“I opened the curtains a bit and said, ‘Look at all these people who’ve paid to see us!’ I didn’t realise that was the worst thing I could have done”: Carl Palmer on Keith Emerson, and how his death wasn’t the worst part of losing him

Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer.

Surviving Emerson, Lake & Palmer member Carl Palmer remembers his first meeting with the supremely talented Keith Emerson, and reflects on a long and extraordinarily creative career with the man he describes as “the best rock’n’roll keyboard player.”

Carl Palmer was 17 and playing drums with Fleetwood Mac the first time he met Keith Emerson. It was late 1967 and Mac bassist John McVie had asked Palmer to sit in for a sick Mick Fleetwood at Goldsmith’s College in south London. “I said, ‘Yes! Who else is playing?’” says Palmer today. “He said, ‘The Nice.’ I said, ‘I know them. That’d be great.’”