Brain Salad Surgery was released on this date 51 years ago. Before Brain Salad Surgery, I hadn’t been a big fan of ELP. Of course like everyone, I loved Lucky Man and From the Beginning. Still do. But the rest sounded like a band trying too hard to be grandiose.
Brain Salad Surgery though had a secret ingredient that no other album has ever had other than In the Court of the Crimson King and In the Wake of Poseidon: It featured an album with the lyricist from the original King Crimson line-up teaming up with the singer from the original King Crimson line-up. It’s nice when lightning does strike twice.
Brain Salad Surgery (the title is based on a phrase from Dr. John’s classic, Right Place, Wrong Time) starts off with a unique melding of two classics. Most likely, Emerson came up with the idea to cover Hubert Parry’s hymn, Jerusalem, and Lake suggested basing the lyrics on a William Blake poem which introduced his classic book, Milton. Somehow it all works in a way that much of ELP’s pomposity did not.
Next up is an adaptation of Toccata concertata, the Fourth Movement of Ginastera’s 1st Piano Concerto. This is a monster song that could have easily fit on Billy Cobham’s Spectrum album with Carl Palmer flying all over his massive electronic drum kit.
Unfortunately, side one also contains what I feel is one of Lake’s weakest Lucky Man-type songs, Still…You Turn Me On. People have made fun of the lyrics, and rightfully so. “Undercover you could even be the man on the moon.” “Every day a little sadder, a little madder. Someone get me a ladder.” Come on.
But, few prog rock epics ever sounded better than the magnum opus of Karn Evil 9. Here is the logical next dystopian chapter from the earlier triptych of 21st Century Schizoid Man, Epitaph, and In the Court of the Crimson King. Whereas Sinfield’s lyrics on the Court album delved into man’s inhumanity to man, with its attendant cruelty and madness, his lyrics on Karn Evil 9 reflected the inevitable showdown between artificial and natural intelligence, with machines winning the war. (2001: A Space Odyssey, anyone?) Greatest show in heaven, hell or earth, indeed.
ELP was not for everyone’s musical tastes. Lake’s songs were too soft and Emerson was too high-falutin. But when they peaked on Karn Evil 9, it was spectacular. “Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. We’re so happy you’ll attend. Come inside. Come inside.” The cover was also a work of art in the vein of Crimson’s first. It was based on the work of H. G. Giger. You might recall the showdown between Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley and the monster in the Alien series. That monster was entirely based on a similar Giger nightmarish painting. Are we creating our own monster through AI? 50 years ago, Sinfield warned to be careful where technology would lead us. On the concluding lyrics to the album, he wrote a dialogue between man and computer:
“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 was right.”
I’M PERFECT! ARE YOU?
Only time will tell.
