Emerson, Lake & Palmer (album)

Although the composition of this track was attributed to the three band members on early pressings of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, "The Barbarian" is in fact an arrangement for rock band of Béla Bartók's 1911 piano piece Allegro Barbaro.[11][12] Musicologist Edward Macan notes, in his 2006 book on ELP's work Endless Enigma, that Bartók's widow contacted the band shortly after the album's release to request that the song's author credit be corrected.[13]

"Take a Pebble" by Greg Lake is a full band arrangement, with the primary sections being a jazz arrangement by keyboardist Keith Emerson, and the middle section being a folk guitar work by Lake with water-like percussion effects by Carl Palmer, plus a bit of clapping and whistling. The end returns to the jazz arrangement by Emerson, starting with a modal based improvisation on top of the primary ostinato.

The music of "Knife-Edge" is based on the first movement of Leoš Janáček's Sinfonietta (1926)[12] with an instrumental middle section that includes an extended quotation from the Allemande of Johann Sebastian Bach's first French Suite in D minor, BWV 812, but played on an organ rather than clavichord or piano. Greg Lake provided the song's lyrics, with assistance from Richard Fraser, a member of ELP's road crew.

"The Three Fates" is a three-part "pseudo suite,"[11] written and predominantly performed by Emerson. It comprises three movements, one for each of the three sisters of Greek mythology known as the Three Fates or Moirai; Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. Its overall length is a little under eight minutes. The "Clotho" movement was recorded at the Royal Festival Hall, London, with Emerson playing the venue's massive pipe organ. "Lachesis," which follows, is a piano solo of about 2 minutes 45 seconds. It features baroque and jazz influences ending in grand, sweeping arpeggios. In "Atropos," after briefly revisiting the pipe organ from the first movement, Emerson moves to a piano vamp in 7/8 with percussion accompaniment from Palmer (according to Macan's analysis of "The Three Fates" in Endless Enigma, Lake does not play on the track).[14] An improvisation is layered over the top which eventually transforms into a polymetrically played repeated sequence in 4/4 time. The resonance of the final chords is curtailed by sound of explosions.

Palmer's solo spot "Tank" was composed with Emerson. The first section features Emerson on clavinet and piano, Lake on bass and Palmer on drums. The middle section is a drum solo. The final section features Emerson on clavinet and Moog synthesizer.

"Lucky Man" is a folk rock ballad by Lake, with a notable solo on the Moog synthesizer by Emerson at the end, liberally using portamento.[15] Lake wrote the song for acoustic guitar when he was 12.[16][17] Although a quad mix of this album was never issued, "Lucky Man" was included on the DVD-Audio 5.1 surround version of Brain Salad Surgery (Rhino #R9 75980, 2000).

In May 2012, Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree remixed the album for a 3 Disc reissue containing the original mix, the Wilson remix, and a DVD-Audio with Wilson's 5.1 surround sound version and a higher-bitrate version of his stereo mix.

The remixed versions have different track listings from the original album, with the first two sections of "The Three Fates" ("Clotho" and "Lachesis") and "Tank" being omitted as multitrack tapes for these pieces were unavailable, and adding unreleased material, while "Knife Edge" has an extended ending; due to the difficulty of reproducing the song's original tape slowdown ending digitally, Wilson decided to include the end of the original album session at its original speed. The 5.1 remix replaces "Tank" with an unreleased instrumental called "Rave Up", which bears some similarity to the instrumental section of "Mass" on Tarkus.

The remixed stereo versions include all of the above while adding more unreleased material: a vocal version of Mussorgsky's "Promenade" (the first live version of which appears on Pictures at an Exhibition) replaces the missing sections of "The Three Fates"; a new otherwise untitled "Drum Solo" by Carl Palmer (similar but not identical to a section of "Tank") is added between "Rave Up" and "Lucky Man"; "Lucky Man" is followed by an unfinished alternate take of "Take a Pebble", complete with some studio banter an unreleased take of "Knife Edge" (lacking vocals and final section), and two versions of "Lucky Man", the first being Greg Lake's original demo, the second an unreleased complete band version.