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By Eric Sandberg
For hard core progressive rock fans, the name Robert Berry should be a familiar one. Up to a point, Berry's career in music paralleled that of Trevor Rabin. Like Trevor, Robert led a successful albeit regionally band called Hush in the Northwest before receiving the John Kalodner treatment.
First, Kalodner paired Robert up with Steve Howe in an attempted revamp of GTR after Steve Hackett's departure from that band. Some of the rehearsal material from this period has appeared on bootlegs and subsequent Berry solo albums, but the project did not proceed.
Kalodner's next idea was to team Berry up with Carl Palmer and, ultimately, Keith Emerson in new band to be called 3. On the surface [and in reality] 3 was an attempt to replicate the early 80's success of the re-tooled Yes featuring Trevor Rabin and the breakout success of the first Asia album.
There is some fine work on To The Power Of 3, but emphasis was put on the more commercial tracks that proved to be anything but. Emerson, who we all now sadly know, was hypersensitive to criticism from his fans, and decided to end 3 before it could realize its potential.
Before his untimely death in 2016, Keith had had a change of heart about 3 and was actively collaborating with Robert Berry on music for a long overdue follow up album. Now, armed with immense talent, a clear vision and the blessing of Aaron Emerson and Keith's estate Robert has completed the album utilizing several of Keith's compositions and arrangements while playing all of the music himself.
The resulting album 3.2 The Rules Have Changed is a surprise critical and commercial success and is serving, along with preparations for ELP's 50th anniversary in 2020, to keep Keith's memory as one of rock's greatest composers.
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Robert about the album and his future plans surrounding this project and his career. Robert is warm, engaging and humble but, enough of my yakkin'. Read for yourself.
Eric Sandberg: Tell me how you're feeling about the response to 3.2: The Rules Have Changed.
Robert Berry: Everything is still moving along with the album and the response has been so great I'm not really believing it. It's really something.
Eric: Well, you know what? It's really good! To think I might have missed it. I do my due diligence and scroll through those Amazon upcoming release listings for hours and I spotted it and preordered it immediately.
RB: It's a wonder that the album got such a great pre-launch start. A lot of people discovered it and pre-ordered it. It's not like the record company is taking out ads on TV for it. I think when people discover something on their own they take a little extra ownership of it. I don't know but it's been pretty exciting for me, I'll tell you that.
Eric: The album was waiting for me when I came home from a vacation and I listened to it in bed with earphones expecting to fall asleep to it, but i ended up to listening to the whole thing twice!
As I listened, I thought "Wow, Keith is all over this thing! This is vintage Keith!" The next morning I looked at the booklet and, hidden in all the extraneous information, I found "Instrumentation: Robert Berry" You played all the instruments yourself and you seem to be pretty humble about it.
RB: First of all, I wanted it to be about the music. The bottom line is, I don't need credit for playing everything, but it's hard to explain this over the phone, but I had twenty percent of Keith's playing on there.
Keith and I would be on the phone many nights, each of us at a piano, jamming back and forth. I was desperately trying to learn and keep up with what Keith was playing for me. He'd play 'diddlydowdiddlydowdiddldow' and I'd be playing 'ding, ding, ding clunk.'
We worked it so I could get his musical ideas down in Pro Tools and then I could start to build songs around them. So, besides having twenty percent of his actual playing for the album, I had all these little jam sessions where he was giving me ideas.
I don't want to take credit for composing music just like Keith's. To use writing as a metaphor, Keith might write 'There was a brown dog' and I might add 'and he had a fluffy tail' as opposed to Keith saying 'Write about a dog' and me taking it from there.
As for why Keith's playing is not on the album, his estate actually asked me to take it off. Six months on from his death I had no plans to do this album but Aaron Emerson had reached out to me and thought it would be a great thing to do.
I sent him a recording of the first song on the album "One By One" which starts with a really difficult duel piano piece Keith and I had worked up. Aaron said "Oh man, that's my dad. I don't play like that!" I said "Nobody plays like your dad!" but he said "That's just not what I do." But Aaron reaching out to me is what rekindled the spark to make me want to do this album.
