he wrote as a 12 year old.

Keith Emerson hated it. In fact, he told Greg and Carl Palmer if they wanted to record it, they could go ahead, but HE was heading off to the pub.

Greg and Carl packed in quite a bit of work into just a few hours, laying down several guitar, bass, and rhythm tracks and overdubbing vocal parts.

When Keith returned to the studio, he was shocked at how good it sounded. He had just ordered a brand new "toy" called a Moog synthesizer, and thought he might be able to add a solo at the end of the song.

They rolled the tape, and Keith started noodling. When the song was done, Keith was shocked again: The FIRST TAKE sounded GREAT!

Oh, what a lucky man he was...because "Lucky Man" became Emerson, Lake and Palmer's best known song. It was only a mid-charter in the US and Canada, but album rock radio stations played it a lot, and it still can be heard on classic rock stations today!

And there's an epilog to the story...

In concert, ELP would replace the Moog solo with a guitar solo...because in those days, synthesizers were large and unwieldly--which made it difficult to take on tour.

A number of years went by before synthesizers would shrink enough to allow the group to use one in concert.

But then there was a NEW problem:

Because Keith had ad-libbed his solo and didn't write anything down, he had NO IDEA what he had originally played! Listening to the old track and trying to transcribe the solo was tedious, so he called Keyboard Magazine who had already transcribed it for sheet music purposes, and asked for a copy.

After the folks at Keyboard got over their shock that a musician had asked for a copy of his own work, they sent him the sheet music...and from that point on, "Lucky Man" has been played in concert as originally recorded!

"Lucky Man" by Emerson, Lake & Palmer: a "Great Song of 1971!"