1997 European Tour Report
by Akiko Hada, Yoko Fukuma and Mami Noguchi

Reunion time - we had met and got to know each other in October 1996, during the ELP tour of Japan. Eight months later we are meeting up on the other side of the globe, for yet another ELP tour...

23 June, Prague: 
We arrive at the venue, the Palace of Culture, around 5PM. As the name suggests, it's a large communist building housing a congress centre, various offices and showrooms, drab-looking cafes, and so on. We can hear a faint sound of what could be ELP soundchecking coming from somewhere in the building, and we spend a long time wandering up and down the complex, trying to find the hall/stage area, getting totally lost in the maze of corridors, staircases and escalators. We spot a few other groups of fans doing the same, none of them with any more luck than we have. As the sound we hear becomes nearer and more recognisable - yes, it's "Touch & Go" - our excitement mounts up, but we still have no idea exactly where the hall is. We finally come to what looks like an empty lobby and decide it's the nearest we can get to the stage, and stand there listening in (or rather: straining our ears to make out which piece they're just playing, and chatting when the music stops.) Oh, is that...could it be?? Yes, yes, it's "Karn Evil #9 1st Impression Part 2" - not the "welcome back my friends" bit they opened their 1992 & 1996 sets with, but the organ solo section following that! We jump up and down with joy, until Mami points out that we shouldn't get too excited about it, as the group often try things out during the soundcheck which they don't play in the actual set. Well, we suppose so...

When the soundcheck seems to be over, we go outside again. There are a lot more people waiting outside, which is encouraging. As with all the other dates on the European leg of this tour, the Prague show was confirmed very late, and posters went up only a few weeks before the event. And there are so many big-name international groups playing in Prague in June, that a local newspaper printed an article earlier on in the month pointing out this absurd situation: how are the Czech people supposed to be able to afford to go and see so many concerts in such a short space of time? (Tickets for the ELP concert cost around £20 each, which is a lot in local terms.) In fact Alice Cooper is playing in town on the same night as ELP, splitting the audience even further. Greg Lake tells us afterwards that ELP had sold half of the (1,500?) seats in advance, Alice Cooper a third of the seats in a larger venue. As it turns out, however, many more people have turned up tonight and the Congress Centre is almost full by the time the concert begins. 

Just before the show, we find Pär Lindh in the lobby and introduce ourselves. He and the president of the Scandinavian ELP Fan Club, Tor Ansgar Bakken, drove all the way down to Prague! 

The concert begins as announced, at 8PM, with no support act. Greg is wearing a black & white "Hawaiian" shirt and black trousers, Carl in his dark red waistcoat (to remove during his drum solo), Keith has his pinstripe two-piece on, with no shirt under the waistcoat. The set begins, as with last year, with a voice announcing "Welcome back my friends, to the show never that ends..." as the group come onstage, and they go straight into "Karn Evil #9, 1st Impression Part 2". The house system is terrible - some of the instruments are distorted and the rest is not clear at all. Still, we are thrilled to hear "Karn Evil #9" anyway - yes, they do play it in full! - even though we feel Keith's keyboards are not mixed loud enough during the instrumental section, where he plays both the organ and guitar parts on his QS-8 and Goff/Hammond respectively. The beginning of the "solo" section is pitch bent using the modulation wheel on the QS-8, and as we are sitting in the 5th row on Carl's side and can't see Keith's hands very well, it sounds as if the house electricity is playing tricks on them! We are relieved to find out at later concerts that this has been intended and not due to Czech power brown-outs. It is also quite obvious that the group are having problems with their monitors - the usual, perfect co-ordination and harmony between the three of them is lacking, Keith in particular tending to sound rushed. (We are later questioned by Keith and Carl: "tell us honestly - were we loud enough?" "Er...not quite." "Ah!" "But the sound was already distorted, so you couldn't have gone much louder..." "Was it distorted?" At which point, they go off to discuss the matter between themselves, so we are not sure what verdict they have reached. But it sounds as though they used the old house PA which was not quite up to scratch...and the band obviously couldn't hear what was going out, due to monitoring problems, and were suspicious of the overall sound quality.) 

