As an avid fan and follower of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, I’ve written extensively about their albums and their concerts, even got the chance to interview all three members on more than one occasion. While I’ve tried to examine most chapters of the band’s topsy-turvy career, one area that I sadly neglected to give much time to was 3, a band Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer put together in the late 1980s.
To round out 3, American bassist and vocalist Robert Berry joined Emerson and Palmer to record the group’s debut, 1988’s …To the Power Of Three. The album fell short of its intended commercial appeal, though its one and only single, “Talkin’ Bout” managed to land inside the Top 10 of the mainstream rock chart. After 3’s short time together, Emerson and Palmer rejoined Greg Lake in the 90s for another six-year run.
Robert Berry’s brief brush with greatness didn’t deter him from carrying on as an in-demand producer, session and touring musician (he proficiently plays guitar, keyboards, bass and drums). The band 3, however, was still very much a part of his identity, and he continued to stay in touch with Emerson and Palmer. After the 2015 release of a 3 live album, Emerson started working on old and new material with Berry for a new album. It was a dream come true for Robert Berry.
On March 11, 2016, Berry’s dream to make music with one of the greatest rock keyboardists in history was derailed when Keith Emerson took his own life. As he carried on, Berry decided to complete the album on his own, adding his vocals, bass and guitar parts to keyboards he played in the style of Keith Emerson. Without a trace of deceit or pretentiousness, Berry’s 3.2 album, The Rules Have Changed, is a thoughtful, commanding and heartfelt tribute to Keith Emerson.
Emerson’s influence is all over the record. Yet Berry’s stamp is equally significant as he keeps the arrangements tight, the vocals powerful and on pitch, and his own mastery of production and musicality at the highest level possible. Thirty years after 3, Robert Berry’s hard work and diligence is finally paying off. The dream lives on. In the following interview, he tells me how it all came together.
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So you’re down in Cabo San Lucas, right?
I used to play here with Sammy Hagar in the 90s and it’s changed a lot now.
I talked with Greg Kihn last night and he told me you were down there.
Very good. Did you interview him at one of his shows?
I interviewed him last night about the current tour he’s doing and then he did tell me he was going to play at the Sacramento fair this weekend and you couldn’t make it. We did talk a little about you because I mentioned that I was going to be talking to you today. I’ve talked to Greg before. Great guy, as I’m sure you know.
That’s the best interview you’re ever going to do. That guy has stories that will last forever, right?
When we spoke last year, we talked for about an hour and he was just telling me story after story.
He and I do an acoustic tour a lot of the time, and I think it’s the best thing we do. The band is great, but when we did do this thing, he has stories, and he gets put on the spot by audience members and he is good on his feet. We plan to come to LA, so make sure and come out. See that show.
I’d like to see that for sure. So let’s get into this record you have made: The Rules Have Changed. I’m a big ELP fan; I’ve interviewed all three of guys in that band. And I know about 3 with you, Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer. My understanding is that you wrote the music on this record with Keith Emerson. Is that it in a nutshell?
Well, it’s a lot deeper than that. What happened is if you were ELP fan, you hated 3 back in 1988, that’s pretty much the way the real ELP fans looked at us. And they criticized Keith so much for various reasons. What’s funny is they didn’t criticize Carl because he was in Asia, right? He had already played these kind of songs. But Keith hadn’t done that. So they were really hard on Keith. I just realized that a couple days ago: Carl never got any criticism, that’s weird. Keith hated that and the reason we didn’t keep going is because he just felt like, “This is a mistake and my fans are eating me up.” They said some pretty nasty things to him.
So there was no way there was ever going to be a second 3 album until 2015 when a record company put out the 3 Live In Boston CD. Keith thought, “Well, I could use some more money. I’ll take the advance. Yeah, whatever, put it out, I don’t care.” It was no big deal to him. We stayed friends and we did a lot of things together over the years. We recorded different things. I was in the Keith Emerson Band when it first started for a while, for about a week, but that wasn’t right for me.
