Knife-Edge - Alternate Take; 2012 Stereo Mix

A track from the debut Emerson, Lake & Palmer album, "Knife-Edge" incorporates themes of madness and desperation. Greg Lake sings: From the flight of the seagull Come the spread claws of the eagle Only fear breaks the silence As we all kneel pray for guidance Later in the song, the images get even more bleak, with references to "the gallows" and "the furnace," invoking the fiery underworld. In the end, Lake asks the question: Can you still keep your balance? Can you live on a knife-edge?

ELP songs started with the music and had to stand on their own before they would consider vocals. In our interview with drummer Carl Palmer, he said: "'Knife Edge,' which was the only rock track on the very first album, was something which came together very, very quickly in the studio and really worked - it was fantastic. We thought it was an instrumental, and Greg said, 'No, hang on.' He said, 'I could put a topline on this, we could have something.'"

Keith Emerson came up with the music for this song, incorporating many elements of classical music. His bandmates didn't know it at the time, but much of it was based on a 1926 piece by the Czech composer Leos Janacek called "Sinfonietta." A few years after "Knife-Edge" was released, the publisher who owned the rights to "Sinfonietta" brought up the issue, and Janacek was given a songwriting credit. Johann Sebastian Bach is also credited, as the song uses quotations from his "French Suite in D Minor."