The audience reaction is positive and enthusiastic. The age group of the audience is as one would expect in any other parts of Europe - mostly people in their 40's, men and women, with some younger fans (mostly male) scattered around. 

Greg Lake's voice is as clear as it was on last year's tour: that is to say, 100 times better than on the Black Moon tour. Keith's set-up is similar to what he had on the '96 tour: General Music GEM2 MIDI grand piano (88 keys) with Alesis QS-8 stacked on top; on the other side is his Goff Hammond and Korg Trinity above it. But this time round, he's taken the Moog back on the road, not just the ribbon controller as he did last year. Admittedly, it's a smaller stack of Moog modulars than that he used on the '92 Black Moon tour. The audience is thrilled to see it there on stage, nevertheless.  

The set list is also similar to that of last year's Japanese tour, with a few changes:
1.   Karn Evil #9, 1st Impression Part 2 (in whole) - Keith plays the guitar parts on his synth
2.   Tiger in the Spotlight
3.   Hoedown - including a short solo on the Moog, before Keith walks around with the ribbon  
      controller (and the usual rubbing it against his buttocks, etc.)  
4.   Touch & Go 
5.   From the Beginning 
6.   Knife Edge
7.   Bitches Crystal - so great to hear this live again, it's an absolute classic! 
8.   Creole Dance (KE solo)
9.   Honky Tonk Train Blues (KE solo) - Greg & Carl join in halfway through, brightening up 
      the piece and making it so danceable!
10. Take a Pebble - including a wonderfully fast, jazzy improvisation in the middle
11. Lucky Man - with the same synth intro as they incorporated on last tour, and Keith playing 
      the bass line on his keyboard throughout. 
12. Tarkus - from "Eruption", all the way up to and including "Mass" this time, then straight 
      into...
13. Pictures - "The Hut of Baba Yaga" & "The Great Gates of Kiev"

Encore: 
14. Fanfare / Rondo including 5 stunning minutes of Carl Palmer drum solo. - Keith interjects a 
      short Moog solo in "Fanfare", with his back to the audience; in "Rondo", just before the 
      drum solo, he incorporates phrases from "Flight of the Bumble Bee", "Carmina Burana" and 
      Bartók's "Out of Doors". And later, when he leaves the L-100 whining on its own in the 
      middle of the stage and rushes back to his QS-8 to play a few phrases on it, before returning 
      to the L-100 for the upside-down "Toccata & Fugue" - he lets off a series of sequenced, 
      "spacy" notes from the Moog, while playing the synth chords.

The spectacle lasts a little over 90 minutes including the encore, which is not much longer than the set they played in Japan last year. However, we find the whole show somehow more powerful than the concerts in Japan - perhaps most strongly felt in Carl's performance, confirming, once more, how esssential his drive is in the overall make-up of ELP. 

When the band go off stage after the encore, the s.o. audience clap and cheer and shout for more, for although Nick Sizer, the drums & guitar technician, has started to take the drum kit apart, Will Alexander hasn't come to disconnect the keyboards and we can see him just standing by the stage, looking as if he's awaiting further instructions. After we all clap for 15-20 minutes and our hands begin to hurt, Will finally comes onto the stage and starts pulling the leads out from the back of the keyboards - a sign for everyone to give up and go home. 

After the concert, Keith manages to squeeze in a very quick sightseeing tour of the town, which he last visited in 1968 with the Nice, one of the very first Western groups to play here. 
He tells us afterwards that he hardly recognised the Wenceslas Square, in 1968 filled with protesting students and Soviet tanks trying to disperse them, and now full of tourists and brightly lit cafes. How times change. 

