The late prog-rock legend Greg Lake began his musical life on six-strings, but when his childhood friend and bandmate Robert Fripp suggested he pivot to bass, he quickly learned the two instruments are not as similar as they appear.
Fripp and Lake cut their guitar-playing teeth under the tutelage of Don Strike, who Fripp said “gave me a very good technical foundation.” The pair grew up together, practiced their homework together, and developed a tight musical bond.
When Fripp saw Lake perform with one of his early bands, Unit Four, he was invited to join them, as a roadie, for a show on the Isle of Wight, just off England’s south coast.
The story goes that when no one turned up to watch them play, the pair resorted to jamming songs that Strike had taught them. It's a moment that typifies their relationship.
So when Fripp looked to form King Crimson after the demise of his group Giles, Giles, and Fripp in 1968, Lake was naturally in his mind. But there was a caveat.
“They really wanted me as the lead singer, and so Robert said, ‘Would you be prepared to play bass?’” he recalled in a 2016 interview with Bass Player. “And I thought, ‘Four strings, six strings... what could be the problem?’”
Lake would continue to hold down the low-end in the powerhouse supergroup Emerson, Lake & Palmer, which he co-founded after leaving Crimson in 1970. But his early experiences showed him just how steep the learning curve was. Electric guitar and bass are very different beasts.
“I was very cavalier when I picked up the bass,” he admitted. “Little did I realize that bass playing is an entirely different world; it's an art form within itself.
“And although the instruments look similar, they perform a totally different function. They require a different set of skills and knowledge.”
Of course, as a bassist, Lake's role was to bridge the divide between the drums and the guitar, but he soon felt the wrath of the man he was meant to be supplementing in King Crimson.
“The first thing to wake me up to the difference between guitar and bass was the first rehearsal I did with King Crimson,” he said. “Michael Giles, the drummer, started to bang furiously on his snare, and the whole band stopped.
“He looked up at me — I'll never forget the look on his face, a look of pity, sort of annoyed — and he said, ‘Listen, when I play the snare drum, you don't play. That's how the snare cuts through.’
“It was my first rude awakening to bass playing,” he added.
However, in a separate interview with For Bass Players Only, Lake found there to be a few upsides to his introduction to the instrument.
Michael Giles looked up at me and said, ‘Listen, when I play the snare drum, you don't play. That's how the snare cuts through.’
Greg Lake
“At that time, most bass players were using tapewound strings; they were very dull, and had no sustain,” he explains. “Because I came from guitar, I really missed the sustain, and so one day I stumbled across the strings called Rotosound, and that was the solution to my problem.
“All of a sudden, I had a guitar that was just an octave lower with four strings. I was able to play much more melodic, sustained lines and a lot more percussive chords. Of course, when you get more response from a string, you’re able to play it with more alacrity. You can move around more quickly because you’re getting an instant response from it.”
Lake learned to be a bass player, but echoes of his guitarist days still influenced some of his decision-making, and it made him stand out on an instrument that, slowly but surely, he made fully his own.
Lake’s former bandmate Fripp suffered a heart attack earlier this year, although his recent Sunday Lunch antics with his wife, Toyah, suggest he’s back to full health.
He isn’t, however, working on a new album with the prog giants. He delivered a trademark response to a news story that circulated over the Summer in which Jakko Jakszyk suggested that work on his first-ever studio album with King Crimson was underway. Excitement for Crimson's first album since 2003’s The Power to Believe is sadly premature.
