An actual ELP reunion is no longer possible following the premature passing of unmistakable singer/bassist/guitarist Greg Lake and keyboard virtuoso Keith Emerson, but thanks to technology and the initiative of solo survivor Carl Palmer, there’s still a chance to say “Welcome Back My Friends – The Return Of Emerson Lake & Palmer.”

In honor of the English supergroup’s 50th anniversary, which includes the release of a dozen vinyl box set, “Singles,” the beat keeper and his current band will perform live alongside estate-approved video footage of both late greats (after nixing a hologram idea), which is news that has some fans fawning and others asking questions.

Either way, the progressive, symphonic and downright classic music is sure to speak for itself, and as this self-professed “Lucky Man” tells Chicago Concert Reviews, that’s precisely the reason behind this short American tour prior to his other blockbuster band, Asia, turning 40 and combing the vaults for some rare material made in the “Heat Of The Moment.”

Two of these concerts are in the Chicago suburbs. Any thoughts about the area?

Carl Palmer: First of all, we always enjoyed Chicago. ELP played at Soldier Field. One of my sponsors, the Ludwig drum company, was originally based in Chicago, so I spent quite a lot of time there in the ‘70s. We’re not playing at Reggies with this new show, but [during] the pandemic, I did a video for Reggies so they could try and get some money because they were having a bit of a hard time. They are really nice guys. I always enjoy working with them, that’s for sure.

Why did you shy away from holograms and turn your attention towards screens?

Palmer: The hologram thing, two years ago, was like big cheese. Everybody, your Whitney Houston, Ronnie James Dio [was doing it]. Anyway, I went to a company in Toronto and they showed me some stuff. I learned about how they prepare it, dressing up an actor [with similar] clothes, stick a face on him, get him to mime a bit, film it and put it together. I thought that was weird. It was a bit spooky for me. I then went to a company in L.A. and they all do it the same way. It didn’t feel right. If those other two were here and I wasn’t here, I’m sure they would’ve passed on it like I did. It’s because you can’t capture the real human being with a hologram. I went to a see a Frank Zappa hologram show. I’m thinking, “I’ve got to see this live, not just on YouTube,” and it didn’t do it for me.

So roll on about ten, eleven months ago, I came across some footage from the Royal Albert Hall in London that was recorded in the mid ‘90s and it was a DVD that actually got released. It was two nights, a five camera shoot and everything was recorded individually. We did it that way because if one of us made a mistake, we could at least go into the studio, put a big band aid over it and it would all be okay. Anyway, it got released as a DVD by Sanctuary. It was all approved by the band. We did the necessary work on it. During that period [when] this product got released, “Live At The Royal Albert Hall,” Sanctuary sold out to Universal, so it fell right in the crack and this piece got lost in all of that. When I checked up on the sales just before I started this project, we’d only sold about 12,000 copies globally, which is nothing. Now it’s good for me. There’s been a few clips on YouTube, which I had taken down for obvious reasons cause I’m trying to keep this project as fresh as possible. I looked at it all and it was superb. One, it was Keith and Greg at their very best. Two, I have control over all the audio, so I can make it sound even better or add to it if need be. Three, it had been approved by the group, so why not? They both liked it. All I had to do now was edit it. I had to get me out of it. They’re going to appear on giant screens on each side of the stage and I’m going to be playing along with them, plus a screen of me being projected on stage. It’s going to be really cool.

How do the Emerson and Lake families feel about this idea?

Palmer: So the show being put together in that way, I had to get the blessing of the families. I couldn’t take the hologram to the families because I didn’t believe in it, and if I didn’t believe in it, then it’s not worth doing. I’m quite selfish. I’m only in music for me. It’s gotta be honest. It’s gotta be real. It’s gotta be truthful. It’s gotta be original, if it can be. That’s why I’ve never had a keyboard player in my band because I could never duplicate what ELP did. I won’t even name the great keyboard players that wanted to join me and play ELP music. I didn’t want to do that. That’s why I did it with guitars. Anyway, I wrote to the Emerson family and I wrote to the Lake family. I called Regina Lake, Greg’s wife. I started speaking to the managers. Within about 15 to 20 minutes, my inbox had about 16 emails from these guys. “Carl, please do this.” [Keith’s son] Aaron said, “I know my dad would love this.” Once I got that blessing, I got the confidence I was on the right track. I knew I was anyway, to be honest, but I knew this would mean that much more to us in our little group. I think for the hardened ELP fans, if you ever wanted to see ELP again, it’s only through technology we can do this.