June 24, Munich:
ELP set off on their tour bus early morning, we catch a midday flight to grey and wet Munich. Luckily the rain stops by the time we make our way to the Tollwood, on the edge of the Olympic Park. It's a large tent, holding around 1,500, with many stalls around it selling bric-a-brac, snacks and - of course - local beer. As we arrive around 5PM, the main entrance to the tent is still open and we and a few other fans walk in and sit down to watch ELP go through their soundcheck. We can tell that the sound quality is a vast improvement on yesterday's, even though we get to hear little of the actual music played - a lot of the time they are having discussions with the TV crew from the local station, Bayerischer Rundfunk, who are sponsoring and filming the Tollwood Festival, a whole season of music and theatre events  celebrating the venue's 10-year anniversary, of which tonight's ELP concert is part. We get kicked out after 10 minutes and  have to stand outside in the cold. By the time they let us in at 7PM, there is a long, long queue, and as the entrance opens, the diehard fans all dash to the front of the stage, while others take seats at the back of the tent. 

The concert begins, on time again, at 7:30PM with the 5-piece Munich group Seiges Even, who are to open all the German non festival dates on this tour with a 35-minute set. Theirs is a kind of progressive hard rock along the lines of Rush and Yes, featuring a virtuoso guitarist and a solid rhythm section. Unfortunately everyone in the audience is too anxious to see ELP come onstage to really listen and appreciate Sieges Even's highly complex pieces or their sheer technical skills. Which is a shame, but we suppose it's a test that all new groups have to go through... 

When Sieges Even is through with their set, it doesn't take long for the crew to get the stage ready for ELP, and they are on before 8:30PM. The keyboard still sounds too quiet on "Karn Evil", but other than that, the sound quality is good. There are 5 TV cameras filming the concert, and as one of the camera operators, who is inside the barrier at the front of the stage,  moves in to catch Keith from the front angle during one of his solos, he blocks the view of several fans at the front, causing a lot of angry protest. Otherwise the atmosphere is a very happy one throughout the evening. Keith is full of facial expressions and gestures for the cameras, humming and singing to himself while playing "Honky Tonk Train Blues" or, while walking around the stage with his ribbon controller, sticking it up between Greg's legs from behind, for example (Greg doesn't appear to mind this so much, though you never know!), putting his comical side on full show. The audience, in responce to the great spectacle unravelling before their eyes, answers with an applause for each piece, from the beginning to the end. And, of course, they sing along to "Lucky Man", which was ELP's biggest hit in Germany. 

As the band retires from the stage, the call for them to return for an encore is deafening, and after a few minutes they do come back onstage.  The "silliness" section of "Rondo" gets extra silly tonight, with Keith making faces and nodding to the audience while his Hammond L-100 cries and wails and makes all other sorts of noises. On the footage which Bayerischer Rundfunk have broadcast, you can see that Greg is also making a funny face in reply, and of course Carl does his little "belly dance" - how anyone can do that while keeping the rhythm is hard for  laypeople like us to comprehend. Then follows his energetic and flamboyant drum solo: a showman in his own right, he sure knows how to work up the audience! 

Keith's stabbing of the organ, however, meets with a fairly cool reaction from the audience: most of them just stand there and watch the action in a rather detached manner,  some get their cameras out and take a couple of shots. There is a big cheer again, though, when Keith turns the L-100 upside down and starts to play "Toccata and Fugue" from underneath it. And this  is to be the pattern at all the other concerts we attend. 

25 June: 
A day off for us all.  We get a chance to have a chat with Carl before leaving for Luxembourg, while he and Greg wait for Keith to finish his telephone interview with the South American Keyboard magazine. Carl is surprised to hear that the "Live at the Royal Albert Hall" video had  been released on laser disc in Japan long before the video came out in Europe, especially as he is aware of the problem with the sound-to-picture sync that had delayed the European release. He asks us how much it costs to buy, how bad the sync is on the disc, etc. etc. and seems very concerned about the whole matter, saying he'll discuss it with Stewart Young, who will be flying in to Amsterdam when ELP play there. 

26 June, Luxembourg:
Tonight's concert was originally supposed to be held at the Kockelschuer ice skating rink in Luxembourg City, but has been moved to a smaller sports centre in the little village of Pétange on the Belgian border, about half an hour's drive from the City. As the village has no train station, and because we are relying on public transport systems for the entire tour, we are relieved to be offered a lift with ELP on their tour bus, to the venue and back. 

