‘Can You Still Keep Your Balance?’: Keith Emerson's anxiety of influence, style change, and the road to prog superstardom

Abstract

Harold Bloom's theory of poetic influence has been applied to studies of Western art music, but rarely to studies of popular music. This article investigates the applicability of his theory to the music of British progressive rock keyboardist Keith Emerson. It will be argued that, while Emerson's overtly intertextual music for The Nice cannot be well illuminated with this theory, Bloom can help us explore and interpret some delicate aesthetic aspects of the important style change from The Nice to Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP). Emerson felt the anxiety of The Nice's influence upon ELP, changed his style because of it, and led the new group to prog rock superstardom. Bloom's six revisionary ratios can indeed shed light on those subtle qualities which were necessary for a progressive rock ideology to be ‘mainstreamed’ and sold as commodity – qualities that resulted from a process of ‘misreading’.