What types of fan reactions have you heard alongside this announcement?

Palmer: Like all online, some people say, “I bought that DVD. Why would I want to go and see the show?’ Well, you want to go see the show because it’s been re-edited. I’ve been edited out of it. You’ll see me live on a screen and in the middle of the stage playing with these guys, like that was the group there. There they are, they just happen to be on film. It’s a very difficult thing to do. It’s not easy to create this. [It took] a lot of practice on my part. Even though I recorded the original tracks, it still takes some getting together. Some people have said some real strange remarks like, “he’s doing it for the money.” God, I’m not doing this for the money! I mean, I don’t want to show off or boast, but I’m in music for music. I’ve never wanted to chase the buck. That’s really not me. If I wanted to chase the buck, I could’ve put together an ELP cover band. I could’ve been going out for much more money and playing residencies in Vegas, but that’s not honest. That’s not me. That’s why I choose guitars so it could show the versatility in ELP’s music…

Now that I’ve got the blessings of the families, it gives me the chance to play with them one more time and that’s why I’m doing it, for no other reason. There’s only ten concerts. It’s a quick blip right before Christmas. Listen, if it goes really well, people like it and the reaction on social media is good, then yeah, I will reproduce it. I’m 72, so for me, this technology is wonderful. Thank God we’ve got it. I’m gonna use it cause it’s there. It’s the music I love playing. It’s been fun trying to create this and I’ve finally got it. It’s only six songs with them, but you know something, they’re the most precious six songs I’ve ever had…I just hope we get a good response. There’s always problems with social media, but you’ve just gotta make that work for you. As long as the music works and the concept works for the ELP fans, then I’ve done my job. The Emersons and the Lakes just want this to happen so much, just like I do.

What’s on tap in terms of both the virtual and live band collaborations?

Palmer: I managed to get six tunes that work remarkably well out of this with about ten weeks of editing. We’ve got “Lucky Man,” “From The Beginning,” “Knife Edge,” “Paper Blood,” “Welcome Back My Friends,” and a piano piece, “Creole Dance,” which was really great cause it was only Keith on stage. It was actually perfect [to edit, but] just a video of him playing on his own is not quite right, so I’ve been trying to construct and write some drum parts that I can play on stage as he’s doing his piano solo, which is not in time for more than half a bar, so it’s all got to be bits like an orchestral percussionist…I know Keith would’ve loved this. I learned how to play behind it, so he’s not on his own. That’s kind of monumental, in a way, because this has never been seen.

It’s not as if I’m the first one to do it because I did notice that Paul McCartney had John Lennon singing at the back of the stage the other night when he was on stage. They did a duo together and Paul sang harmonies with John’s vocals, so this is the real live because it’s not a hologram. It’s the actual artists at their very best, performing the way they did, looking great and sounding great. I’m sure Greg and Keith are looking down and saying, “why did this take you so freaking long to do this?”

I’ll have my band, Paul Bielatowicz on lead guitar and Simon Fitzpatrick on the Chapman stick. They’ll be integrated into the show. We’ll play a full version of “Tarkus.” Then it will be me playing “Lucky Man” with Greg and Keith. Then I’ll be back with my band playing “Hoedown,” from the “Rodeo” suite by Aaron Copland. Then Keith and Greg will be back and we’ll be playing “Knife Edge” together and it will go on like that. When it’s just ELP with Greg and Keith on film, and me, then possibly Paul and Simon will reinforce some of the parts, but they won’t be in the way of any of the solos. They’ll just be doubling up on some lines just to fatten it up a bit, but we still need to decide on that. It’s all very exciting for me…

How would you describe your original dynamic of working together?