We hear the group rehearse "21st Century Schizoid Man" during the soundcheck - great, they'll be playing that tonight!? They have to go through it over and over again, though, trying to get the transition to "Rondo" right, which is rather tricky. At the end of the soundcheck we can't tell whether they are happy enough with it to go ahead and play the piece as part of the encore tonight. We'll see... We meet Keith Wechsler, who has just arrived in Europe and will be doing the sound mix from tonight onwards. (He was working as Greg's guitar technician when we last saw him on the '96 Japanese tour.) And it's the third night that we see Pär Lindh and Tor Ansgar Bakken, it's nice to have some familiar faces around in such a remote part of the world!  

When the door opens, the venue is quickly filled with people - and heat. We can see the group are suffering from the excessive heat and humidity in the place throughout the show. Keith, in his black shirt and black leather trousers(!), has to wipe sweat off his face with a towel after each piece. 

"Pictures" doesn't sound as tight as usual, but perhaps that's because we are nearly fainting ourselves by that point. The strong backlights from above the stage not only glare down onto the stage but also directly hit the audience in front of it. We don't want to complain, though, for we're happy to be able to watch ELP play from such a short distance, which is impossible in Japan where most concerts have reserved seating and a row of security staff at the front of the stage and between rows, forbidding audiences to leave their seat. 

To our joy, the medley they play for encore does include "21st Century Schizoid Man", sandwiched between "Fanfare" and "Rondo". Although the transitions between the pieces still don't sound very smooth, we are glad to be able to hear "21st Century..." live at last, and so are everyone else in the audience, who all sing along to it. Despite the sound quality being not as good as in Munich - and one of the channels going off in the middle of the set! -  it has been a concert well worth attending. 

27 June, Kassel: 
A day off for all. We hear that tomorrow's concert, due to take place in the concert garden of the Stadthalle (City Hall), is now moved indoors due to a forecast of bad weather. 

28 June, Kassel: 
Contrary to the weather forecast, it's a bright, sunny day, and for the first time on this tour we are sweating. As it turns out, it remains clear for the whole day and into the evening, but they have now set up the stage inside and are going ahead with an indoor concert. Greg starts to develop an infection in his right ear and has to see a doctor before the band make their way to the venue. 

We sit down and watch the group go through their soundcheck. The PA sounds good again, to our relief. They are rehearsing the transition from "21st Century Schizoid Man" to "America" again. Perhaps they were not happy with the result in Luxembourg and are planning a new combination? Again, we'll just have to wait and see...

The door opens at 7PM and, again, the diehard fans rush to the front, filling up the first 3 rows within a few minutes, while the others take up the seats at the back of the venue where they can see and hear better in comfort, thus leaving a gap in the middle at first, which will later be filled - as at all the venues. 

After the opening act by Sieges Even, their equipment is moved off stage and ELP's gear brought on and put in place. The audience's anticipation is getting high, and after a while Will Alexander comes on stage to pull the black covers off Keith's equipment. As the grand piano and the stack of Moogs are revealed, there's a big cheer from the audience. 

The sound is good tonight - probably the best so far on this tour as far as we can tell, although right in front of the stage is not the best place for objectively judging the overall sound quality. One local friend of ours, who watched the concert from the back of the hall, says  afterwards that the sound was good and loud, and the deep, subsonic bass sound during Keith's solo in "Lucky Man" made his whole body vibrate and almost made him sick in the stomach! In fact everything is - at least almost - perfect tonight: solid performance from the band who are now obviously working in full harmony to an appreciative and enthusiastic audience. The inevitable singing along to "Lucky Man" by everyone in the audience - and we are not just talking about the chorus bit, they are singing the verses, too! - amuses Keith, obviously pleased to see 1,500 people in the hall singing together, and he's grinning throughout the song. But his hand seems to be giving him some trouble, he's shaking it every now and then in between playing. It doesn't show in his performance, though, and there is a great applause at the end of his particularly aggressive and energetic Hammond solo in "Stones of Years", as well as the furious "Creole Dance". He has his "cowboy" outfit on tonight: jeans with brown rawhide patching, a matching vest and a white shirt. He will sport the same look in Amsterdam and Dresden again, while Greg's and Carl's outfits are to remain the same for all the dates we attend. 

