Greg Lake, (Gregory Stuart Lake), British musician (born Nov. 10, 1947,
Poole,
Dorset, Eng.—died Dec. 7, 2016, London, Eng.), was a founding member of the progressive rock bands King Crimson and
Emerson Lake & Palmer (ELP). Lake was admired for his soaring vocals and his musicianship on the bass and lead guitars. He studied guitar from the age of 12, and he played with a succession of groups, taking up songwriting along the way. In the late 1960s Lake was asked by a boyhood friend, guitarist Robert Fripp, to join a band. The ensemble, King Crimson, debuted in 1969 at a large free concert, with Lake playing bass and singing. Lake’s vocals anchored the group’s
seminal first album,
In the Court of the Crimson King (1969), as well as the 1970 follow-up,
In the Wake of Poseidon. However, at a 1969 concert at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, Lake met keyboardist
Keith Emerson, then playing with the Nice, and they decided to form, with drummer Carl Palmer, the art-rock band
ELP. That group debuted in 1970 at the Plymouth Guildhall. The ensemble’s self-titled debut album, released in 1970, featured long
eclectic songs that focused on keyboard rather than guitar and blended classical influences with
rock music, and it charted on both sides of the
Atlantic Ocean. The album contained ELP’s biggest hit single, “Lucky Man,” written and sung by Lake. Subsequent releases, including rock versions of classical songs, were also hits.
Brain Salad Surgery (1973) was ELP’s most-successful LP, and it was followed by a three-album concert recording,
Welcome Back My Friends, to the Show That Never Ends (1974). The symphonic bombast of
art rock fell out of favour by the late 1970s, however, though Lake had a solo hit in 1975 with “I Believe in Father Christmas,” which became a seasonal standard. He released two solo albums and later participated in a reunited ELP.