Farewell, Greg Lake of King Crimson fame

The progressive rock movement began and became well-entrenched in the music landscape when I was in senior school in the late '60s and early '70s. One of my abiding musical memories during college days is the album In the Court of the Crimson King by the band King Crimson.

The album artwork was simply mind-blowing depicting the 21st Century Schizoid Man - also the title of the opening song in the album. The cover was strange, haunting and powerful. Rarely had an album sleeve so accurately encapsulated the shock-and-awe which this extraordinary music produced in its listeners.

The opening song began with heavily distorted vocals, which had a dystopian feel to them. That's the first time I heard Greg Lake, the bassist and vocalist of the band. The song became a gold standard for musicians attracted both by its sense of rage and technical virtuosity.

Lake showed his softer side in "I Talk to the Wind" from the same album. In fact, every song from the album was a classic, in no small measure due to Lake's mesmerising vocals. The album proved to be a landmark in the emerging progressive style after its release in 1969.

Its reputation grew until it was seen as an undisputed classic, with Pete Townshend of The Who (another amazing band whose concert of their concept album Tommy I had the good fortune to see at the Royal Albert Hall, London) calling it "an uncanny masterpiece".

Although Lake appeared on King Crimson's second album, he had already left the group to found ELP (Emerson, Lake and Palmer) alongside keyboard player Keith Emerson (who died earlier this year) and drummer Carl Palmer.

The group was an instant success. They also gained a reputation for spectacular live performances, which were hugely expensive to mount.

A song that became a great favourite of mine was "Lucky Man" from ELP's self-titled first album. Written by Lake when he was 12 years old and recorded by the trio using improvised arrangements, the song contains one of progressive rock music's earliest instances of a Moog synthesizer solo. "Lucky Man" is an acoustic ballad about a man who had everything, went to war, and died.

The inclusion of this song was a fortuitous last-minute decision, but it set the trend of what became a parallel career for the group. The song's success on FM radio gave them an image that contradicted the musical signature of the band- keyboard-driven, loud and bombastic, and boundlessly exultant in its instrumental power.

On each subsequent album, some room was left for Lake to put his obligatory ballad.

Another favorite ballad of mine was "C'est la Vie" from ELP's "Works, Volume 1"- a double album with Emerson the focus of the first side, Lake the second, Palmer the third, and the entire band sharing equally on Side 4.

"C'est La Vie" was one of the songs Lake wrote for his side with help from lyricist Pete Sinfield, who was his bandmate in King Crimson. Lake used to live in Paris for a while and, while walking its streets, he would hear a barrel organ playing. One day, while walking back to his apartment, he went past a cafe where he heard a song by Edith Piaf, the famous French singer. He then thought of writing a French song with French feelings.

To non-progressive fans, Lake was best known as the creator of one of the UK's most enduring Christmas hits "I Believe in Father Christmas". The song was about how Christmas had deteriorated and was in the process of becoming another victim of crass corporate financial exploitation.

As per Lake, Christmas was much more than lager and Baileys. It was more important to make spiritual human contact, or visit someone lonely.

ELP went downhill after the punk explosion of the late '70s, and broke up in 1979. Lake had an unsettled 1980s musically, playing briefly with another supergroup Asia, and forming a new ELP - Emerson, Lake and Powell, with Cozy Powell replacing Palmer. Lake worked as a solo artist, too, before the original ELP reunited in 1991 on an on-again, off-again basis.

However, they never recaptured their original popularity. Tastes had changed and the only thing that remained was a core of fanatic rabid followers.

Lake died on December 7, 2016 at the age of 69.

As I crawl a cracked and broken path

If we make it we can all sit back and laugh...

is a stanza from the King Crimson song "Epitaph".

Well, Greg did make it. He has joined his former bandmate Keith Emerson in heaven and must be sitting back and laughing. They have both earned it!