[Elspode]

Last year at the Moog Fest in New York to celebrate the great man's creation, Bob found a quiet corner in my dressing room. He sat munching an apple while watching me warm up on a practice keyboard that was turned around with the keys facing away. I had to lean over the instrument in order to play it in such an irregular and awkward position. Bob sat observing what was so obviously an impractical exercise without saying a word. Finally he said, "Do you always practice like that?" Without thinking I replied that I did. This answer didn't seem to phase him one bit. He didn't ask any further questions on the subject maybe because he'd got an answer that he expected. It led me to thinking that that's the way he worked.

Being at one with his creation, he might have expected it to work for him. But it was a completely different thing to find musicians great or small, all over the world, using his invention to greater effect. I think he was often overwhelmed by that fact. And what about the theremin? A box with a couple of aerials that could frighten anyone of a nervous disposition when waving one's hands around it! It could play the notes that were between all the other notes!! I mention all this because Bob seemed unwavered faced by either a tough road or an easy one. He'd trod most of them with "Amazing Grace" and humor! He had a great loud uninhibited laugh that always made me feel comfortable. It made itself very audible when I first met him in London in 1970. It was well known then that the Heathrow baggage handlers (not being avid gardeners) treated suitcases with the same respect as a sack of cow shit. Having successfully retrieved his luggage it therefore amused him greatly to notice that left, going round and round on the conveyer belt, was just a handle with the baggage tag still attached...and somebody actually claiming it without complaining.

I was very excited when Bob attended an early 70's ELP concert for the first time and had him sit on stage and out of view of the audience behind my speakers. This is a story that Bob loved to tell:

"...Keith had invited me to come wherever backstage was. He and I piled into his mandatory limousine and we went through the mud, rocks and broken glass-which is what you expect to find underneath the tracks of a New York City Subway train-onto a soccer field. He got out with the rest of the group and they walked onto the field up to this wooden platform stage out by one goal. At the end of the field, there was a line of ten or twelve portajohns. There were about 10,000 young males packed in there. I don't remember any seats; people were just trampling on the soccer field. That's where I saw Keith do his number with the organ and knives, with pieces of keys flying off.

Lo and behold, who should I meet there but a customer friend of mine, Gershon Kingsley. Gershon was a successful middle-aged professional studio musician...Anyhow, I meet up with Gershon by the row of portajohns, and he's completely disorientated and freaked out. Behind us, you can smell the shit and piss and the doors to the johns are banging open and closed. And in front, here's this guy throwing an organ around, making keys go flying off, and making the instruments scream. All of a sudden, Gershon shrieks, 'This is the end of the world!'"
Dr. Robert Moog

Well, Bob, it's not the end of the world. As you created my sound with your creation, I will continue to define it with my definition... God Willing!

Keith Emerson
August 22, 2005

Photo - Keith Emerson and Bob Moog ca 1970