Carl Palmer

The progressive rock boom of the late 1960's and early 1970's produced its own pantheon of superstars -- Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman at the keyboards, guitarists Robert Fripp and Bill Nelson, and Chris Squire on the bass come to mind. Among the drummers in the field, Carl Palmer stands out as the best known of them all -- he has peers within the genre, to be sure, including Michael Giles, and at least one rival, Bill Bruford, who transcends the field, but Palmer is easily the biggest name, principally by virtue of his work with Emerson, Lake & Palmer, although he's had successes in other contexts as well. Palmer was born in England's West Midlands in 1950, placing him among the youngest members of his generation of art-rock musicians. He was at best an indifferent student within the context of formal education, a frequent truant who preferred practice his drums, and he was serious enough to take -- and his parents sufficiently supportive to pay for -- lessons with a proper teacher in London. He reached his teens just as the Liverpool sound started sweeping the country; he was a fan of the Beatles, but already Palmer had musical idols far removed from anything that had come out of the Cavern Club and other Merseyside venues -- Buddy Rich, whom he came to know personally, brazenly showing up at his hotel on one occasion when the American legend was on tour in England; Philly Joe Jones, Art Blakey, Gene Krupa, and other figures out of jazz and the big-band swing era. He also listened to a lot of r&b and was a formidible player when he joined his first professional group, originally known as the King Bees but later rechristened the Craig; a Mod outfit par excellence, they were a solid r&b-based band, and on their first record, "I Must Be Mad" b/w "Suspense", Palmer --...