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Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Tarkus

Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Tarkus Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Tarkus
Released: 1971

Tarkus Lyrics

The wall
On which the prophets wrote
Is cracking
At the seams

Upon the
Instrument's object
The sunlight
Brightly gleams

Where every man
Is torn apart
With nightmares
And with dreams

Will no one lay
The laurel wreath
When silence
Drowns the screams

Confusion
Will be my epitaph
As I crawl
This cracked and broken path
If we make it
We can all
Sit back
And laugh

But I fear tomorrow
I'll be crying
Yes I fear tomorrow
I'll be crying
Yes I fear tomorrow
I'll be crying

Between the iron gates of fate
The seeds of time were sown
And watered by
The deeds of those
Who know
And who are known

Knowledge is
A deadly friend
If no one
Sets the rules

The fate of all
Mankind I see
Is in
The hands of fools

The wall
On which the prophets wrote
Is cracking
At the seams

Upon the
Instrument's object
The sunlight
Brightly gleams

Where every man
Is torn apart
With nightmares
And with dreams

Will no one lay
The laurel wreath
When silence
Drowns the screams

Confusion
Will be my epitaph
As I crawl
This cracked and broken path
If we make it
We can all
Sit back
And laugh

But I fear tomorrow
I'll be crying
Yes I fear tomorrow
I'll be crying
Yes I fear tomorrow
I'll be crying

Crying
Crying

Yes I fear tomorrow
I'll be crying
Yes I fear tomorrow
I'll be crying

Crying

Writer/s: GREG LAKE, IAN MCDONALD, MICHAEL REX GILES, PETER JOHN SINFIELD, ROBERT FRIPP
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Tarkus

This progressive epic runs 20:42 and takes up the entire first side of the album. The parts are:

Eruption
Stone of Years
Iconoclast
Mass
Manticore
Battlefield
Aquatarkus

This song describes the story of a war machine called Tarkus (a mixture between an armadillo and a tank). This creature emerges from an egg that is beside a volcanic crater that is making an eruption. Then a cybernetic creature that looks like a futuristic station, this creature is destroyed by Tarkus' turrets. After that comes a creature called Iconoclast, that is a mixture between pterodactyl and a war airplane. This creature battles, but can't compare to Tarkus and loses the battle.

Another creature appears named Mass (a mixture of lizard, lobster and a rocket launcher), and after a battle Mass loses the battle and Tarkus continues his bloody adventure. After three victories Tarkus faces a mythological creature called Manticore (this creature has a human face, lion's body and scorpion's tail). Tarkus faces Manticore and is stung in his eye. Manticore forces Tarkus to go back, and Manticore defeats Tarkus, whose body falls down to a river. But though Tarkus seems to be dead you can't be sure because his turrets are not damaged.

Greg Lake, who wrote the lyrics for this track, explains: "The initial inspiration for this record came from the music that Keith (Emerson) had written. Following on from this I wrote various songs and worked together with Keith and Carl (Palmer) as a producer to create the record you now hear. Tarkus has been the backbone performance piece for ELP and has certainly stood the test of time. It is one of the best examples of the musical genius of Keith Emerson as a composer and of the band ELP working and performing together at the very top of their game."

The album cover, created by the artist William Neal, shows a depiction of Tarkus. While most ELP albums were completed long before the cover art was done, in this case, it helped adhere the songs. Lake explains: "The album cover art lent a sort of visual concept to an album which didn't really have a bonding concept at all. Before the album sleeve was conceived the whole thing was just a string of various musical and lyrical concepts weaved together into one continuous arrangement."

Keith Emerson poured through Greek mythology looking for a name for this song, but came up empty. Inspiration struck when the word "Tarkus" popped into his head when the band was driving back from a gig. It conjured up visions of a tank, so the idea developed to make the new mythological creature an armadillo (because of its armor) with tank treads. Emerson says that the word is completely original, and the only thing he's heard close to it is "tukhus" - a Yiddish word for the rear end.

Always a very theatrical band, Emerson, Lake & Palmer at one point shared the stage with a model of the Tarkus creature, which would blast a foamy substance at key moments. This provided a Spinal Tap moment when during a show that Carl Palmer recalls being in Brighton, the creature was aimed in the wrong direction, and the foam went into Emerson's grand piano. "We had to stop the show and on came the roadies with the dustpans and the Hoover to clear it out," Palmer said.

In our interview with Carl Palmer , he said: "The greatest piece collectively as a band, which really was a blueprint for a lot of up-and-coming prog rock groups to follow, would have been 'Tarkus

.'
The music in 'Tarkus' was very, very simple. It was a 10/8 rhythm, which I played to Keith, and I said, 'We could count this in 5/4, this is where the accents are.' He wrote, then, a topline that went wherever the accents were, and we had the melody. This was a fantastic piece of music, unbelievable.

All that was wrong with 'Tarkus' was it probably wasn't as mature as a concept lyrically as what it should have been. It was just a group of songs nailed together, but the actual music itself was outstanding. It just didn't have the political overtones that something like Pink Floyd had with The Wall. It wasn't that in-depth. But the music was superior, was absolutely fantastic. We just never really carried it through far enough intellectually.

