1975 I Believe In Father Christmas

.....Finding this song on CD is quite easy. Finding this version is trickier, but not impossible.

• 03:31 "I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS" (Greg Lake, Peter Sinfield)
• 02:25 b/w "HUMBUG" (Greg Lake, Peter Sinfield)
• performed by Greg Lake
• original source: 7" Manticore K13511 (UK) November 10th, 1975
• as well as this: 7" Atlantic 45-3305 (US) November 10th, 1975
• and my source: CDEP I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS Rhino R2 72242 (US) 1995

.....Originally intended for release in 1974, production would have needed to be rushed and the quality and promotional campaign both would have suffered, usually not a concern for Christmas-themed pop singles. Released the following year on Lake's 28th birthday, it seemed to have benefited from the preparation commercially, at least. According to Martin Strong's Great Rock Discography (7th ed.) it reached #2 in the UK, but only #95 in the US. Despite that, Lake has received flak for the song, criticizing what is clearly a sense of disillusionment pervading the lyrics. Most telling is that the closest line to the title actually says, "I believed [past tense] in Father Christmas". I would guess most people's confusion stems from Lake protesting both the over-commercialization of Christmas and the persistence of warfare in lieu of 'Peace On Earth'. Instead of focusing on one (as Jethro Tull had regarding commercialization) or the other (as John Lennon had with warfare) he conflated the two, reminding us that we would never have felt disillusionment so crushingly if we had not allowed ourselves to be sold easy answers and cheap gaudy violence when true beauty and true solutions were always available (it ends with the line "The Christmas we get, we deserve"). The promotional video clip (common on television and other venues in England and Europe long before MTV existed) featured Lake playing guitar in Israel while camels walk by in the background, superimposed with stock footage of warfare reportedly shot in Vietnam. It's not obvious whether this was a comment on violence in the Middle East specifically or on warfare generally with a locale associated with Christmas.

.....Greg Lake co-wrote and co-produced the single with his old King Crimson cohort Peter Sinfield. Sinfield also contributed to LP BRAIN SALAD SURGERY(1973), Emerson, Lake and Palmer's previous studio album. At that point King Crimson had already overhauled their line-up for LP LARKS' TONGUES IN ASPIC (1973) and Sinfield was moving on creatively and professionally. Lake, on the other hand, was squarely in his ELP element. Approached for comment on U2's 2008 cover of this song he explained that while the song's verse structure is simple and straightforward the musical structure integrates classical and popular/folk themes. [ The whole statement can be found at atu2blog.com/would-you-believe/1116/ .] Prominent among the classical themes is a portion of Sergei Prokofiev's "LIEUTENANT KIJE SUITE" (Op.60). Aiding and abetting to that end is Godfrey Salmon conducting The London Philharmonic Orchestra with The King's Singers. Lake performed bass, guitars and vocals and the whole thing was recorded at Advision Studios, London.

.....After an extended break from recording, ELP returned in 1977 with 2LP WORKS Volume 1 and LP WORKS Volume 2, collections of shorter unrelated pieces without the thematic links of some of their earlier albums. Volume 2 included a rerecording of "I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS", again produced by Lake and Sinfield but without performance credits. They have one other co-written co-production on the same album, a country-inflected love song "WATCHING OVER YOU". The other tracks are various combinations of composers and producers, drawing on the trio and a few associates. It doesn't seem likely that "WATCHING OVER YOU" was intended to be paired with the Christmas song to make a new single. They might have thought that releasing the song under the name ELP might improve sales in the US, but "WATCHING..." doesn't have the holiday appeal of the jaunty "HUMBUG", with what sounds like a glockenspiel and tuba. (For anyone who has never heard the original single, it should be pointed out that each side is in fact the opposite both of what it purports to be and of the other side. The A-side's singer does not believe in Father Christmas. The B-side does not take on the perspective of Ebeneezer Scrooge, dismissing Christmas as fluff and nonsense; it is fluff and nonsense, and a great deal of fun.) In any event, "WATCHING OVER YOU" was eventually paired with "HALLOWED BE THY NAME" from LP WORKS Volume 1 as 7" Atlantic K11061 (UK) Jan/78.

