Welcome Back My Friends - Personalized Home Decor & Wall Art for Living Room, Bedroom, Office - Perfect for Gifts, Reunions & Special Occasions

There is so much to say about how important this record is. When I was in high school in 1985 I had never listened to ELP until a drummer that we jammed with one afternoon let me borrow two vinyl records Brain Salad Surgery and this one, Welcome Back My Friends. This was wilder music than I had been accustomed to listening to and I was blown away by what these three guys could do with their instruments. I was soon hooked on prog rock and it was largely because of this album in particular. The band were talented musicians in every capacity in their own right and here you hear them in their prime weaving a tapestry of classical music and a little jazz cranked up through loud rock amplifiers and performed with incredible pyrotechnics on piano, Hammond B3 and the most explosive use of the Moog synthesizer as a live performance instrument as you have heard since; on a bass guitar that is dark and round and then hard and gritty again or morphed through a synth & on dizzying percussion that is at times triumphant and bombastic or simple and subdued and filled with a varied spectrum of timpani's, gongs and electronic beats that keep your ear interested as well as metered along the wild winding ride through a prog rock countryside. To the critics who have felt their music was a little over the top, it was and is and that is exactly why we love it. Here you hear the band live bringing this complicated, challenging material to the people. There is a reason why this live recording was a top seller in its day and it I because the proof is in the pudding. This is not three virtuoso players meticulously nailing well rehearsed arrangements to pin point perfection it is three rockers executing a masterful performance of this music live that lives and breathes down to the pregnant pause of a piano chord to some fancy melodies blazing out of the Hammond off the cuff and incredible in the middle of daring arrangements that could become a train wreck in a second for lesser players. Greg Lake's voice is incredible and he joins Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer in bringing their wild blend of classical, rock bravado and mythology to bear on a willing waiting audience. This album is the best of what was great about prog rock and an artistic statement about the potential of man to create incredible music. With the passing of Keith Emerson I have gone back to revisit these albums a lot over recent days and I am suddenly aware of how profoundly this music has shaped my perspective on how I pursue my own music. In a world of cookie cutter pop songs, auto tune and lip sync it is an incredible insight into what people are really capable of actually performing and pulling off live to listen to this live performance by this band. Glad they had a chance to do it. Glad they recorded it. With this recording the show will indeed never end. If you have never heard this band then this one is a great start. If you have then Welcome back my friends...