Palmer: We had our own rehearsal complex. We had rooms we rented to other bands and we had two rooms, which had our equipment set up in both rooms. We could play 24 hours a day. It was a job, you know? We would go in and we would play maybe four hours, five hours, go in the next day, do three hours, and we might do that five, six days a week. We played a lot of music, rehearsed a lot of stuff and we were always very thorough in our approach. Listen, ELP weren’t the biggest friends in the world. We didn’t go out for dinner a lot together. We didn’t go on holiday together, but when we were in the rehearsal room creating or rehearsing music we already created, we were on fire. We just loved the music. We loved each other’s company within that musical environment.

There was always a lot of friction in the band, loads of friction. No one sat on the fence. If somebody didn’t like it, we’d say, “I don’t like that. Stop that. Don’t play that. It’s not good.” As time went by, I found out I ended up being more of a referee cause Greg and Keith wrote more than me. So I would come in, and if they heard from me it wasn’t good, I was probably the only person in the world they ever trusted on that level cause they knew I wasn’t walking in with a carrier bag full of tunes. “Hey, try mine?” If I came in and said, “that doesn’t work,” then they would really put it under the microscope. We had this very strong bond musically and with honesty in regard to music. That was very important and that was why we were successful, even though it was for a short period of time. I think we had seven years in the first stint, from 1970 up until about ‘78, and then the reformation, which I think was about ‘91 until the end of ‘96. We weren’t together years, like The Who, The Rolling Stones or U2. We had, comparatively speaking, a short period together and it was split as well.

After waiting out the pandemic, this tour marks the 50th anniversary of the group getting started. Did you ever think it would be able to last that long?

Palmer: I didn’t think it would last five minutes! Because the first day we met, we argued. I kind of liked that we all spoke our opinions. Greg Lake and I were falling out all the time. Then we’d be fine. We’d get to the rehearsal room, play and all would be forgotten. I’ll tell you an ELP story. This is the real story. We would never argue over money. We would never argue over women. We would never argue over restaurants, but we would argue over four bars of music for about four months! We would argue about music until the cats and the dogs came home! We would argue, and argue, and argue, and we would not forget where we got to in the argument. It really was three individuals. It was Emerson, it was Lake and it was Palmer.

Another way to mark this milestone is the new “Singles” box set. What prompted that idea?

Palmer: Nearly three years ago, I went to BMG, our record company, who are a great company, and said, “we need a box set of singles because people think of ELP as a prog rock band.” It’s kind of a narrow line because the music was quite eclectic. It was classical. It was folky. There was a bit of jazz. There was some rock and it was a bit proggy, hence “Tarkus” and things like that, but classical adaptations, like “Pictures At An Exhibition” by Mussorgsky, were huge pieces that even got used in music schools. These singles, “Lucky Man,” “Still…You Turn Me On,” “C’est la Vie,” “From The Beginning,” “Footprints In The Snow,” “Fanfare For The Common Man,” and there’s lots of them, were the tracks that got us played on radio because radio wasn’t going to play a 20-minute piece of music. But they might play a short song like “Lucky Man,” which was on the first ELP album and it became a top five hit. They played that on the radio and they’d go, “who is this band that played it?” Then when they put on the album, they heard the rest of the music. They were three or four cuts deep cause they realized, “there’s a lot of integrity here. These guys are thoroughbreds. They know what they’re doing.”

I just wanted that box set put together so people understood how ELP music made the mainstream. These singles were the door openers. I mean, “I Believe In Father Christmas” was a number two single here for Greg Lake. I think he was stopped only by “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. “Fanfare For The Common Man” was a number one hit. I think it got high up in the Billboard charts as well in America. “Still…You Turn Me On” was huge. “From The Beginning” was huge. “C’est la Vie” was a number one single in Canada, where we were huge and lived for about six, seven months. All the vinyls are different colors, by the way, and the bags that the vinyls are in are as close as I could find for the original bags we used to have in those days. A few of them we’ve had to make some little bits up, but all the graphics are right, I can guarantee that. I had 100 percent involvement in that. It’s been received very well. I’m very happy about it.

