Bloom: When The Apple Blossoms Bloom In The Windmills Of Your Mind I’ll Be Your Valentine

ELP: When The Apple Blossoms Bloom In The Windmills Of Your Mind I’ll Be Your Valentine
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You might have noticed that I’ve long been a fan of prog rock and have often filled this space with discussions of it. You also might have noticed that I’ve never written about one of the most well-known prog bands, Emerson, Lake & Palmer (although, I have mentioned their bassist/vocalist Greg Lake, mostly in the context of his work with King Crimson, which I have written about probably too many times). And that’s because I was never that big a fan of ELP. Although there are a handful or so of their songs that I’ve liked, and I appreciated their musical virtuosity, I don’t think that I have ever bought a full ELP album in any format. There was always something about their music that left me a little cold, while I think that the more emotional music of their contemporaries Genesis and Yes appealed to me more. 

Despite a run of popular and well-received (except by the prog-haters) albums in the early 1970s, it seemed that by the middle of the decade, as the genre began to lose favor, ELP also appeared to lose creativity and cohesiveness. Their 1977 album, Works Vol.1 was a double album, with each member of the band getting one side, and the fourth side was collaborative. Although it sold well, it really wasn’t good, although the band’s version of Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare For The Common Man” was fun (and is on my list of ELP songs that I like). Later that year, they released Works, Vol. 2 which was essentially an odds and ends compilation of B-sides and unreleased tracks. Since most of these came from an earlier period when ELP was firing on all creative cylinders, it has more good stuff on it, including our feature song. 

“When The Apple Blossoms Bloom In The Windmills Of Your Mind I’ll Be Your Valentine” is a relatively short song for ELP, clocking in at just under 4 minutes, with a title that takes almost as long as that to say. (but if you want long titles, check out the Red Sparowes). It’s an upbeat and relatively unpretentious (by ELP standards) instrumental that may well have started as a jam. You can hear the musical talent of the three musicians and enjoy their playing on this track. It was recorded during the Brain Salad Surgery sessions and was released as the B-side to the “Jerusalem” single. 

Works, Vol. 2 was less commercially successful than its predecessor, which is probably what economists call a lagging indicator. But it also pretty much the end for ELP. Their next album, the contractually required Love Beach, which features the band members posing with mostly open shirts near a beach, appeared to be an attempt to pivot toward more pop-oriented music, much as Yes and Genesis were doing in this period, but without any real conviction. Moreover, the band was breaking apart even more, with Lake and Palmer recording their parts and fleeing the studio, leaving Emerson to finalize the album. It sold OK, but was not well received by critics, even those who still liked the genre. 

Other than a few live releases, a few partial reunions that included other musicians replacing absent core members, and a brief full reunion in the 90s, that was pretty much it for ELP. Emerson died in 2016 of a self-inflicted gunshot, and Lake died of cancer the same year.

ELECTRICITY: TOGETHER IN ELECTRIC DREAMS/PHILLIP OAKEY & GIORGIO MORODER

Let's not forget the full glory of the title, not least as it is the how and why they happened to be together that underlines this piece. Hearing a snatch on the radio, I rather guess most civilians assume this to be the Human League, so similar it is to the template already riding high the charts. Indeed, wise to that, the record company contrived to include the song on 1988's Greatest Hits collection of that band. But it wasn't, it arising purely from the serendipity of movie producer Steve Barron rejecting Giorgio Moroder's original choice of singer for a tune he had been hired to write.

Electric Dreams was a film made by Barron, earlier better known as the director of innumerable music videos, such as Take On Me/Aha and Money For Nothing/Dire Straits. In truth, that is as much as you need to know about the film, it being somewhat lightweight tosh, with a soundtrack album, Electric Dreams, featuring many of the great and the good of the day. As I look back at this, Jeff Lynne jostling with Culture Club, plus a couple of Moroder instrumentals, it is remarkable how little else has stuck. It is, really, only the Oakey/Moroder collaboration I can recall. Or anyone else recalls. Room for confusion arises in that the duo produced an album called Electric Dreams. The song and several more they cooked hastily together. Again, only the title track has had any real posterity.

Be My Lover Now/Oakey & Moroder

Moroder seems an interesting guy, and certainly lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Whilst his website might describe him as the founder of disco, a claim he seems on shaky ground with, it correctly asserts he was a trailblazer of electronic music, seeing the more popular opportunities in synthesisers , still then more the domain of serious prog-rockers. I had not before appreciated that the song, Son of My Father, taken to the UK chart by band Chicory Tip, was one of his writes. Pretty slim fare, it's true, but it was certainly the first synthesiser led track I can recall on Top of the Pops. As a producer and studio mogul, Moroder pumped out a slew of singles, embracing the twin idioms of disco and electronica. If by attrition alone, some of these had to be hits, with Donna Summer's I Feel Love being his biggest and best known breakthrough. If many of his themes and backing tracks sounded the same, that seemed no bad thing, and he took the launch into film scores. Here, Midnight Express was clearly his high water mark, but the list of his other involvements is immense, from work with David Bowie and Blondie. And Electric Dreams, of course.