As they go into the encore, we are curious to see how it will develop tonight - but alas, no "21st Schizoid Man" and no "America", just "Fanfare" and "Rondo" as they had been playing up until Munich. Perhaps they have decided it just didn't work. As they go off stage, people are still clapping, shouting for more. Well, they won't come back again after the upside-down Hammond climax, we know that, don't we? But no, we are wrong: the band does come back and go straight into "21st Century..." and then into "America" as they had been rehearsing during the soundcheck. Then they go off again, the end of the evening. With the extra 10 minutes of encore, the concert has lasted nearly 2 hours.

29 June, Amsterdam:
It's still sunny as we leave Kassel, but as our train crosses the German-Dutch border and approaches Amsterdam, the sky turns greyer and greyer. Amsterdam is grey, wet, windy and cold. 

Paradiso is a small club venue with a balcony all the way around the dance floor, and another small seating area at a higher level at the back, altogether holding around 1,200. Most groups who play here are not as widely known as ELP, but it is also a legend in its own sense: the Rolling Stones, for example, once played a secret gig here.  Tickets for tonight's concert are sold out in advance, and as the door opens and people are let in, the place fills very quickly, and yet the queue of people waiting to get in never seems to end. 

Abandoning our usual position in the front row for once, we have secured ourselves seats on the balcony, right above Keith. From this position we can see the place is literally packed full of people and observe how enthusiastically they react to each piece the band plays. The heat of the place tonight is really incredible! 

During "Hoedown", as usual, Keith turns his back to the audience and plays the Moog. (We can at last see his fingers while he does this - they are usually hidden from the audience's view, even if you stand right in front of the keyboards.) Then he goes off to the front of the stage with his ribbon controller and - whooosh! - lets offthe fireworks. So far local fire regulations must have prevented him from using the fireworks at indoor or semi-indoor venues, which is a shame, as this little display certainly adds drama to the show, even though the overall duration of the ribbon controller interlude tonight is shorter than on earlier nights. 

Keith is again seen shaking his right hand a few times during the concert. After "Creole Dance" he grabs the mic and tells the audience: "my left hand is killing me!" which surprises no one, after the incredible torture we have just witnessed Keith give it playing that rigorous piece. Just from hearing him play, it is almost impossible to think or imagine his hands are not in perfect working condition, he truly amazes the audience with his dynamic solos (in "Stones of Years", "Take a Pebble" and  "Creole Dance") and receives huge applause and cheer after each one of them.  His fingers also don't get tangled up while he's playing "Toccata & Fugue" upside down, as they did on some of the other nights. 

One thing that has been bugging some of us up to this evening is that, at the end of the piano improvisation section of "Take a Pebble", Keith has always plunged, without pausing for a second (as on the record), straight into the decending figure that leads into the verse again. It sounded like he was rushing the whole thing too much: we personally appreciate the return of his fast, machine-gun play on this and the '96 tour (in comparison to his style of playing on the Black Moon tour), but he doesn't need to always play so fast, in all places! He had said in an interview several years back that in the early days of ELP he had felt compelled to show off how fast he could play but now he no longer have the need - so why suddenly again? To prove to himself, perhaps, that he could again after the troubles with his hand? In any case, we felt that pause in "Take a Pebble" was definitely needed there. And tonight, in reaction to the enthusiastic audience, he does pause after the highest note and looks on to the audience, as if to tease them, to let them anticipate what is to come next. And it works much better that way. 

Watching the whole show from above the stage,  we also find out that the voice announcing "Welcome back my friends..." at the beginning of each concert is not taped but belongs to Richard Coble, the band's tour manager!  

The band do come back for the second encore ("21st Century..." and "America") tonight, as they continue to do for the rest of the tour.  

