The Nice

For the greater part of their three-year run as a working unit, The Nice operated chiefly as a devoted niche ensemble instead of household names, although they later secured prominent success throughout England together with an expanding audience abroad. While crafting notable albums and staging even stronger concerts, the band linked mid-1960s psychedelic pop to 1970s art rock and thereby laid essential groundwork for the subsequent surge of progressive rock. Keith Emerson began his shift from an unrecognized musician to an international rock figure precisely while serving in The Nice.

Their beginnings, ironically, gave little indication that they would become an avant-garde act, since they started life as a support group modeled on Booker T. & the MG's for the American-born soul singer P.P. Arnold, a former Ikette whom producer, manager, and music executive Andrew Oldham intended to position as the next Tina Turner. Keyboardist Keith Emerson had already performed with Gary Farr & the T-Bones, while the new rhythm section drew on fellow T-Bones veterans Lee Jackson on bass and Ian Hague on drums, and ex-Attack guitarist Davy O'List completed the lineup.

Formed in May 1967, the quartet soon received unexpected latitude within their role as Arnold's backing musicians. Part of that role involved warming audiences before her entrance, and the singer encouraged them to perform whatever material they wished; consequently, ambitious original compositions by the members began appearing alongside soul standards, and the opening sets quickly attracted their own following. By summer the group received separate billing at the National Jazz and Blues Festival, and by autumn 1967 they had secured an independent recording agreement with Oldham's Immediate Records. Hague emerged as the weak link, however, and by the time formal sessions commenced he had been succeeded by Brian Davison, formerly O'List's bandmate in The Attack.

An unusually spontaneous ensemble in keeping with the era, they blended psychedelic blues featuring extended cadenza-like keyboard passages on piano or Hammond organ with ornate, flamboyant guitar work that recalled Jimi Hendrix; amid pop gestures and forceful piano and guitar figures, classical, soul, and jazz elements could be discerned. Their debut album stood ready for release early in 1968 yet reached stores only later that year, by which point they had issued a single to promote it—an energetic, showy instrumental treatment of “America” from the musical West Side Story. The track received extensive airplay and appeared poised for British chart entry until objections arose over an ill-judged picture sleeve and composer Leonard Bernstein protested the unauthorized rearrangement, thereby restricting domestic sales and blocking an American release.

The first year of activity had begun to generate a following for the band, and especially for the flamboyant Emerson, within England. The organist inserted knives into his keyboards, ignited objects onstage (including, on one occasion at Royal Albert Hall, the American flag, which risked a diplomatic incident), and simulated intercourse with his instrument; by 1968 he was already being called the Jimi Hendrix of the keyboard. The debut album, The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack, sounded unlike virtually anything else then available, with eerie organ lines and slashing guitar attacks colliding while heavily disguised quotations from Dave Brubeck and Johann Sebastian Bach surfaced within the songs, signaling something singular about the group.

They were developing their second album when Davy O'List departed in early autumn 1968 owing to personal difficulties; he was not replaced, leaving The Nice a trio of keyboard, bass (with occasional guest guitar), and drums. Their sound grew tighter and moved in a fresh direction, the centerpiece of Ars Longa Vita Brevis being the title suite for band and orchestra that occupied the entire second side and incorporated an arrangement of a movement from Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. Another highlight was the group’s reading of the intermezzo from Jean Sibelius’s The Karelia Suite, and both classically derived pieces dominated the record.

Issued in November 1968, only four months after the debut, Ars Longa Vita Brevis earned strong reviews yet failed to chart without a supporting single. By then manager Tony Stratton-Smith had grown concerned about the financial stability of Immediate Records, which constantly faced creditors and hangers-on spending company funds. Plans nevertheless proceeded for a third album, originally conceived as a live recording from the group’s early 1969 Fillmore East dates in the United States. The resulting set, issued under several titles including Nice and Everything as Nice as Mother Makes It (later Nice #3), combined live and studio tracks that displayed the band at increasing strength and continuing evolution even within the album itself. The overt psychedelic touches of the first two records had vanished, replaced by concentrated jazz and classical elements; the lean trio surged through material yet remained subtle enough to insert playful embellishments. The album reached number three on the British charts, elevating The Nice among the nation’s leading acts, and their popularity in Europe prompted the formation of a Dutch counterpart, Ekseption, led by admirer Rick van der Linden.

Around the time of the third album’s appearance, Immediate Records finally declared bankruptcy. Stratton-Smith had already prepared for the group’s departure from the label, and the collapse supplied the opportunity. In 1969 the band entered unprecedented artistic territory when they received a formal commission—the first ever granted a rock group—to compose a work for rock ensemble and orchestra for the prestigious Newcastle Arts Festival scheduled that autumn. They responded with “The Five Bridges Suite,” performed at the festival and later recorded in Croydon. Together with additional live recordings and various shorter studio pieces still in progress, the commission supplied enough high-quality material for two complete albums. The Five Bridges, issued on Stratton-Smith’s new Charisma label in Britain and on Mercury in America, became the band’s strongest seller to that point.

Emerson nevertheless concluded that the group had reached its musical limits, particularly given longstanding constraints on the vocal front; Jackson was a restricted singer and Emerson scarcely sang at all (his lead vocal on “Happy Freuds” from the second album is the exception). Late in 1969 he encountered King Crimson while sharing a Fillmore West bill and was struck by vocalist-bassist Greg Lake, who in turn had grown dissatisfied within Crimson. Emerson contacted Lake, who agreed to collaborate, so Emerson was already committed to leaving by the end of that winter, although the decision was not made public until spring. Meanwhile The Nice continued performing memorable concerts that were taped and contributed to The Five Bridges. After Emerson’s departure Stratton-Smith assembled Elegy, a compilation of late-era live and studio performances that highlighted Emerson’s playing. Both albums appeared in America on Mercury and achieved respectable sales. In 1973 Stratton-Smith released a further collection, issued as Autumn to Spring or Autumn 1967/Spring 1968, containing alternate takes and mixes drawn from the first two Immediate albums.

In subsequent decades, Emerson’s later fame with Emerson, Lake & Palmer, combined with the Immediate bankruptcy that placed the catalog under successive uninterested receivers and well-intentioned producers, resulted in the three Immediate albums appearing in varied configurations on vinyl and CD. The present-day reissues constitute the finest available documentation of that phase of the band’s history. Jackson and Davison pursued several unsuccessful projects and in 1973 attempted another try by forming Refugee with keyboardist Patrick Moraz, yet the venture attracted little attention despite strong music. By the late 1970s shifting tastes had also ended Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s run. In 1999 Emerson, Jackson, and Davison reunited for a single performance marking a personal occasion, yielding a live album; Davison’s death in 2008 ended any prospect of further reunions. During summer 2009 Virgin/EMI, custodian of the Charisma catalog, issued expanded and remastered editions of the 1969–1970 material along with the double-CD Fillmore East compiled from rediscovered tapes of the December 1969 concerts.