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Endless Enigma: A Musical Biography of Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

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Endless Enigma: A Musical Biography of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. By Edward Macan. Chicago: Open Court Press, 2006. [xlv, 817 p. ISBN 0-8126-9596-8. $49.95.] Appendices, indexes.

Endless Enigma: A Musical Biography of Emerson, Lake and Palmer by Edward Macan must rate as one of the most substantive and meticulous critical biographies of a rock band ever written. The work represents an enormous scholarly effort that examines this influential and often polarizing band from a myriad of perspectives and in intricate detail.

Author of the well-known Rocking The Classics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), Macan situates his book in the context of several recent critical studies of progressive rock including Paul Stump's The Music's All That Matters: A History of Progressive Rock (London: Quartet Books, 1997), Bill Martin's Listening to the Future: The Time of Progressive Rock (Chicago: Open Court Press, 1998), and the book edited by Kevin Holm-Hudson, Progressive Rock Reconsidered (New York: Routledge, 2002). He also places his work in relation to several recent biographical studies dedicated to Emerson, Lake and Palmer (hereafter ELP), notably Emerson Lake and Palmer: The Show That Never Ends by George Forrester, Martyn Hanson and Frank Askew (London: Helter Skelter, 2001) and Keith Emerson's autobiography Pictures of an Exhibitionist (London: John Blake, 2003).

Macan's goals for his book are clearly delineated in his introduction. In addition to providing a "comprehensive biography of the band," he endeavors to provide "a comprehensive critical survey of the...

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