I remember watching NICE live at the Brighton Top Rank Suite in 1968. It was an unusual show in that they had barely started playing when Emerson's badly abused Hammond Organ decided it couldn't take any more knives rammed into the keyboard and ground to a halt. Frantic efforts to restart it failed and in a great act of 'The the show must go on' professionalism an upright piano was found on the premises and wheeled onto the stage.
Emerson continued to play the set with his customary energy but to say that 'AMERICA' on the piano lacked a little something is an understatement.
I guess his music identified him and it's sad that it came to this.
Here is a short paragraph outlining the fanatanism and drive of the man.
'The name Keith Emerson is synonymous with a more effervescent style of musicianship. First with fledgling prog-rockers, The Nice in the late '60s, and then with the monumental Emerson, Lake & Palmer in the '70s, he played keyboards like no one else. Often with knives stabbed into an instrument that had barely settled back onto its feet after being thrown about. Sometimes playing upside down or spinning above the audience, sometimes finishing a show with hands bloody from playing so hard, the occasional broken nose and broken ribs - all the mark of a man committed to putting on a real show.'
