Carl Palmer Admits He Didn’t Want Emerson Lake and Palmer Reunion: ‘In Actual Fact, I Stopped It’

Share this:

Carl Palmer now says he’s the one who halted a larger Emerson Lake and Palmer reunion after the prog trio’s performance at the High Voltage Festival in 2010.

As ELP gathered for that 40th anniversary concert, Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Palmer hadn’t toured together since 1998. They hadn’t issued an album since 1994. And, Palmer has said previously argued, it showed. He felt that they didn’t mesh together in the same fashion anymore.



Emerson Lake and Palmer had, of course, split up before. But this time, he says something had changed, perhaps forever.

“If it had been just as good as it used to be, on that same level, I would have accepted that,” Palmer tells Prog Magazine. “But I don’t think it was, and I don’t think the other guys thought it was.”

Things might have been different, had Emerson Lake and Palmer chosen to augment the show with additional musicians, a common practice on today’s concert stages. “And why not?” Palmer muses, “but at that particular time, we decided to do it as three — and we did it as three, and it wasn’t as successful.”

That, apparently, was that. “In actual fact, I stopped it,” he now says.

Palmer returned to Asia, with whom he issued series of albums. Lake went on to tour as a solo act, while Emerson completed The Three Fates Project in 2012.

Something Else!