.....Although there were no performance credits for the second recording of "I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS", it's obvious that the orchestra and chorus are gone. Depending on the edit, it's also 10-20 seconds shorter. The ominous sounding echo effect on the last line is gone as well, and it sounds as though a synthesizer is being used to make up the loss of instrumentation previously provided by the orchestra. Still, there's no real change in the rhythm or melody and one would have to hear them back to back to notice many of the differences between them. Should anyone wish to make sense of the history, I have made an ELP Christmas Chronology for my own reference. Because their catalog was remastered nearly twenty years ago that means good news and bad news: the good news is that everything has been on disc; the bad news is that the cost of the remastering and repackaging has been recouped by releasing cheap, cranked out compilations that don't always correctly cite their sources. I'll mark the first appearance of a recording with a "♫" and cite what I can confirm.

• [♫] "NUTROCKER" (Kim Fowley; arranged by ELP) appears on LP PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION (Nov/71). It's a live recording from March 26, 1971, reworking Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and originally recorded in the 1960's as an American studio project.
• 7" Cotillion 45-44151 (US) Mar/72-- "NUTROCKER" is paired with "GREAT GATES OF KIEV", also taken from LP PICTURES...
• [♫] "JERUSALEM" (music: Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, words: William Blake; arranged by ELP) appears on LP BRAIN SALAD SURGERY (Dec/73).
• 7" Manticore K13503 (UK) Dec/73-- "JERUSALEM" is paired with "WHEN THE APPLE BLOSSOM BLOOMS...", a non-album track.
• [♫] "I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS" b/w "HUMBUG", detailed above
• [♫] "I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS" (1977 version) appears on LP WORKS Volume 2 (Nov/77). The song "WHEN THE APPLE BLOSSOMS BLOOM..." also appears there, but since I've never heard the original vinyl version I don't know if it is another remake or the same recording as the 1973 B-side.
• "JERUSALEM" appears on LP THE BEST OF EMERSON LAKE AND PALMER (Nov/80)
• [♫] Keith Emerson releases his solo LP THE CHRISTMAS ALBUM Emerson Records KEITHLP1 (1988). The first track is "TROIKA", the fourth movement of Prokofiev's "LIEUTENANT KIJE SUITE" and the one which Lake used as the basis for "I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS".
• The original 7" "I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS" and "JERUSALEM" appear on 2CD THE ATLANTIC YEARS (Jul/92).
• There's a new vinyl pressing of "I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS" b/w "HUMBUG" released as 7" Atlantic A7393 (UK) (Dec/92) as a fund raiser for the charity Shelter. It has new, very different sleeve artwork by Catherine Brightly.
• [♫] A new, third version of "I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS" appears on the boxed set 4CD THE RETURN OF THE MANTICORE (Nov/93), released a month ahead of a reissue program on the Victory label in which the band's back catalog was remastered for the first time. The box also contained the 1973 "JERUSALEM".
• CD5 Victory/Polygram 383 483 004-2 (US) Dec/93-- a CD single containing three songs: "I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS" (1993 version), "JERSALEM" (1973 version) and "WHEN THE APPLE BLOSSOMS BLOOM..." (1977, which implies that the version appearing on LP WORKS Volume 2 is not the same as the 1973 B-side).
• The first of the redundant exploitation compilations appears, CD CLASSIC ROCK (Apr/95), containing "JERUSALEM".
• CDEP I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS Rhino R2 72242 (US) Nov/95-- This contains five tracks: "I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS" (7" A-side, 1975), "TROIKA" (from the Keith Emerson 1988 album), "HUMBUG" (7" B-side, 1975), "I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS" (1977 version) and "NUTROCKER" (from 1971). Strangely, Peter Sinfield's production credit disappears from the two 1975 tracks, but not from the 1977 one, although he's still acknowledged as co-author in all three cases.
• The 1975 original version of "I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS" is the last track on the new, radically reconfigured CD THE BEST OF EMERSON, LAKE AND PALMER (May/96) on Rhino, in conjunction with a second remaster program.

.....After that it would be ten years before another single-CD compilation included any version of the song, let alone the 1975 A-side. In 2001 a 1972 live version of "NUTROCKER" emerged in a multi-disc set and in 2007 early versions of "JERUSALEM" and "I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS" surfaced (or were buried, depending on your perspective) in 5CD/1DVD FROM THE BEGINNING (Sep/07).

.....The most convenient package is the 1995 CDEP. If you are lucky enough to find a copy, the 1993 CD5 is the only other Christmas-related item here and at that it is unessential and a rare collectible, probably not worth the cost or effort for a listening copy if your only interest is hearing the first song. Comparatively, the EP is more widely available, generally cheaper and has more material, including the only CD appearance of "HUMBUG" ever, to my knowledge.

.....This, I hope, will be the most thorough disambiguation I do for this blog. For February I hope to do shorter and more frequent postings. Between shoveling snow, I mean.