At this point, it was, “Great, put it out, I don’t care, put the money in the bank.” Well, he got a copy of that CD and he called me. He was sitting at home — that’s what he liked to do. He liked to stay home in his condo there in Santa Monica, a glass of white wine, listen to music.
So he decided to put on this terrible tragedy from 1988 and he called me up and he said, “Robert, I can’t believe what a good band we were. I’m listening to this CD. It’s fantastic.” He was super excited. And, of course, for me, I always knew we were a good band. There were some mistakes made material-wise — mostly my material that was developed with me.
I was just straight rock, a Bryan Adams and Sting kind of guy. That’s not right for Keith and Carl, but that’s what we were doing. And he was hearing it live and he’s excited. For 27 years, I wanted to do a second album, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen. And there was that little crack in the door that you stick your foot in so nobody can slam it closed. I said, “What would you think about doing a follow-up?” and he calmly said, “Maybe.” (laughs) He was a funny guy, but he wasn’t quite ready to commit. I said, “You know what, the record company really wants it, they’ve been bugging me about it. Let me call them and see.”
I called the record company Frontiers. Serafino (Perigino) there had really wanted it for years. He said, “What do you want?” I said, “I’ll call Keith and find out.” We gave them all the parameters. It was a good advance, complete artistic control, a year to do it — all the things we needed. Serafino agreed, so we started in.
To really answer to your question — we had a song from 1988 that I didn’t think was particularly right. It was all Keith’s music. I don’t why I didn’t think it was right back then, but it’s perfect now. It just needed new lyrics and a melody and a few extra Emerson parts in there. We had that.
I had a bunch of digital files that Keith sent me of things he had played. Maybe the whole thing wasn’t that good but there were some Emerson gems. If you’re an ELP fan, you know what I’m talking about. Things like chord structure and the melody and the stuff that was all Emerson, one-of-a-kind things that only he did. I had those.
The beauty really was we spoke on the phone. He had a digital piano in his place and I had one in front of my Pro Tools. We talked about ideas and play something. I had eight years in classical piano, a couple of years of jazz and majored in music at college. I’m capable. I would never say I’m a Keith Emerson. I don’t think anybody can ever be. But I’m capable of playing a lot of keyboards. Just not at Keith’s level. Anymore…when I was 12, I could (laughs). We played back and forth He played me something up to speed and I would sort of plunk it out at half speed, and this is over the phone, if you can imagine that. He’d go, “No, there’s an F in there” or “That’s a minor 7th chord.” He would correct me and mentor me. It was almost like getting a piano lesson from Keith Emerson.
I had played keyboards on stage with 3 and Keith before — one of the few guys who ever played keyboards with Keith on stage because he didn’t need another keyboard player. So we developed this material over three months that way, and I was gluing it all together. If you look at the Pro Tools, you’d see, like a hallowed pumpkin, you’d see these missing teeth. There’d be maybe something off Keith’s original files he sent me that really sounded good. There’d be something we spoke about on the phone. There’d be all these other sections where I had to write lyrics and choruses and whatever, and glue it all together like you do as a songwriter. It was just a little more inside out than the normal.
So, did take you take bits and pieces of stuff you’d written back in the 80s and integrate that, or was it a combination of that and the newer material you had put together?
It was both. I had one complete song on “What You’re Dreamin’ Now.” It didn’t have lyrics or the melody. Then I had all these little bits that we didn’t use on cassette. He had this 8-track recorder and super high quality one-inch 8-track. He recorded his parts on it, then he wrote them, and that’s what I had on a cassette tape. A really high quality cassette tape done right is better than an MP3 now, so the quality of the keyboard stuff that I had from back then was usable.
You didn’t have any older complete songs that had never been released?
