‘In actual fact, I stopped it’: Carl Palmer admits he didn’t want Emerson Lake and Palmer reunion

Carl Palmer now says he’s the one who halted a larger Emerson Lake and Palmer reunion after the prog trio’s performance at the High Voltage Festival in 2010.

As ELP gathered for that 40th anniversary concert, Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Palmer hadn’t toured together since 1998. They hadn’t issued an album since 1994. And, Palmer has said previously argued, it showed. He felt that they didn’t mesh together in the same fashion anymore. Emerson Lake and Palmer had, of course, split up before. But this time, he says something had changed, perhaps forever.

“If it had been just as good as it used to be, on that same level, I would have accepted that,” Palmer tells Prog Magazine. “But I don’t think it was, and I don’t think the other guys thought it was.”