So great album, great, great music, just didn't cap it off completely. But very proud of it."

Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Karn Evil 9

Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Karn Evil 9 Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Brain Salad Surgery
Released: 1973

Karn Evil 9 Lyrics

Karn Evil 9

This is ELP's most popular song from their most popular album. The song is most commonly interpreted as ELP's take on a shortened history of the world into a futuristic tale. The First Impression begins on the "Cold and misty morning" of the Earth's birth, through the ice age ("Where the seeds have withered, silent faces in the cold"), and to man's growing lust for money ("Now their faces captured in the lenses of the jackals for gold"), which leads to various wars. Afterwards, the world is described as a carnival, wherein various elements of humanity are reduced to circus sideshows ("A bomb inside a car," "Pull Jesus from a hat"), representing the human race's growing selfishness and indifference toward others. Even human misery is described as a "specialty" in the "show."

The second part of the First Impression focuses on the growing artificialization of the world, describing something as natural as "A real blade of grass" as some bizarre circus attraction. Despite the fact that the world is becoming more and more consumed by artificiality and given control to computers (see Third Impression), the human race insists that it is still in control, as it created all that the "Carnival" encompasses ("We would like it to be known the exhibits that were shown were exclusively our own.").

The Second Impression is an instrumental piece (mostly a piano solo), symbolizing the blissful ignorance of humanity towards the impending danger of the conquest of the computers, which culminates in the Third Impression. At this point, the "machines" have concluded their superiority to humanity and begin to take on mankind's necessity to prove their own superiority. The computers are represented by heavily distorted vocals, while the voice of the all-representative "Man" is clean and without effect. The computers finally wage a violent conquest of the Earth. Mankind is shocked that its own creation is fighting back against him ("Walls that no man thought would fall") and is unprepared for the conflict. Finally the machines determine that they are sentient beings and the new "Humans," or rather the new dominant species ("Load your program. I am yourself."), pushing humanity to the subservient status that they had once occupied. After their victory ("Rejoice! Glory is ours!"), they make sure not to wipe out the human race, but preserve it to demean humanity and gloat about their superiority.

The last stanza of the suite epitomizes the conquest and the arrogance of both the old and new masters of the earth, wherein man struggles to maintain his presence as the dominant species on Earth and the computers assert that they have surpassed their creators: "I am all there is." "Negative! Primitive! Limited! I let you live!" "But I gave you life!" "What else could you do?" "To do what is right." "I'm perfect! Are you?" (thanks, Mike - Long Island, NY)

"Roll up... see the show!" represents the carnival barker. "Roll Up" is a British term inviting people to come check something out - Paul McCartney said it at the beginning of The Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour."

When asked in 2009 if he knew how prophetic the lyrics, to this song would be, Greg Lake replied: "Yes we did. The reason for this was that Pete [Sinfield] and I had both written Schizoid Man some years before and could already see the writing on the wall."

Why #9? When we spoke with Greg Lake, we surmised it may have had something to do with John Lennon, who was a big influence on Lake and an affinity for the digit. Greg's response: "I have no f--king clue what number 9's got to do with anything, to be honest with you."

With that theory debunked, we can look to Keith Emerson, who says that he had an idea for lyrics about a planet called Ganton 9. Lyricist Pete Sinfield shot down the planet idea, but perhaps kept the number.

"Karn Evil" is a series of songs on the Brain Salad Surgery album which were conceived as one piece. "Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression, Pt. 1" runs 8:37 and closes the first side of the album. The second side begins with "Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression, Pt. 2," which is by far the most famous part of the movement. Running 4:45, it's the section that begins, "Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends." This is what radio stations typically play, as it works as a self contained song and is a practical length for airplay.

"Karn Evil 9: 2nd Impression" follows, running 7:07, and "Karn Evil 9: 3rd Impression" closes out the original album at 9:07.

No part of "Karn Evil" was ever released as a single, but it helped the album reach #2 in the UK and #11 in the US.

The title is a play on the word "Carnival." Pete Sinfield, who wrote some lyrics for the band, came up with the phrase after hearing some music Keith Emerson wrote for the piece - he thought it sounded like something you would hear at a carnival. Sinfield says that the work of the musician Tom Lehrer and the author Kurt Vonnegut were an influence on the words he wrote.

The "Karn Evil" suite was written with live performance in mind, and it served ELP well as a concert favorite. The band's previous album was Trilogy, which contained songs that required sound effects and other assistance to play live. In our interview with Greg Lake , he explained: "We decided that the next album we made, we would make sure that we could perform it live. And so, I know it sounds horribly extravagant, but this is what we did: We bought a cinema in London and we set up on the stage, and we wrote the album, performing it on the stage in the theatre. So as we created the album, we made sure that we could perform it live.

So it came about, this line, 'Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends.' It was a kind of live idea behind it."

Emerson, Lake & Palmer - The Sage

Emerson, Lake & Palmer - The Sage Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Pictures At An Exhibition
Released: 1971

The Sage Lyrics

The Sage

This is a fantasy song written by Greg Lake for their tribute to composer Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Greg Lake says that it denotes castles and journeys and imagination. (thanks, Linda - NYC, NY)