No, they weren’t complete for in-the-studio kind of stuff. They were keyboard parts that he gave me to write lyrics and melodies to. So nothing was a complete old file. Part of our plan was to keep one foot in the past in the sound that 3 was, and was really unique to us, and then another foot into the future, and combine the two with a more acoustic drum sound, energetic kind of music and the richness. So it was a combination even in theory that we wanted to do.
On The Rules Have Changed, I definitely noticed a more organic sound, and not so much that 80s over-processed sound. Obviously with the keyboards. It has a very Emersonian sound, if I can use that term. When I spoke to Greg Kihn, he told me you’re a pretty good keyboard player and I definitely have to agree. In fact, you actually play all the instruments on the record, correct?
That is true, but it didn’t start out that way. Twenty percent of that album, I had Keith playing on. Usable, sounding good, great stuff, as you know, Keith would never do anything that wasn’t great. His standard was super high. After he died, I had no reason to do that. I wanted to do this with Keith, it was a 3 album and he was the sound quality of 3.
Nine months later, I thought what if Aaron Emerson would play on it. I sent Aaron a song we were working on, and unfortunately it was a really hard one. Aaron said, “Oh my God, I really wanted to do this. This is way too hard. This is my dad. I don’t play like that.” It was disappointing, but then again, Imagine how Aaron felt, he was all excited. “Yes. Send me a song. This sounds cool.” Then he gets it, and “It’s like, ‘OK, well maybe not.’”
It was smart to me to finish up the album. At the point I decided to do the album again, I didn’t do it because I wanted to have it released. I did it because I thought, you know, we spent so much time on it. I was a third of the sound, I was half the songwriters. I’m going to do this just because I want to do it.
Did you ask Carl Palmer about playing on the record?
I spoke to Carl. Carl and I actually over the years had spoken about maybe doing another album together. He’s so busy; that guy is a dynamo. When you have Carl Palmer in a band, you’re not only guaranteed success, but you’re guaranteed you’ll be working a lot on something. He’s really something else.
Yeah, he’s always out there playing.
He’s amazing and you know what? He’s playing better today than ever. I’ve seen him a few times with the ELP Legacy. The thing about that is with Greg and Keith both gone, Carl’s totally dedicated to the ELP legacy, as he should be. He’s the only one left, and he’s doing it in such a cool way. He doesn’t have time for anything new going on.
Honestly, Keith and I discussed everything and played all kinds of stuff. The only guy that knew after Keith was gone what this was going to be, in an updated version, was me. Carl actually said, “I’m glad, use the name 3, but I can’t be involved. I’m totally dedicated to the ELP Legacy.” I’m proud of him for that. He’s doing a fantastic job. I’m sure you’ve seen them.
I have. I caught him earlier this year and I just got his new live release. Yeah, he’s playing great and, of course, he’s got those two younger guys on guitar and bass. It’s pretty heavy. I remember I talked to him a couple of years ago, and they were going to be on this Monsters of Rock show, which is primarily heavy metal and hard rock bands, and I said, “That’s an interesting bill for you to be on.” And he said, “Well, you know, we’re playing pretty heavy. So I think we’ll go over pretty well.” And I heard they did.
Like I was saying, some of the songs on the new record — they sound more organic and even a little more proggier than 3 did. I listen to “One By One,” “Our Bond” and “Your Mark On The World,” and they are definitely a step up from the more commercial-sounding stuff 3 did. Was it your intention to be a little more prog on this record?
You have to remember that 3 happened quickly. We wrote quickly, we recorded quickly, we toured quickly. The …To The Power Of 3 album was going to be the album of what we learned playing together and what we learned what people liked and also what we wanted to do. Even Carl was moving on from ELP and doing something fresh.
If you listen back to my solo album Pilgrimage To A Point, which you might not know, it has two songs I wrote for the second 3 album and two songs I wrote for the second GTR album. Those were my visions of what I thought those bands should be doing. You can say it is kind of like Asia, but I wanted to make it a little more progressive. Keith and I didn’t really like the progressive label; we wanted it to be more musical. But you’re right: It’s more progressive in its total appeal.