I decided to do it by myself but it was daunting. I looked at the music I had in Pro Tools and it looked like a Halloween pumpkin that was missing a lot of teeth. I had snippets and fragments, I had to fill in a lot of blanks but it was all inspired by him. I was just trying to continue on with the plan we had laid out.
The only reason I wanted to finish this album was to bring to fruition all the outline of our plan, and all the sessions and conversations I had with the most famous friend I ever had, Keith Emerson. Him and Sammy Hagar. Sammy's still cooking away as we all know.
It was important for me to do it exactly the way we had planned. Getting back to what you were saying about me being humble about the instrumentation. This was always about the music and the plan Keith and I had to make a second 3 album, to follow through with that after all these years. That was my only guideline.
I took what I knew about his playing and how we batted things back and forth. All the conversations we had about the music were foremost in my mind as I did this. I kept having conversations with him in my head even though he wasn't there. "What would you do here?" So I can't really take credit for all that. I guess putting it in the credits like that indicates that I'm capable of doing all that but also allows the album to be taken on its musical merits.
Eric: It is an astounding album and I don't think you have to worry about it, because the spirit of Keith Emerson absolutely comes through.
RB: That's fantastic that you feel that way. I had so much self doubt about this. I spent hundreds of hours working in my studio in the dark with the only light coming from my Pro Tools screen.
I had to work very hard to get my piano skills back up to snuff. I'm capable of it because I had eight years of classical training and jazz but it was still hard. I had kind of left that befind. My identity is as a bass playing singer. I've gotten to play with Beck and Geoff Downes and Ambrosia. Great keyboard players. I had left the keyboards behind.
I not only had to create parts to link Keith's parts together, I now had to play Keith's existing pieces myself because they didn't want his playing on the album. They said they wanted him "to be remembered as a composer, not a rock keyboard player." I said "You're kidding me, right." I was amazed and heartbroken at the same time.
Eric: That's insane.
RB: He was the Jimi Hendrix of the keyboard. The only guy that held a Hammond organ behind his back and stuck knives into it. He decided to get out of classical music to form a rock band.
Eric: Jimi played a guitar behind his head. Keith played an organ on his back!
RB: Keith was much stronger! (laughter)
When I finished the album I felt obligated to share it with the record company [Frontiers Music] but I didn't think they'd be interested due of my having to remove Keith from the album but they immediately wanted to put it out. Keith and I started the new 3 project with a a record deal, financial backing and full artistic control already in place.
I thought, first let me get a little feedback on it. First I sent it to Rolf Remlinger who runs a Facebook group dedicated to 3 or Emerson, Berry and Palmer. I sent him a couple of songs and he said “Oh my God, you need to put this out!” I still didn’t buy it, Rolf’s really close to it and he loves everything.
So I sent it to this woman in Scotland who had worked with Keith at one time, is a great keyboardist and loves ELP. I figured she’d give it to me straight. Some devout ELP fans didn’t exactly like what 3 was doing. She came back to me asking “How did you do this? I hear Keith all over this! And the solos! I know Keith didn’t play them but it sounds like something he would come up with!”
It wasn’t that she came out and said “Boy, this is really good,” it was all questions: “How? Why? What? I thought, if I can get that from the music, that would mean that I had brought out the second 3 album as Keith and I had planned. Why not give it try and honor Keith and add just a little bit to his legacy?
Eric: I would imagine another concern about you putting yourself out there alone with this project was the original acceptance, or lack thereof, of the band back in 1988.
Personally, I grew up listening to all the great bands of the 1970’s that are now lumped into this category now derisively [by me] known as “PROG.” At the time, though, these bands just happened to be channeling their classical and jazz influences and expanding the boundaries of rock music. They all did it very differently and sound nothing like each other.
Today’s pantheon of PROG musicians sound quite interchangeable to me by comparison. It seems like the only thing that came through from that era was the massive chops. In 1988, my jaded view of the 3 project was “Oh, I see. We’ve traded traded in Greg Lake and gotten a shiny new Trevor Rabin, ka-ching!”
