Progressive rock can be tricky. Done poorly, it’s a real mess. Done well, as ELP does with Tarkus, it’s magical and powerful. I wonder of prog rock is an acquired taste. Either you love it, or you hate it? I guess prog rock can come off as ostentatious to some listeners. I get that. But I don’t care if a musician is showing off. I decide to appreciate how they choose to share their skill and talent. If I like it, great! If not, I admire the attempt, nonetheless. I’m certainly not going to criticize an artist for reaching for greatness.
Progressive rock is a genre “that has been celebrated and maligned in equal measure.”1 Ian Anderson of prog rock luminary Jethro Tull notes that complexity for the sake of itself doesn’t make good music.
Anderson says he tries to find a balance between music that is sufficiently detailed and elaborate enough to keep himself entertained, but without leaving his audience behind by making it too clever for its own good.2
This is the rub. The most commercially successful artists find this balance. Others fail to find it. If that’s what they want to do and fully understand they may not cash in as much as they could, then more power to them. I admire that too. To thine own self be true. For a non-musician listener like me who has only the shallowest understanding of music theory or the nuts and bolts of creating and constructing songs, I am unbale to determine a piece of music’s merits on a technical level. I can only calculate whether or not I like it. I like this album. My rating:
New Musical Express published a negative review by critic Richard Green stating, “rarely have I heard so many minutes of what is largely self-indulgent confused sound.”3
David Lebin also panned the album in his review for Rolling Stone.
Tarkus records the failure of three performers to become creators. Regardless of how fast and how many styles they can play. Emerson, Lake and Palmer will continue turning out mediocrity like Tarkus until they discover what, if anything, it is that they must say on their own and for themselves.4
Despite these negative contemporary reviews Tarkus influenced many younger musicians. For example, “This album really changed my life," says Dream Theater's Jordan Rudess.5 Writing in 1999, Derk van Mourik asserted, “Emerson, Lake and Palmer made a lasting impression on the music scene and to this day their influence can still be felt and their music still inspires bands from around the world.”6
Retrospective commentary has been kinder and laudatory.
Reviewing the album for AllMusic François Couture argues that the track “‘Tarkus’ is a thoroughly written, focused piece of music. It remains among the Top Ten classic tracks in progressive rock history.”7
PopMatters ranked Tarkus twenty-first on its list of The 25 Best Classic Era Progressive Rock Albums.
This is where grandiosity meets spectacle, with a storyline as bewildering as it is half-baked. But the music? With ELP it’s all about the music, and the mood — only more so. The martial Sturm und Drang of the opening notes billowing into the scorched earth lamentation of what is supposedly a tale of evolution in reverse expertly balances bedlam with resolution. Art-with-a-capital-A; Epic-with-a-capital-E, Pomposity-with-a-capital-P, etc.8
In 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, Tim Jones wrote:
This is an album that defines prog grandeur.9
Enjoy and listen without prejudice. Cheers!
Prime Playlist: 203. Tarkus by Emerson, Lake & Palmer
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For details about this project, read this: Project 1001 Albums
Charts
• Peak on Billboard 200 album chart: #910
• Singles on Billboard Hot 100 chart: n/a
• RIAA certification: Gold | August 26, 197111
Released on June 14, 1971. Here’s what else was happening:
Pop Culture
• Number one song: “Want Ads” by The Honey Cone12
• Number one album: Sticky Fingers by The Rolling Stones13
• Number one movie: Gimme Shelter by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin14
• Most watched TV programs: Marcus Welby, MD, The Flip Wilson Show, Here’s Lucy, Ironside, Gunsmoke, ABC Movie of the Week, Hawaii Five-O, Medical Center, Bonanza, The FBI, Mod Squad, Adam 12, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, Wonderful World of Disney15
• NYT bestseller, fiction: The Passions of the Mind by Irving Stone16
• NYT bestseller, non-fiction: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown17
Some other albums released that month
• The Staple Swingers by The Staple Singers
• Love Letters from Elvis by Elvis Presley
• Ruby by Buck Owens
• Blue by Joni Mitchell
• Byrdmaniax by The Byrds
• Runt. The Ballad of Todd Rundgren by Todd Rundgren
• Indelibly Stamped by Supertramp
• Stephen Stills 2 by Stephen Stills
• Aerial Pandemonium Ballet by Harry Nilsson
• Blood, Sweat & Tears 4 by Blood, Sweat & Tears
• Homemade by The Osmonds
• One World by Rare Earth
• San Francisco Dues by Chuck Berry
• Sing Children Sing by Lesley Duncan
• Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song by Melvin Van Peebles
• Touch by The Supremes
• Touching Home by Jerry Lee Lewis18
Sport
• Jun 13 LPGA Championship Women's Golf, Pleasant Valley CC: Kathy Whitworth wins by 4 strokes from Kathy Ahern.
• Jun 21 US Open Men's Golf, Merion GC: Lee Trevino wins his 2nd Open by 3 strokes in a Monday 18-hole playoff with Jack Nicklaus.
• Jun 23 MLB Philadelphia Phillies Rick Wise no-hits Reds, and hits 2 HR's and 3 RBI in 4-0 win at Cincinnati.19
Notable Births
• Jun 5 Mark “Marky Mark” Wahlberg, American singer (Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch) and actor (Boogie Nights, The Departed), born in Boston, Massachusetts.
• Jun 15 Jake Busey, American actor.
• Jun 16 Tupac Shakur, American rapper and actor (Juice, Bullet), born in East Harlem, New York.20
Historical Events
• Jun 11 US & Japan sign accord to return Okinawa to Japan.
• Jun 11 US ends ban on China trade.
• Jun 13 The New York Times begins publishing excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, classified documents on the long history of the U.S. in Vietnam.21
Notable Deaths
• Jun 1 Reinhold Niebuhr, American theologian (Nature & Destiny of Man), dies at 78.
• Jun 9 Harold Lloyd Jr, American actor (Frankenstein's Daughter), cabaret singer, and son of famous silent film actor Harold Lloyd, Sr., dies of a complications from a stroke at 40.
• Jun 18 Thomas Gomez, American actor (Force of Evil, Key Largo, Kim, Sellout), dies after a car accident at 65.22
King, Ian, Appetite for Definition: An A-Z Guide to Rock Genres, Harper Perennial, 2018, p. 331.
King, p. 323.
Jones, Tim, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, Fifth printing, ed. by Robert Dimmery p. 240.
Ibid.