FROM THE BEGINNING

Great song this:

FROM THE BEGINNING

 I first heard it in 1973 when Mike Tony and I went to Christchurch for a university arts festival.
We were staying in billeted accommodation - a student flat during a university break (late July or August I think) and the students had left their stereo and one album - Emerson Lake and Palmer's Trilogy.

I already owned ELP's first album simply named Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

This, in 1971 appealed to my university student pretentiousness because this band weren't just a bloody good rock band - they were classically trained musicians. While The Rolling stones were ripping off American blues composers and claiming their works as their own, here was ELP helping themselves to Bartok, Janacek and traditional British folk composers - wrapping it up in Greek mythology and classicism. Great. If only I'd had a serious girlfriend to impress!

I wasn't that taken with most of the songs and musical pieces on Trilogy but 'In The Beginning' hit the spot with me. When we were in the flat and not out at arts festival events and trying to pick up women or, as Richard used to put it (the only thing he put in those days) 'looking for the sex', I would play this track over and over. It was just as well that no-one was trying to get any sleep as the room we had allocated to us only had one bed! A single bed (thank god). During the week we were there we took turns on a rotational basis - bed springs, mattress or floorboards.


The first track above is Greg Lake performing solo in 1992.

Here is the studio version for the album in 1972:


FROM THE BEGINNING