There was some very good stuff on that album but the focus tracks sounded like they missed the point that “Owner Of A Lonely Heart” and “Heat Of The Moment” were pretty much quirky flukes. The guitar solos on either of those songs did not scream Top 40.
RB: It was very hard for Keith because, if you were an ELP fan, you didn’t criticise Carl for being there because he had already been successful with Asia. You criticised Keith because he hadn’t gone ‘there’ before. That’s why he broke up the band in 1989. He couldn’t take the criticism.
Eric: After Yes had reinvented themselves and Steve Howe and Carl reinvented themselves, this was Keith’s attempt to reinvent himself for the 80s but the constraints put on him by this format were just not who he was or could ever be.
RB: In at least half the songs and that was the mistake. John Kalodner, in developing me as a solo artist, saw me as Bryan Adams meets Sting. At least three of the songs that came from that should not have been on the album but Geffen had already spent money on them.
Eric: And now this new album was begun with you and a Keith Emerson who were unshackled from from those constraints which is what allows it to be so good.
RB: With all the interviewers I’ve talked to about this album you're the first person to talk about it from the perspective of the past to the present like this. Talking to you has made me realize that, perhaps unconsciously, was my goal all along.
I wanted to present what the second album by guys who had recorded together, toured together and grown together would have sounded like.
Eric: Your mentioning the touring aspect of the band brings me to my next question. The release of 3: Live In Boston a few years ago is evidence that the band live was something to be reckoned with. In a live setting 3 seemed completely unshackled from those constraints, even on the songs that were supposed to be pop breakthroughs. I think it put the bands legacy in a new light? Was that a factor that contributed to the making of this album?
RB: That’s exactly why we have a this second album because Keith got a copy of that live album. In 1989 Keith had gotten a couple of letters from fans that really read him the riot act and he took them to heart and said “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
When he listened to that album he called me up and said “Oh my God, we were such a good band!” I couldn’t believe my ears because, as much as we have done things together here and there over the years, I’ve never brought up to him the idea of doing a second 3 album. I knew he had left it behind but here he is calling me, excited about how good that live in Boston is.
I was flabbergasted at how excited he was and, when he finally calmed down, I said “What do you think about doing a second album?’ He very calmly said “Maybe.” (laughter) I told him “The record company has been bugging me for ten years but I never mentioned it because I didn’t think you’d be interested.”
So we talked about it and how it might work and I told him I’d talk to Frontiers and see what we would be able to do. The funny thing was, I called Serafino (Perugino) at Frontiers in Italy, who wanted this album, and he said “We’re ready! Let’s do it!” I said “We want complete artistic freedom…”
Yes! OK, let’s do it! When can you start?” “...and we want [this much] money…” We’re good!”
He was so excited about it. I called Keith back and said “Keith, all our demands and contract parameters have been met! Including the money.” He said “You’re kidding me.Nobody cares anymore.” I said “Well this guy cares.”
Eric: Thank God for him! How much great music have we had a chance to hear over the past couple of decades because of him and his love for classic and progressive rock?
RB: Oh my my God! It gives guys who would normally be playing the oldies circuit or the county fairs the opportunity, if they have the will, to create something new. A lot of these bands are stepping up and giving us good stuff. Frontiers provides a platform for these guys to take the idea of making a new album seriously. No one else is doing that that I know of.
Eric: You also have Mr. Udo in Japan who, at the very least, got UFO back together with Michael Schenker and Ron Nevison because he was a fan, he wanted it to happen, and he had the money to make it happen.
RB: It costs a lot of money to write, record, press and distribute a record, at least before it became primarily an online business which is much cheaper. Unfortunately most artists don’t reap the benefit of that.
Eric: With all the technology available today you don’t even have to rent studio time to make a record.
RB: I think renting a studio to record the basic tracks is still preferable but you can use Pro Tools to fix stuff rather than being in the studio for weeks doing multiple takes.You can fix stuff, cut it up, move it around and achieve the same result without spending a fortune on studio time. A studio provides you with the ability to achieve high-level artistry and software helps you get to the finish line more quickly.
