Studio - 2. Tarkus
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| Tarkus | ||||
| Studio album by Emerson, Lake & Palmer | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Released | June 14, 1971 (UK) August, 1971 (US) | |||
| Recorded | January 1971, Advision Studios | |||
| Genre | Progressive rock | |||
| Length | 38:40 | |||
| Label | Island, Manticore (UK) Cotillion, Rhino Records (U.S.) | |||
| Producer | Greg Lake | |||
| Professional reviews | ||||
| Emerson, Lake & Palmer chronology | ||||
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Tarkus is the second album by British progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer, released in 1971.
The track "Battlefield" features one of the rare electric guitar solos from Greg Lake. Some live versions also featured an excerpt from a King Crimson-song, "Epitaph", originally co-authored and sung by Lake on Crimson's first album.
The final track, "Are You Ready Eddy?", was written for their engineer Eddie Offord. The track ends with Carl Palmer exclaiming "They've only got 'am or cheese!", apparently the only sandwiches on offer in the Advision canteen.
In 1993 the album was digitally remastered by Joseph M. Palmaccio. The remastered version was released by Victory Records in the UK and Rhino Records in the United States.
1. The title track.
The chief feature of the album is the "Tarkus" suite, originally forming the whole of Side one of the album.
Greg Lake stated in an early interview that he viewed Tarkus as a representation of the military-industrial complex, and that his lyrics were about that, and about the futility of war and strife.
On the album cover, made after the music was created and recorded, Tarkus is depicted as a half armadillo/half tank creature, born from an egg erupted from a volcano.
The inner gatefold sleeve features a sequence of pictures depicting battles between Tarkus and other half-mechanical creatures, until its eventual defeat by a manticore. "Tarkus" then becomes "Aquatarkus", an aquatic version of the land-bound original. The band later chose the name Manticore Records for their self-owned record label.
The lyrics of the "Tarkus" suite relate only very abstractly to the story as delineated in the images: "Mass" is musings on organised religion (as is "The Only Way"), while "Battlefield" is a general statement about war and what war causes (such as: "You talk of freedom? Starving children fall...").
Keith Emerson later said in his autobiography that he presented most of the piece fully formed to the rest of the band and as such Greg Lake was initially not pleased about the band's new direction.
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