Echo MandalaA fanzine about psychedelic and progressive music

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Emerson, Lake & Palmer — Pictures at an Exhibition

What the critics heard when these records were new. Original reviews, release anniversaries and chart histories.

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First release · United Kingdom
Album cover: Emerson, Lake & Palmer — Pictures at an Exhibition (Original 1971 UK Island Records release (HELP 1))
Cover source ↗Emerson, Lake & Palmer / Island Records / Cover Art Archive (MusicBrainz)
1971

Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Pictures at an Exhibition

progressive rocksymphonic progart rock
Hostile review

Pictures at an Exhibition: the hostile Circus review that got ELP wrong

Released in the United Kingdom on 12 November 1971. A contemporary hostile review by Ed Kelleher in Circus, alongside chart results in the US, UK and Germany with their dates.

The verdict at the time

Kelleher dismissed Pictures at an Exhibition as 'genuinely awful and pretentious' and a 'cynical' fusion of rock and classical music. The hostile verdict belongs to Ed Kelleher and Circus, not to Echo Mandala.

Ed Kelleher · Circus ·

Read the contemporary review

Chart peaks

USA#10Billboard 2001972 · Original release periodChart source
UK#3Official Albums Chart1971-12-04 · Original release periodChart source
Europe · Germany#9Offizielle Top 1001971 · Original release periodChart source

European positions are listed by country. Later chart entries are labelled separately.

Sources & context

One critic's opinion, summarised from Ed Kelleher's Circus review of April 1972. The album is now recognised as a seminal document of progressive rock and a landmark in the adaptation of classical music for rock bands.

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