30 June: 
Day off again. 

1 July, Nuremberg:
Serenadenhof (Serenade Garden) is a small enclosure at the side of ruin s of an ancient  colosseum. The walls are covered in ivy, and as the name suggests, it is a very romantic setting, save for the modern tents covering the whole area including the stage. A small slope covered with grass and shrubs separates the stage from the audience. Shortly after the soundcheck is over, the blue sky suddenly turns grey and a thunderstorm breaks out. The crew runs around covering the mixing desk and the equipment on stage with plastic sheets, which is not an easy task as the wind is so strong. This delays the public admission, and as people (armed with macs and umbrellas) are finally allowed in, it is still raining a little, but luckily it stops in time for Sieges Even's set. 

Another happy concert. Another sing-along session to "Lucky Man". This time Greg calls out to the audience to join in, in the middle of the second or third chorus - but the audience doesn't need the prompting, they are already singing along, making Keith grin again. This one must counts as an "outside" venue, we get to see the firework display again - great! But the local press photographers, not anticipating something like this, all manage to miss a great shot. Keith plays "Take a Pebble" with that crucial pause again, so we are happy. 

When they come back for the second encore, Carl is in his white bathrobe - with "Carl" stiched on - and socks and shoes. He walks right up to the front of the stage, turns around and bends while pulling up the robe, exposing his sweat-soaked, blue underpants to the audience, before taking his position at the drum kit! 

2-4 July: 
A few days off for us. ELP play in Paris and then at the Out-In-The-Green Festival in Halle (in former East Germany) but we give those a miss and instead do our washing and get some rest at Akiko's flat in Berlin. God, the band must be really tired, travelling and working so hard every day!

5 July:
Second day of the Out-In-The-Green Festival, this time at the Westfalenpark in Dortmund. ELP appear at 5PM, followed by Art Garfunkel and then Barclay James Harvest. To us it doesn't seem to make much sense to have a loud group at the beginning and then an accoustic artist, but we suppose it is the best arrangement for people who live nearby. (The only article in the local newspaper reporting the event a couple of days later, did in fact have the headline: "No Complaints About the Festival in the Park" - apparently, during last year's festival, the police had endless phone calls from local residents complaining about the noise level.) 

The group seem more relaxed than usual, and so do the audience: apart from 5 rows of fanatic ELP fans (us included) at the front, many people are sitting or lying down on the grass during the show. Right at the beginning of "Knife Edge" the bass gets cut off, but Greg reacts demurely, as if he is amused by the accident. The problem gets sorted out in a few minutes and the group play "Knife Edge" once more from the beginning, perfect this time. 

Due to time restrictions there is only one encore this evening. Keith gets up on top of his grand piano to play "Toccata & Fugue", and when he comes down to continue playing on the synthesizer (in normal style!) he seems to have hurt/cut himself in his finger. It looks rather painful, but he continues to play as usual - true professionalism!

6-10 July:
Days off for us. ELP go on to play the Daytona Festival on the 6th. This festival, at the former Canadian Military Air Base in Lahr (in the Black Forest, South West Germany) has been advertised as "an international meeting place for bikers and music fans" featuring the Scorpions, Deep Purple, James Brown and a score of lesser-known bands, as well as motorbike workshops and family entertainment. ELP are playing on the third day of the festival, along with Deep Purple. They then go on to play the Montreux Jazz Festival on the 7th, where they will be able to have a few days off before returning to Germany. 

We later hear from Will Alexander, Keith Wechsler and Malcolm, the tour bus driver, that:
 
•Another thunderstorm caused all groups playing at the Daytona Festival technical problems with their equipment, as water poured down on the storage area. It also meant a long delay in the day's proceedings and ELP had no time to do soundcheck. (We later met one fan at the Hamburg concert, who had been to the Daytona Festival, and she said that the ELP "were good but short. They stopped in the middle of their set to sort out the technical problem, and came back on 15-20 minutes later to play the rest.")
On being asked whether the place was really full of bikers (they had expected 80,000 bikers to attend the 3-day festival), Will answered: "you couldn't tell whether they were bikers or not, but there certainly were lots of people." 