The recent Asia re-issue of “Live At The Budokan Tokyo 1983” also has an ELP connection. What’s the story behind that and bringing it back after being lost for so long?

Palmer: Let me just tell you, first of all, Asia will be coming back next year in February. It’s Geoff Downes, the original keyboard player, and myself. We’ve got a new lead vocalist and guitar player, who hasn’t played with us yet, Marc Bonilla, who used to be with the Keith Emerson Band. Billy Sherwood is on bass guitar and vocals. He’s played a couple of Asia tours with us in the past. [Guitarist] Steve Howe won’t be there. We’re going to play about 25 concerts along with Alan Parsons next year. We were going to come out this year, but Alan had a back operation. It all went well, but it seemed a bit of a rush for him, which we understood. We wanted to cancel it and go on out on our own, but the promoters and the people around us said, “hey, can’t you wait till next year?” We said, “of course we could. If Alan wants to, we want to go out together,” so we’re going out next year. We’ll be sort of celebrating the 40th anniversary, which really would’ve been this year, on that [debut] Asia album with “Heat Of The Moment,” “Only Time Will Tell,” “Sole Survivor” and all those tracks. We’ll be celebrating that just one year later, but we’ll be celebrating with Alan. That’s gonna be a great thing.

Regarding Greg Lake and Asia, we were doing one the very first satellite music broadcasts from Japan. They’d done a lot of sports in the early ‘80s, but never really music. [Original singer/bassist, the late] John Wetton unfortunately got very ill. We couldn’t cancel satellite time that had been bought and we had to go through with it. So we said, “okay, let’s carry on with this. What should we do?” We were on Geffen Records, which David Geffen had just started. His right hand man in the company, John Kalodner, said, “why don’t you try Greg Lake?” Everyone thinks it was my idea. I didn’t even think of Greg, but Greg and John Wetton had very similar voices. Both were from the south of England from a town called Bournemouth. So Greg Lake was brought in and did a remarkable job. We put it on LaserDisc way back in the day and that was it. Eventually, all of that got signed over to BMG, and Asia did a deal with all these bits and pieces we had we wanted to re-release.

What was it like getting to have such enormous success in multiple groups?

Palmer: I’ve been very lucky. When I was 18-years-old in 1968, I flew to America for the first time. I was in a band, The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, and we had a number one single called “Fire.” I’m thinking “God almighty, this is it! I’m in America.” They’ve got big cars, big restaurants and huge hotels. What’s not to like? I’ve been exceptionally lucky all my life. I was with Arthur Brown just the other day, who’s now about 80-years-old. He looks fantastic and he’s still performing. It really has been a great life.

Do you have any plans for how long you’ll keep going?

Palmer: Where I’m at now with this ELP show, well, it’s not the end of my career, it’s just part of my career. I won’t retire. When I can’t play properly, obviously I will and I’ve got a philosophy on that. At the moment, I’m still improving. My feet are getting better. My double bass drum work is getting better. I’m happy with that. The minute I can’t improve but I can maintain my standard, I’ll carry on. The minute I can’t maintain my standard, I will just disappear. You won’t even hear of me. I will disappear and I’ll be gone. Right now, there’s plenty of gas in the tank. I’m rocking, I’m ready to do it and I’m really looking forward to these ten days, which is a one-off, so it will be quite emotional for me. But it depends on the public, the ELP fans who we’re doing it for. If they like it, then maybe we’ll come back, but there no plans for that yet. I just want to do it for them. It’s for Keith and Greg really.

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Carl Palmer’s “Welcome Back My Friends – The Return Of Emerson Lake & Palmer” performs at the Arcada Theatre on Thursday, December 1 and at the Des Plaines Theatre on Friday, December 2. For additional details, visit CarlPalmer.com, EmersonLakePalmer.com, ArcadaLive.com and DesPlainesTheatre.com.