I work with clients in my studio five days a week unless I’m on tour or working on my own album. It’s booked every day. I have to turn people away. People like to use a studio because they don’t have the experience to record stuff at home to a high standard. I’ve been recording and engineering my own stuff since I was twelve years old. People want that expertise and don’t want to try to do it by themselves.
Whitesnake, for example, would never record an album at home. They’re going to go into a studio. They work in a really good studio up in northern California because they want to keep that standard up.
Eric: I remember when Yes recorded Talk, Trevor Rabin recorded the whole thing on his computer at his house. After it was done he said “I’m Never doing that again!” [laughter]
RB: He did it before it was easy to do. That was an amazing album. What he did with that was really something. He’s also one of those guys that has been engineering his own stuff since he was a baby. He knows what he’s doing.
Eric: What are your plans going forward regarding 3.2. Is this something you can take on tour?
RB: I had not planned on touring behind this but a manager called me and said “Look, I’m going to put you on the road. This is a tremendous album, there is a lot of great stuff here. I’m going to send you from South America and Russia and everywhere in between next year.”
This time it was my turn to say “You’re kidding me!” He said he wasn’t and that this was an important piece of work and he was looking at my history in, “progressive rock”. Although I’m not necessarily fond of that term, I do have a thirty year history that began when I started working with Steve Howe in a new lineup of GTR.
That didn’t quite work out but it led to me joining with Carl and Keith in 3. I worked with Sammy Hagar in the 90s, so I wouldn’t include any of that, but I also worked with Ambrosia who, despite that big pop hit of theirs, was really a progressive rock band. I’d like to do “Life Beyond LA” on this tour, which I love.
Than I have material from my solo album Pilgrimage To A Point [1992] which included songs that would have been on GTR II and a second 3 album and some songs from The Dividing Line that was out on Frontiers ten years ago. If I line this up with a couple of songs from 3.2 I have about an hour and a half of my greatest hits including “Desde La Vida” from the first 3 album, plus I have the cover versions that I did for the four Magna Carta tribute albums to Yes, Jethro Tull, Genesis and Rush.
Steve Howe loves my version of “Roundabout” and even played on the end part with me. Ian Anderson loves my version of “Minstrel In The Gallery”, I did “Watcher The Skies” with my band Hush and I played lead guitar on “Mission” on the Rush tribute, so I would incorporate those four songs with those classic prog numbers that I recorded in my style with a bit a of a deeper groove on them.
I’m going to put all that together and do this greatest hits, thirty years of prog show. I’ll have Paul Keller with me on guitar and I also have a drummer from a fairly well-known band. I can’t say who just yet and, right now, I’m searching for a keyboard player who isn’t thinking too much because he’s going to have to be really good but he’s also going to have to say “yes” when it comes to learning all this material which is going to be really hard.
All the details aren’t in place just yet but I’m working on it. I’m also working on a vinyl edition which will be out in December and everybody is bugging me for T-shirts! The record company won’t put out a vinyl. I don’t know why. You know the 3.2 album sold out by noon on the day of release. It took seven weeks for a second pressing of the CD to be available on Amazon again. Frontiers had to send them everything they had, including my copy. I didn’t even get my one copy, which is my chance to see the finished product. It’s kind of a badge of honor when you finally get that shrink wrapped CD as sort of a trophy for your efforts. I didn’t get mine for two weeks. You had yours, I didn’t have mine! [laughter]
That seems wrong. I said, “Hey guys, wouldn’t it be nice if I could post a picture of myself on Facebook holding the album!?”
Eric: That reminds me of when I was a paperboy and I kept getting shorted and my dad wouldn’t get his paper. He would shout “HOW COME MY SON IS THE PAPER BOY AND I DON’T GET A PAPER!?” [laughter]
RB: Anyway, getting back to the tour, I’m looking forward to getting it all pulled together. I want it to be in intimate venues because, in addition to the music, I want to be able to tell some of the stories behind the songs and about working with legends like Carl Palmer, Steve Howe and Keith Emerson. I also want it to be a tribute to the work Keith put into the 3.2 project that shows that he still had it...he was still on top of a game as a composer.