When you joined up with Emerson and Palmer in the 80s to form 3, were you an ELP fan? Were you a prog fan?
My dad had a music store. He sold Vox guitars and amplifiers, which were imported from England. It was what the Beatles used. Brian May of Queen plays a Vox amp and all kinds of guys use Vox. The Thomas organ company — my dad also sold organs — bought the rights to manufacture Vox. When they did that, Thomas also got the rights to manufacture a Moog synthesizer, which is called a Moog Satellite. This Moog Satellite had the perfect “Lucky Man” sound. It had that Moog with the oscillator sound. My cover band Hush — which played Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant, and ELP — we were on top of the world in San Jose, California, because we had a Moog synthesizer and a Mellotron and we did “Lucky Man” with the real tone. Nobody else had a Moog.
Yes, so I was a big ELP fan. I have a Hammond B3 in my studio. I have a Memory Moog synthesizer at the studio. I have Oberheims, which Keith was sort of famous for, with that synth brass sound. And, of course, the (Yamaha) GX, which I had samples made of during 3 by a company named Voice Crystal, which is long gone, but I still have them and the (Roland) D50, which was a big 3 sound. I was a big fan of Greg Lake and his folk tunes, too.
Well, I’ve been an ELP fan from 1974. And as a fan of Emerson and Palmer, I did find 3 very interesting. I thought your cover of “Eight Miles High” was pretty cool. I actually saw 3 perform at the Atlantic Records 40th anniversary show.
I got to tell you…I’ve been asked a million times about that show but I’ve never talked to anybody who was actually there (laughs).
I remember you guys did, I think “Fanfare” and, I believe, “Rondo.”
Yes we did. I was not on Atlantic Records, 3 were on Geffen, so they weren’t about to introduce me. They said, “Ladies and gentlemen, Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer,” and Keith went up to the mic and said, “And Robert Berry.” That was Keith. He was such a sweet guy.
The other thing was the Copland estate did not give us the rights to play “Fanfare.” I said, “You know what? I’m here with these guys, representing ELP and to me, the biggest song the average listener is going to know isn’t going to be ‘America’ or ‘Rondo,’ it’s going to be ‘Fanfare.’” And Brian Lane, our manager, said, “They won’t give us the rights.” And we said, “We’re going to play anyway.” I was really adamant about this. And they said, “We’re not going to broadcast it.” I said, “Brian, we need to play that song.” I was fighting for it, not the ELP guys. Keith and Carl said, “Yeah, he’s right. We should do it. If they want to cut it out of the broadcast, let them cut it out.” Sure enough in the United States, they cut it out of the broadcast. But down in Argentina, South America, it came out. So you can actually find “Fanfare” on video from the Atlantic 40th anniversary show.
I have some video from the show, but I haven’t watched it in a while. I’ll have to see if “Fanfare” is there. I wish I could have seen a proper 3 show.
One of the things about the 3 tour is that no one ever got to see Keith and Carl that close up before. We played a 1,000 seater to a 5,000 seater kind of place. They were right there. For the people that got in there, they were just seeing something really special that they would never see again. I mean, I was up there doing my thing. I was glad to be part of it. And I’m really proud of that time, but those guys were playing like they were playing to 25,000 people.
So 3 obviously had this plan to be a little more melodic with sort of a prog backbone, sort of in the style of Asia and GTR. Was that the initial plan at that time?
Back when 3 first started, that was the plan — to try to get some of that notoriety Carl got with Asia. You know, honestly, Greg wrote the folk songs and the hits in ELP, and he made all the money. Carl made all the money in Asia. Keith didn’t do as well financially. He wanted to do better financially. That was part of our deal initially. It was not the 3.2 deal. The 3.2 deal was to make it musical.
Could you ever envision taking 3.2 out live with a band?
