How the Hendrix of the keyboard was trolled to death by his own fans: Keith Emerson's widow claims flamboyant showman was a 'sensitive soul' killed himself after taking cruel jibes to heart 

On stage, a Keith Emerson keyboard solo carried all the pomp and self-importance of a Hamlet monologue delivered by one of our most eminent Shakespeareans. Only with infinitely more theatrics.

Cannons roared, smoke billowed, and flames shot from his electric organ as he swung it around the stage. Piano and pianist would sail through the air above a stunned audience, disappearing in an explosion.

Back on stage, Emerson would attack his keyboard with antique Nazi daggers or wrestle it to the floor as he continued to play it. A giant contraption in the shape of an armadillo would shoot thousands of tiny polystyrene balls into the audience.

Mari Kawaguchi, 52, (left) and Keith Emerson (right) of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, pictured in July 2007

On stage, Emerson would attack his keyboard with antique Nazi daggers or wrestle it to the floor as he continued to play it

As for the decibel level, let’s just say that when fans talked of being ‘blown away’ by an Emerson, Lake and Palmer concert, they weren’t talking entirely metaphorically.

In the days before health and safety noise limits, fans standing at the front of ELP gigs recall that the sonic wave created by the speaker system from the Seventies’ most successful progressive rock band was so powerful it billowed their flared trousers.

Many of those fans have been fondly recalling the crazy, hazy, preposterously over-blown days of ELP as they mourn the sudden and violent death of the band’s founding member and keyboardist.

The Yorkshire-born musician was one of the kings of progressive ‘prog’ rock, an attempt by musicians to bring some credibility to rock in the late Sixties and early Seventies by injecting into it some of the features of classical music.

Emerson died aged 71 at his home in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, on Friday morning from what police said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

It appears that for all his rock dinosaur image, he was the victim of a very modern fate — ‘trolled to death’ by heartless fans who had attacked him online over the quality of his recent music, even suggesting he gave up.

Emerson was one of the kings of progressive ‘prog’ rock, an attempt by musicians to bring some credibility to rock in the late Sixties and early Seventies by injecting into it some of the features of classical music

In fact, he had been suffering for years from a debilitating muscular condition that affected the fingers in his right hand.

‘He read all the criticism online and was a sensitive soul,’ said his Japanese girlfriend, Mari Kawaguchi, 52.

Although he had been planning to retire after a string of upcoming concerts in Japan, he was ‘tormented with worry’ that he wouldn’t be good enough, she said. ‘He didn’t want to let down his fans. He was a perfectionist and the thought he wouldn’t play perfectly made him depressed, nervous and anxious.’

It’s easy to believe that he could have been deeply troubled by the cruel barbs from fans. Not only did Emerson take his music very seriously — even if many others didn’t — but he was a deeply sensitive man who was far from the wild rock star that he appeared on stage.

‘Keith was a gentle soul whose love for music and passion for his performance as a keyboard player will remain unmatched for many years to come,’ said his former bandmate, Carl Palmer.

Nobody could deny that ‘passion’. A gifted classical pianist who was a musical sensation in what became his home town of Worthing, West Sussex, at 14, he set out to do for the keyboard what his friend Jimi Hendrix did for the guitar.

He had been planning to retire after a string of upcoming concerts in Japan but was 'tormented with worry' that he wouldn't be good enough 

Emerson brilliantly exploded the idea keyboard players were the boring, immobile members in a band.

In a decade of gloriously silly musical pretentiousness, Emerson, Lake and Palmer — the band’s name didn’t sound like a puffed-up law firm for nothing — was leagues ahead of the opposition. Even Spinal Tap, the mock-documentary parody of a heavy metal band, didn’t come close to matching the excesses of ELP in its prime.

Emerson set up the band in 1970 with two other successful British musicians, guitarist Greg Lake and drummer Palmer. He had got his previous band, The Nice, banned from playing the Royal Albert Hall after he set fire to a U.S. flag during an irreverent version of the West Side Story song I Want To Be In America.

At ELP’s first concert, on the Isle of Wight in 1970, the band performed a blistering interpretation of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition. It provided a taste of their passion for re-working — critics would say butchering — classical works.

A few months later, their debut album featured high-octane versions of pieces by the Slavic composers Bartok and Janacek, with Emerson being one of the first rock musicians to use electronic synthesisers. Classical purists howled with rage, but fans lapped it up.

Emerson set up the band in 1970 with two other successful British musicians, guitarist Greg Lake and drummer Palmer

If ELP records were bombastic enough, the band’s live appearances were something else. The group toured with 40 tons of equipment, the vast expense justified only by the fact that no one except The Rolling Stones, The Who and Led Zeppelin drew bigger live crowds. It included 13 keyboards and a £2,000 Persian rug that Greg Lake stood on while he played.

Emerson was always centre stage and would be hoisted on a wire 20ft into the air while strapped to a Steinway grand piano. He would then play the instrument while it spun end over end as smoke billowed around him. Finally, in a huge explosion from fireworks inside the piano, it and Emerson would disappear.

The stunt had eventually to stop because Emerson kept getting hurt: once he broke his nose when the piano suddenly stopped mid-spin; another time, the fireworks went off too soon and he was covered in cuts and bruises. Down on stage, the carnage was intense. At that inaugural Isle of Wight performance, a photographer was hurled off stage into the audience by the force of antique cannons firing at the end of one song.

‘We tried the cannons out in a field near Heathrow Airport,’ Emerson said later. ‘They seemed harmless enough.’

Emerson was always centre stage and would be hoisted on a wire 20ft into the air while strapped to a Steinway grand piano

Away from the stage, Emerson was a mild-mannered father-of-two who harboured a lifelong passion for Spitfires after a childhood spent building Airfix kits.

His on-stage antics, however, were inspired by the way Hendrix would pluck guitar strings with his teeth, and even set his instrument on fire.

Emerson went even further. Dressed flamboyantly, he would plunge large Hitler Youth daggers into the two keyboards of his Hammond organ to sustain notes while swinging the instrument around. He’d sometimes extract the knives and hurl them across the stage.

The keyboard was also rigged up so it could shoot flames out across the stage. His band mate Carl Palmer’s revolving drum kit was pretty tame by comparison.

But Emerson’s crowning on-stage glory was Tarkus, a giant stage prop resembling an armadillo-cum-tank that would shoot polystyrene snow over the audience. It didn’t always go to plan. At least once, the armadillo fired into his piano, forcing roadies to run on stage with a vacuum cleaner.

‘There were lots of funny moments among the broken ribs and blown-off fingernails,’ Emerson recalled years later.

According to Greg Lake, in recent years Emerson had become ‘increasingly confused, desperate and depressed'

ELP’s many critics predictably had a field day mocking the trio’s pretensions. The BBC DJ John Peel called the band a ‘waste of time, talent and electricity’. Another detractor asked: ‘How do you spell pretentious? E-L-P.’

And yet the band was hugely successful, producing nine albums — six of them going platinum — before the last one in 1994.

Sadly, according to Greg Lake, in recent years Emerson had become ‘increasingly confused, desperate and depressed’. Lake blamed his friend’s tormented state on drug use and the degenerative disease affecting his hands.

‘I think it’s a very difficult thing to actually describe what depression is,’ said Lake. ‘We all know what it looks like, people’s moods become very black. But it’s more complicated than that. It changes someone personally.’

Ironically, musical fashion has now swung full circle. Synthesisers dominate modern pop music and some of today’s biggest stars were among those paying tribute to Emerson.

What a pity that, after so much abuse, the king of prog rock didn’t live to see the respect and affection in which he was ultimately held.