Quote:
|
Originally Posted by headsnap
would that have been HELP?  |
Heh...
"A lot of the early days were spent talking and sniffing things out." Keith Emerson told RCD Magazine, in July, 1992. "Greg was into things like Simon & Garfunkel, but he also had a classical music collection that impressed me no end."
Several drummers were considered, spoken to, and/or auditioned; among them: Coliseum's Jon Hiseman, Cream's Ginger Baker, and Mitch Mitchell from The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
It was Mitchell, whom Lake and Emerson believed had the most potential, and though Emerson wanted to keep the project a keyboard-bass-drums trio, there was serious talks to add Jimi Hendrix to the line up.
"Yeah, that story is indeed true, to some degree." says Lake. "Mitch Mitchell had told Jimi about us and he said he wanted to explore the idea. Even after Mitch was long out of the picture and we had already settled on Carl, talk about working with Jimi continued. We were supposed to get together and jam with him around August or September of 1970, but he died before we could put it together."
The rumors of the potential band with Hendrix did leak out to the British music press, who began running articles saying the band would be called "Hendrix, Emerson, Lake & Palmer" or HELP, for short.
It was Cream's manager, Robert Stigwood, who suggested Carl Palmer, a 20 year old drummer who had worked with Atomic Rooster and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (remember the 1968 hit, "Fire"?).
Link