It’s funny you know when we got the record contract. We weren’t going to sign it until we got a couple of things in the can, at least writing-wise. They said, “You get the rights to tour, but you can OK it.” And Keith said, “I don’t know if we’re going to be able to tour this. It depends on how it turns out.” We could fight him on that thing, or we could say, “Look at what it says here, ‘We have to OK it.’ You can just say, ‘No thanks.’”
He wasn’t against touring, but he didn’t want to say “Yes, definitely I want to tour” because he had problems with his arm. That weighed heavily on him. At the point that I got the album done — I wasn’t even sure if I was going to release it — the farthest thing on my mind was to put it out and tour. After I started doing some interviews and I got feedback from people that 30 years ago would write very negative things, and they’re telling me things like, “I feel Keith in the tracks. It’s coming through. I don’t know how you did that.” They mentioned a few songs. They thought his sound was lost forever, that kind of the stuff. I started thinking, “Wow, I have a history in progressive rock that’s fairly expansive. I have the first 3 album, I have GTR. I have a whole series of Magna Carta tribute things I did with ELP, Yes and Jethro Tull.
I have a couple of those.
Yeah, like Roundabout is still talked about. I played with Ambrosia for a couple years and now I have 3.2. You know, I could have an hour-and-a-half show that would almost be like a greatest hits. Even though I only had one hit with 3, Top 10 with “Talkin’ Bout.” We’re talking about the top 10 greatest hits of my career. And then, all of a sudden, a guy calls me and says, “I’m going to put you on tour in South America to Russia. What do you think about doing a world tour next year?” You know what? I’ve been waiting 30 years to hear that. Ten years ago, it would have sounded really good. “But OK, I’m ready.”
Is it going to happen? I hope so. I am actually super-empowered now to do that exact set I was telling you. That’s a good question. I’m definitely going to do it. We’re talking to an agency right now and that’s always the hard part because it’s so expensive.
Hopefully you get on Cruise to the Edge. It’s like a prog Heaven.
Funny you mention that because someone had called me about that, but my agency said, “It’s not your thing.” I said “You know what? If we’re going to do this, I want to do Cruise to the Edge.” So they called and it was already booked. Whatever. I thought, “There goes that.” Since then, there’ve been a lot of people saying, “You have to be on Cruise to the Edge. You should launch it there.” I don’t know if there’s a write-in ballot, but I’m hoping that’s the first show. That would be very cool.
That would be a perfect fit for sure. I only have one last question and that is: When was the last time you spoke to Keith Emerson?
I spoke to him a week before he died. There’s a couple things that were very important about that. He said to me, “I have to do these five shows in Japan and I’m not really happy about it. It’s going to be hard for me. I have to do five nights in a row.” Again, he was referring to his arm, and, you know, his fingers. He goes, “But what I’m really looking forward to is I’m going to visit my grandkids before we start recording. I’ll be there in May and I’m going to visit my grandkids.” I got to tell you a really cute story about that. I just did a tour of the UK and the last night I was there, I planned to have dinner — my wife and I — and was going to go see Aaron Emerson and Keith’s grandsons. We visited them and went to dinner and they took us to Keith’s grave site, which was actually harder on me than I thought it would be but he’s still been alive in my heart and the music. I didn’t realize how much I kept him alive by doing this.
And his grandson pulled out two of these tiny backstage passes and he goes, “Can you sign these for me?” That was a huge moment for me. He goes, “Yeah, I really want to learn about my grandfather.” It was really special.
Well, I’m going to let you go. I want to say The Rules Have Changed is a great tribute to Keith Emerson, and can, I believe, help to keep his memory alive.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate to have you say that because, for me, that was the only thing — and that was to complete the dream I had of Keith and I doing something together. There’s no other reason for me to do it then to complete it.
And guys like you are saying they get it and they want to see it live and they like the album. I feel like I sort have done what we would have done, but can you imagine what more would have happened if Keith would have finished up a few things? He’d call me and say, “You know, the album’s all done, but I have a couple more things I want to do.” I can hear him already. He was such a genius.