The Chase (Midnight Express)/Giorgio Moroder 

A couple of decades silence and he was again suddenly the rage, taken up by Daft Punk and celebrated once more, delighting in being able to remind the world of his modest contributions to music.....

Giorgio by Moroder/Daft Punk

Phil, or Phillip, as he now prefers, Oakey, has also made the most of his opportunities. As lead singer for Sheffield electronic noise terrorists, The Human League, beleaguered and embattled by lack of success, he was left high and dry when the musicians in that band left for Heaven 17,  alone, with only the name of the band. By some enormous quirk of fate he hired a couple more players, added in two schoolgirls he had seen dancing at a club and they were huge. And rightly so. Dare, courtesy some fabulous songs, strident yet simple synth melodies, Oakey's shaky stentorian voice and the glorious naffness of the girls, leapt into the charts as an album, the singles vying with each other to get higher and higher than the one before. Culminating, inevitably, with the joy of Don't You Want Me, number one forever over the Christmas and New Year of 1981 into 82, buoyed by a never more memorable video. If their pinnacle, it certainly wasn't all they had, that line up managing a decent follow-up ahead of creeping personal differences. Another rebirth, as Jam and Lewis picked up the band and gave them a shake, and provided much of the material, with Human shaking the rafters worldwide. Since then they plod on, Oakey, the girls and whomsoever, surviving on the oldies market and the flurries of hope that each new release provides. I think I would certainly still cross the street to see them live.

Never Let Me Go/The Human League

So, the actual song? Well, as described, Barron suggested Oakey and, seemingly, ten minutes in the studio and it was the first take that was used, achieving a 1984 number 3 hit in the UK, but only featuring in the Billboard Dance Chart, if still a not unhealthy 20. In their (electric) dreams, not.

Together?

Beginning: From the Beginning

Emerson, Lake and Palmer were never a take it or leave it band. You were either on their bus or off it, at least when I was a boy and they were just beginning. It's funny, all these years later, wondering quite what the fuss was all about, their star having faded both so far and so fast. Even their erstwhile fans seem content to dismiss them as the stuff of youthful inexperience, with very rare ever a kind word said in retrospect. And I'm not even sure if this is it, but, hell, yes, I was on the bus.

So, in the beginning was (were?) the Nice, I guess Keith Emerson's prototype for the later band, a trio of keyboards, bass and drums. We'll ignore their starting block for transplanted-to-the-UK ex Ikette, P.P.Arnold's backing band, as they were, or the short-lived 4 piece with eternal nearly man Dave O'List, later to be nearly man again, for Roxy Music, ahead of Phil Manzanera's joining. I confess I struggled with the Nice, as the bassist, Lee Jackson, couldn't sing. And I mean, really couldn't sing. But, between the songs came the most remarkable of hammond organ histrionics, an instrument that was mainly for adding background in pop and rock until then. Combining a driving rhythm section with half-remembered classical themes was pure catnip to my teenage tastebuds. Try some:

Come 1970 and the band broke up. Emerson clearly was the one to watch, lifting doleful bassist and singer Greg Lake from King Crimson, and drumming wunderkind Carl Palmer from The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, forming what the rock press greeted as one of the first supergroups. The brief was much the same, driving classically influenced instrumental rock music, up a few gears from the Nice, but with, this time, a singer who could sing. The instrumental palette was likewise wider, with a lot more piano and shedloads of the brand new Moog synthesiser to complement the organ, Lake competent also on guitars electric and acoustic, six string and four. His powerful songs would give respite to the sheer freneticism of Emerson's set piece juggernauts, a break in the records and on stage. I think it fair to say that their first 3 LPs were amongst my most treasured possessions back then, 'Pictures at an Exhibition', their live interpretation of Mussorgsky, being my 2nd album purchase ever and certainly my favourite of theirs. Here's my favourite moments:

At my school it was all very simple. You either liked Yes or you liked ELP, strangely never being allowed to like both, which led me to missing out on a lot of music I only came to later. But the honeymoon had to end. The sheer exuberance of 'Pictures', the majesty of the first eponymous record and the inventiveness of 'Tarkus' were followed by the is-that-all of 'Trilogy'. Sure, I lauded it at the time I bought it, on the day of release, as bravado demanded, but the rot had set in. Not even the thrill of my first big arena show, at London's Earls Court, could hide the fact that 'Brain Salad Surgery' was an empty vessel. The dream was over and I bought the 'Yes Album'.

So that's it, from the beginning, my all too brief infatuation with my first musical love. 3 or 4 years. Their legacy lives on with me, however. Unlike rather more fickle folk, I still have a yen for an occasional blast of 'Tarkus', side 1, or the whole of 'Pictures'. Or 'Lucky Man', killer end piece from the first record. I'm transported back to a mixture of acne and innocence. Let me finish with the title song for this scribble, ironically from 'Trilogy', perhaps the epitome of a Lake interlude, all vocal and multi dubbed guitars, before Emerson weaves in at the end, to remind that it's his group really.

Of course the band played on. And on, becoming eventually what legendary DJ John Peel called, famously, a waste of electricity. Pity, that.

From the beginning, the song, is here, (but I'd get this or this if I were you.)