As a music student and aspiring classical guitarist, Balaam And The Angel’s Jim Morris discovered Emerson, Lake And Palmer’s Pictures At An Exhibition and never looked back – although, as he told Prog, his band’s attempt at emulating ELP resulted in an unforgettable Spinal Tap moment.
“ELP’s Pictures At An Exhibition was an important album in my teenage years. My brothers and I used to club our pocket money to buy albums and this record came in as a result of [drummer sibling] Des’ interest in it.
It’s a fantastic piece of music; it was that combination of being a rock band making a noise while doing an interpretation of classical music. That virtuosity was a fantastic thing for me to see and to aspire to at the time. I started out studying classical guitar and I went to the London College Of Music to do a classical music degree.
The importance of the album came back later. Balaam were doing a gig at the Hammersmith Clarendon Ballroom around 1984, and because we’d been using some brass on The Greatest Story Ever Told album, we got a four-piece brass section to play with us.
They’re playing at the level of virtuosity and memory it requires
They were placed on this supplementary stage at the side of the venue. They also played the walking-in music, which was Promenade from Pictures At An Exhibition, and that was brilliant.
Fast forward about six months. We were playing ULU and we said, ‘Let’s do it again!’ There wasn’t a separate stage so the quartet was at the back of the stage. What we failed to recognise was that they needed some lighting to actually read their music and that they didn’t know the material beyond Promenade.
The lights go down and they fire up – but then it just fell apart. We had to rush on to cover up this complete muddle and cacophony of four brass players who couldn’t see what they were doing, having a go at playing it, and failing miserably!
I was familiar with Mussorgsky’s original; it was interesting how ELP took it on. It’s a real interpretation with all of the key tunes in there. And then you looked at the other stuff that they’d released like Brain Salad Surgery; then a little later Fanfare For The Common Man came out. They were a band I kept my eye on.
What also makes Pictures At An Exhibition so interesting is that they’re playing it live at the high level of virtuosity and memory that it requires. It’s ridiculously good.”
