Works Volume 1 - Overview

Overview

The album was highly anticipated, as it had been almost three-and-a-half years since the release of ELP's last studio album, Brain Salad Surgery. However, it was different from the synthesizer-driven music that most fans had expected and received a mixed reaction from fans and press.

Side 1 is the Keith Emerson side, a concerto for piano and orchestra.

Side 2 is the Greg Lake side, and consists of acoustic ballads, most of which were written by Lake and Peter Sinfield.

Side 3, the Carl Palmer side, includes a remake of "Tank" (from ELP's eponymous first album), with orchestral accompaniment and without the drum solo. Another track on Palmer's side is the rocker "L.A. Nights", featuring Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh on lead and slide guitar and scat vocal. Also, two arrangements of outside composers' pieces figure on the Palmer side: one of Johann Sebastian Bach's baroque D Minor Invention #4, BWV 775, and a piece titled 'The Enemy God Dances With the Black Spirits', an excerpt of the 2nd movement of "The Scythian Suite" by Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), written in 1915.

Side 4 features the entire band, and consists of a modern piece re-arranged for rock band, Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man", and the long-form song "Pirates", which features lyrics added to music Emerson had written for the soundtrack of a canceled film version of Frederick Forsyth's book The Dogs of War. Aaron Copland found ELP's version of his piece appealing although he was puzzled at the inclusion of a modal solo between two fairly straight renditions of his piece.