Lucky Man

Lake wrote Lucky Man when his mother bought him a guitar at twelve, using the first chords he had learned: D, A minor, E minor and G. He rehearsed it with King Crimson in early 1968. It went on the debut album because the band needed one more song. The others disliked his childhood version, so Lake worked on it in the studio with Palmer, adding overdubs of bass, triple-tracked acoustic guitars, electric guitar and harmony vocals until it sounded like a record.

The lyrics tell of a man who had everything, went to war and died. Emerson's Moog solo at the end was recorded in one take. It begins as a drone on a low D before leaping up two octaves, using the glide control throughout. Emerson said he was just jamming and was devastated to learn it would be used, because all the tracks had been used. He later said "That's the solo I've had to live with!"

Released as a single in December 1970, it reached 48 on the Billboard Hot 100, 25 in Canada and 14 in the Netherlands. A reissue in December 1972 reached 51 in the US and 71 in Canada. Record World called it a dazzling beauty of a song with a haunting acoustic sound.

Live and afterlife

On stage Lake usually played the song alone on acoustic guitar. The band tried a full arrangement at Mar y Sol in 1972, dropped it, then made the band version standard from the Emerson, Lake & Powell tour of 1986 and again from 1992 until the final show in 2010. On Emerson, Lake & Powell's live album Emerson sings a verse through a vocoder. The song turned up in The Simpsons in 2010, in the film BlacKkKlansman in 2018, and as the closing theme of CBC Radio One's The Next Chapter. Lake's posthumous autobiography is titled Lucky Man.