•The Montreux concert, on the other hand,  went down exceptionally well. They played the main stage - the Stravinsky Hall, holding 4,000 - on the same bill as Supertramp. The equipment, when it dried, worked perfectly again (to Will's great relief, no doubt.) Everyone was happy about this concert, and it is ironic that this is the only one to attract a negative response from a newspaper critic. Reviews of all concerts in Germany & Amsterdam have been  very positive. 

11 July, Fulda:
Fulda is a small, pretty town with many historic buildings and a celebrity bishop. As you can imagine, it is a very conservative, sleepy little place. Not surprisingly, almost everyone we talk to at the venue - the courtyard of a museum in the town centre, holding about 1,500 - are from elsewhere in Germany. And Spain, Sweden, Holland and Japan, of course. By this point on the current tour many of us - who are ALWAYS standing at the front - have got to know each other and so the atmosphere is very friendly, we all chat and exchange our addresses whilst waiting for the concert to begin.

A big cheer breaks out from the audience, again, as Will Alexander pulls the black sheets covering Keith's equipment and we can all see the Moog with its red, blinking lights. Will must be enjoying this little bit of theatre, he seems to be getting more and more adept at teasing and working up the audience before and after the show! 

The set remains the same as before, but we are surprised by many changes in Keith's improvisations. Of course, he never plays exactly the same thing twice, but everything is completely different from what we last heard a week or so ago, and they are such delights! He has, for example, inserted a new piano section in his solo in "Rondo", between the quotes from "Out of Doors" and "Carmina Burana", and the improvisation section of "Take a Pebble" goes on for noticeably longer than before. 

On the other hand, Keith spoils our fun a little bit by always announcing the title of the piece they are about to play, rather than letting the audience guess from the first few notes*. He did that with some of the pieces on earlier nights, too, but tonight he does it all the way through the show. Perhaps he's trying to make the evening run as smoothly as possible for Greg's sake, who is still obviously very ill. His voice doesn't sound great, and he hardly smiles during the main set. When they come back on for the encore, though, Greg is visibly more relaxed and even pulls a funny face at the noise Keith forces out of the L-100.

*(Now that we come to think of it, it's quite interesting that the Japanese audiences more or less immediately recognise the first few notes of "Tarkus" and cheer accordingly, whereas it seems to take their European counterparts a lot longer.) 

Keith doesn't play his Moog during "Fanfare" tonight, but after his upside-down "Toccata & 'Fugue" he closes the lid of the grand piano, jumps on top of it and plays the same tune again on the QS-8 - back to front - before jumping off and finishing the rest of "Rondo" - as he did in Dortmund and, we hear, Montreux. The overall sound quality doesn't come across as being as good as some of the other shows, perhaps it has to do with the acoustics of the venue. 
  
June 12, Hamburg:
In Prague we had talked to Greg about the Hamburg date, which the Impressions staff as well as many fans from Britain (and New Zealand!) would be flying in to see, and he told us he was looking forward to the occasion. As we arrive at the venue, we find our British friends standing outside on the street corner. Yes, Liv is here, and Martyn, Chris Newman, and.. Geoff Goostry, whom we had seen waving Union Jack and Pirate flags at one of the Tokyo gigs last year, is here with the flags again. It's like a reunion of the ELP Convention in Birmingham back in '95! 

Grosse Freiheit is one of the famous side streets of Reeperbahn in Hamburg's Red Light District, full of bars with bright neon signs and photos of exotically (and scantily) clad dancing girls. The music club at No. 36 is tonight's venue (simply called "Grosse Freiheit 36".) It's slightly smaller than the Paradiso in Amsterdam, holding 1000+, so it fills up quickly, with most of the British fans standing right at the front. It's a very warm evening and the air inside the club - especially near the stage - is so stiflingly hot and sticky. It makes us wonder: if it's so hot down here, how horrible the air must be up there on the 5-ft high stage, with all the lights glaring down! Greg still doesn't look very well, and a huge amount of sweat is running down his face and neck. Keith and Carl are also covered in sweat as they play. Despite their visible discomfort, you can see - feel - that they are putting in extra energy into tonight's show, perhaps for the sake of the British fans who travelled all the way just to see this concert, and perhaps because, like at the Paradiso, there's so much energy coming from the audience - the whole place is on heat, literally and metaphorically. 

