It sure seems like a lot of the musicians I've photographed over the years are hitting this point. No word yet on the cause of death, only that he died in Santa Monica. What an amazing keyboard player. He was discovered by Rikki Farr selling ice cream on the streets of London. Farr found out he played keys and put him in his brother's blues band - Gary Farr and the T Bones. Look up that clip on youtube from 1966 to see a super skinny kid just wailing on the organ.
Keith Emerson photographed in Hollywood for Keyboard Magazine
I saw him and Greg Lake at the Keswick outside of Philly a few years ago... quite sad actually. He had trouble playing and one mild solo, he just couldn't do it..flubbed and flubbed.. he started to cry. Just awful.
But, you can remember him on Brain Salad Surgury... they reissued it in all kinds of high rez formats. From the Amazon description: "Now Celebrating its 40th Anniversary, this classic album has been fully restored and reissued as a Limited Three Disc Edition. The first disc contains a remastered version of the original album, Disc 2 the Alternate Album Mix, and Disc 3, a DVD-A of Super Stereo Mixes with the remastered original and new 2014 stereo mix, both in MLB Lossless 24/96 & LPCMm 24/96. Flac files are also included "
Wonderful photo. Memories of my teens when ELP was a favorite band of mine. I lost touch with their music but still have the albums I bought at the time. Will have to give a listen. Sad to here about his descent from stunning mastery.
He had some sort of neural disorder and had a few surgery in his hands. I read in a science magazine, it is not muscular or muscular/neural, but a brain disorder from repetitive movement and the authors suggested his surgeries did damage. IIRC.
Regardless, he had physical issues that impaired his playing.
The weird thing about the TMZ report is that I had been hearing through musician friends here in L.A. that it was a suicide, but at that time there was no news at all about cause of death. I discounted those rumors from earlier, but it appears they may be true.
When I photographed him - and it was somewhere in Hollywood - he played the hell out of that grand piano - mostly classical. Really one of the best there ever was. Here's the link to Keith playing with Gary Farr and the T Bones from 1966. Keith's solo is at around 2:00 or so.
Does anyone know why, when you upload a neutralized sRGB "black and white" this site always converts the file to untagged grayscale, which, depending on how your system is set up, screws up the way the image is displayed.
Saw ELP in the early 1970s. Tarkus IIRC was the album they were touring to support. Greg Lake said that he had been depressed for the past 20 years, I heard on the WXRT it was a single gunshot to the head. Sad news indeed.
