By Shawn Perry
When Keith Emerson passed away in 2016, fans and followers around the world were shocked, devastated, and at a complete loss. The musician, a pioneer of progressive rock often called the “Jimi Hendrix of the keyboards,” left behind two sons, grandchildren, hundreds of friends and contemporaries, and thousands of admirers. The void ran deep.
In the months that followed, Emerson was honored before audiences by ELP bandmate Carl Palmer and fellow keyboardist Rick Wakeman. In Los Angeles, where the keyboardist lived and worked for the latter part of his life, Marc Bonilla, a frequent collaborator, staged an all-star tribute show of his own. Deemed the “official” tribute with Emerson’s family in support, the May 28, 2016 concert at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles was a musical extravaganza that exceeded all expectations. The only other tribute concert I can think of that truly captured the essence of the artist being honored as well was the 2002 show held at London’s Royal Albert Hall for George Harrison.
I spoke with Bonilla the day before he and some of the other participants from the show were going to appear on a webcast to promote the long-awaited CD and DVD release of The Official Keith Emerson Tribute Concert. He told me that after Emerson’s passing, the family asked him to gather up friends and fellow musicians from the Los Angeles area to do a tribute show. Everyone Bonilla approached signed on. Each keyboardist was given the opportunity to pick a Keith Emerson song, and miraculously, each chose to play something different from the other. There was only one rehearsal and everything fell into place easily.
“Everyone prepped, everybody took us seriously,” Bonilla recalls. “No egos, everybody left them outside. Pretty much all these people could have their own band, but they all knew that they were serving the music in this case. And they all rallied and said whatever you need. And it was great.”
Indeed it was. Over two hours of stellar performances of mostly ELP songs featuring guest keyboardists like Jordan Rudess, Eddie Jobson, Steve Porcoro, Brian Auger, Rachel Flowers, Ed Roth, and CJ Vanston. Bonilla led a house band that included guitarist Mike Wallace, drummer Joe Travers, and bassist Traver Davis. They would be joined by not only the rotating cast of keyboardists, but also guitarists Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and Steve Lukather, drummers Gregg Bissonette, Troy Lucketta, and Vinnie Colaiuta, plus an array of special guests.
The capacity of the El Rey Theatre is listed at 771, which means only a lucky few were able to witness the tribute. Of course, videos from the night made the rounds on YouTube. Everyone knew the show was professionally filmed and recorded, so why did it take five years to release it? There’s no easy answer to that question, though Bonilla does his best to explain.
“It took so long because I had to keep to my guns on it,” he says. “And what I mean by that is these guys all signed on — put their time and their effort into this thing for no money at all. There was no money behind it, there was no budget behind it. It was all for charity. And I told them that at the beginning: ‘No one’s going to make any money off this, all the money that we make tonight, if we do make a profit, is going to go towards charity. When it came time to market this, after we mixed it and edited it and all that, all the record companies wanted their cut and it’s like, ‘No, no, that’s not going to happen. This was done for charity. That’s where it’s going.’ And they all went, ‘Good luck trying to find a record company that’s going to want to do that.’”
Determined, Bonilla refused to budge, stating he’d “sit on it forever” to honor a promise to the Emerson family to donate the full proceeds to a charity for dystonia, a muscular disorder Keith Emerson suffered from. It wasn’t until 2020 that Cherry Red Records stepped up and said they would release the concert DVD and CD without taking a fee. Bonilla said it was really a favor for Martin Darvill of QEDG Management who handle the affairs of several progressive rock bands, including Emerson, Lake & Palmer. A fund was set up with 90 percent of the sales going to the established Keith Emerson Fund at the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation and the other 10 percent to cover the costs.
“No one’s making money off of it,” Bonilla reminds me. “It took me that long to find somebody that would do this because I wasn’t going to compromise everyone’s initial efforts.”
With live events still up in the air because of COVID-19 restrictions, plans for a premiere or celebration were ruled out. Sidestepping the usual fanfare, Bonilla made the decision to just release a CD/DVD package, along with a subsequent digital release, and perhaps show it at events down the line. Simply put, he knew the demand was there, emphasizing: “We didn’t want to sit on it any longer. We wanted people to see it. People are starved for live entertainment, including musicians. So we thought this would be a good time to bring this out.”
Acknowledging this is all happening five years after Emerson’s passing, Bonilla adds that the release of the tribute is “a great way to celebrate his existence as opposed to mourning his absence.” Talking with the guitarist, you get the sense he’s not interested in dwelling on how Emerson died, but rather on how he lived.