Keith is very animated again. The interaction between him and Carl in the "silly" section of "Rondo" is somewhat short, but what they do play tonight more than makes up for that. As the stage is small, Keith is rather restricted in his choice of location for lying down with the L-100 on top of him and playing "Toccata & Fugue" upside down. Once he is through with this, he climbs atop his grand piano and plays it once more on the QS-8, crouched down over it at first and gradually stretching his legs backwards, until he is lying flat on his stomach - all the while continuing to play! Apart from a couple of feedbacks during "Take a Pebble", there are no major hitches tonight.

A small crew from the local TV station, Hamburg 1, is here. As well as filming part of the concert, they conduct a brief interview with the British fans after the show, for a magazine programme to be broadcast the following week (which, unfortunately, we could not get anyone to tape for us, so we don't know how they reported the event in the programme.) 

June 13, Dresden:
The last date of the German leg of the tour - and the last concert for us in Europe! We find a few other fans on the platform at Hamburg Hauptbahnhof waiting for our train.  As our compartment is empty except for us, we invite two British fans,  Geoff Goostrey and Brian Johnstone, to come and join us, declaring it a Honky Tonk Train. The train stops at Berlin-Lichtenberg, where we can watch ravers on their way home from the annual Love Parade, lying or sitting all around the platforms and sunbathing, and hundreds of empty cans left by the others - an intersting sight. The Blues in the "Honky Tonk Train Blues" comes not long afterwards: just before reaching the next stop, Berlin-Schönefeld Airport, the train comes to a halt and doesn't move an inch for over an hour. The engine is kaputt, we are told. There is nothing to do but stare at the boring, semi-country landscape outside the window. Oh well, at least it's a nice day. 

Dresden station still looks as if the Berlin Wall hasn't come down. OK, there's a Pizza Hut in there, but everything else is still ancient: the platform, the signs for departing trains, the shops, the public lavatories. And the town itself is the same: there are McDonalds and West German department stores but, on a whole, the town centre still looks like a typical communist town. They have now finally started restoring the Frauenkirche, which was destroyed by the Allied bombing and left in that state throughout the Socialist regime. It stands on the edge of the area full of historic buildings and tourists wandering around - it's another hot, sunny day - and right across the bridge from there is tonight's venue, an open air cinema at Elbufer (Elbe Bank). It has a huge stage, much larger than the ones ELP have been playing on so far on this tour, and the venue itself spreads across a much larger area than the other venues. Nice contrast to last night's cosy, club atmosphere. The band have had to catch 2 flights to get here from Hamburg, and they arrive at the venue pretty late. After they are finished with the soundcheck, there's hardly time for Sieges Even to go through theirs. For some reason they start letting people in before the poor boys have finished, and they have to complete their  soundcheck in full view of the audience, who are steadily filling the place up. 

By the time ELP come on, the place is full (the official figure is 2,200) - and there are at least 100 lookers-on on the bridge, at the side of the venue and about half a mile away from the stage. The stage being at a 90-degree angle to the bridge, there is no way these people can see anything, except perhaps a tiny edge of the drum kit, but they are curious enough to stay there and "watch" until the end of the show. 

Greg is looking much better tonight - he later tells us that the agonising pain in his right ear, which has kept him awake on many nights, is finally receding. The whole group are at ease and in their element, and a truly sensational show unfolds, the colourful lighting against the gradual dusk adding a dramatic touch to the spectacle.

14 July:
The German leg of the tour is over and ELP are flying to Italy. We say goodbye to Keith, Greg and Carl, and to each other, and leave for home: Yoko via Frankfurt and Tokyo to Hiroshima; Mami is flying from Munich via Kuala Lumpur back to her home town Osaka; and Akiko on a slow train with no air-conditioning back to Berlin. 

With many thanks to Keith, Greg, Carl and all the crew, especially Will Alexander and Richard Coble, for all their help during the tour; and special thanks to Sir Henry for his help with this article. 

©1997 A. Hada/Y. Fukuma/M. Noguchi