Marc Bonilla and Keith Emerson made a lot of music together, some of which has not seen the light of day. Whether any of it will become available for public consumption remains to be seen. Working with Emerson, Bonilla realized the keyboardist didn’t see his legacy highlighted by his playing or his success with Emerson, Lake & Palmer. What he wanted more than anything was to be recognized as a composer.
“After the Keith Emerson Band, we went orchestral and worked with Terje Mikkelsen. We did the Three Fates Project in Munich. And then the one that came out last year — Beyond The Stars. It was the direction we wanted to go. Keith wanted to get more of his composing out there because he’s such a great composer, and he really did want to be more in the classical vein.
“When we were in Munich and we were doing ‘Tarkus,’ I went to the back when they were rehearsing it and Keith was back there and he had tears running down his cheeks. I’m like, ‘OK, what’s wrong?’ And he goes, ‘There’s nothing wrong. You don’t realize that I composed this piece on an upright piano in my parents’ basement when I was only in my 20s. And I always imagined this moment of a full orchestrated version. And now I’ve been able to fill it. That’s why I played synthesizers — because it was the closest thing I could get to an orchestra without having to hire an orchestra.’ It really was meaningful for him on that level. He was a great player, but primarily he was a great composer. You listen to that stuff, and it’s mind-boggling to the ear.”
Bonilla says he and Emerson were planning to play with orchestras around the world, but then the effects of dystonia sidelined the keyboardist. “I think he lost confidence in his abilities and didn’t want to let his fans down because his fingers weren’t what they used to be. Of course, the fans would have given him a pass, and I tried to cover as much of that as I could with my guitar playing. If there were certain passages that were difficult for him, I said, ‘Let me do those and you play chords.’ It was great for him because it was liberating where he didn’t have to carry the entire weight like he used to with ELP when it came to the colorations and the orchestration. Not taking away from Greg and Carl, but Keith had to carry a lot of that burden. And with a guitar player, he was able to relax a little bit. He enjoyed it by just kind of throwing the spotlight back and forth. We traded a lot and it was great; I think it just kind of overtook him. We would have gone out to Japan.”
When I met up with Bonilla and Emerson in 2012 for an in-person interview, you would have never known anything was amiss. There was a true camaraderie between the two, whom, along with Terje Mikkelsen, spoke glowingly about their just-released Three Fates Project album, which includes orchestrated versions of pieces written by both Emerson and Bonilla, as well as a reworking of Aaron Copeland’s “Fanfare For The Common Man.” There was a lot of laughing as they handed the microphone back and forth and answered questions. At one point, Emerson placed the microphone between his legs and announced: “You know what ELP means, don’t you? Extra large parts…”
Bonilla acknowledges the man’s quirky sense of humor. “He was a big joker who never took himself seriously. He was always making himself the butt of musician jokes and things like that because it was fun.”
Even so, Emerson was very serious when it came to making music. “When he first did Works with “Piano Concerto No. 1,” the symphony was very, very snobby and they didn’t take him seriously. So it was a real struggle for him to get that made because they were thinking, “Who’s this rock guy?” He was feeling that kind of anxiety when we went to Munich because he thought that’s what he was going to be up against again because he had put that away for so long. And it was real painful for him. But it ended up that it was not that at all. It was quite the contrary. They would often come up and tell him, ‘The reason that I’m in this orchestra is because of Keith Emerson. We were strict classical players, but then we saw what he did and he made rock cool.’ He made classical musical for the rock guy, too. He opened this door, but it was almost like a star gate. He opened it up between these two universes and we were able to cross-pollinate. He made it all cool. He made keyboards cool. Before they would just be in the back and play, but he was like the Jimi Hendrix of the keyboards.”
During his lifetime, Keith Emerson, the “Jimi Hendrix of the keyboards,” created an astounding body of music. His career and life can never be duplicated because he was a one-of-a-kind artist without a mold to be broken. On one night in May 2016, the people who loved Keith Emerson the most came together to celebrate the man and his music. Now, the world can be part of this truly magical evening by picking up The Official Keith Emerson Tribute Concert, either as a digital download or in a CD/DVD package featuring the incredible artwork of Jerry LoFaro.
To order your copy, go to Cherry Red Records.
To make a donation to the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation, go to the Keith Emerson Fund.
