インタビューに答えている彼の言葉を抜粋:
“but I don’t like the idea of leaving so many people that I love behind, and I want to enjoy this time with them. I don’t want to be feeling sick and tired from the drugs.”
“I have had a brilliant life. I’ve done everything I’ve ever dreamed of, fulfilled every ambition, and these things happen.” But he did not want to go public. “If I announce that I’m ill it’ll be all over the internet and, I know it sounds awful, but I don’t want all the sympathy that will bring. I don’t want to have,” he said, with a chuckle, “a Facebook death.”
ドクトル レイク:2016年1月に イタリアの音楽学校から名誉学位を送られた。
ここで、Annie Barbazzaの歌声が心にしみる。Dr. Lake はもう一度演奏したいと。Dr. Lake はスカイプを通してこのセレモニーに出席している。
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNlCObj8emM&t=929s
here's no end to my life,
No beginning to my death
Death is life!
He walked using a highly decorative stick he’d found on eBay. He had lost so much weight he was barely recognisable as the powerfully built bass player who had once led one of the world’s biggest rock bands.
But in the almost-deserted dining room of the Petersham Hotel in Richmond, Surrey, just over a year ago, Greg Lake – formerly of Emerson, Lake & Palmer – was in defiant mood.
The cancer he had been fighting for a few years, that had left his body shattered and his hands – as he put it – “broken” so he could no longer play his beloved guitar, was not going to be beaten by drugs. So he had decided he wouldn’t have any more chemotherapy.
“I’m not frightened of dying,” he said, “but I don’t like the idea of leaving so many people that I love behind, and I want to enjoy this time with them. I don’t want to be feeling sick and tired from the drugs.”
He had no bitterness: “I have had a brilliant life. I’ve done everything I’ve ever dreamed of, fulfilled every ambition, and these things happen.” But he did not want to go public. “If I announce that I’m ill it’ll be all over the internet and, I know it sounds awful, but I don’t want all the sympathy that will bring. I don’t want to have,” he said, with a chuckle, “a Facebook death.”
“When Pete Sinfield and I wrote I Believe In Father Christmas it was about how Christmas had deteriorated and was in danger of becoming yet another victim of crass corporate financial exploitation.
ピート・シンフィールドと僕が"I believe in Father Christmas"を書いた時、いかにクリスマスが堕落し、キリストとは別の意味での犠牲、愚鈍な財界団体の搾取の犠牲に徐々になってきているか、その脅威について歌ったんだ。」
“As much as I love everyone having a good time, it’s more than 12 pints of lager and a crate of Baileys. It’s more important to make some spiritual human contact, or visit someone lonely.”
“We never had any commercial or financial intentions, but of course now everyone wants to know how it feels to receive all the lovely royalties, which are apparently delivered by wheelbarrow by Santa himself, after a long day climbing down everybody’s chimneys.”
"I have been Greg's manager and close friend since 1972,” explains Stewart Young. “In 2014 Greg was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He told me he was going to write his autobiography and it had to be in his own words. He had no regrets. In his wildest dreams he could never imagine having such a wonderful life; how extraordinary to have such a career in music — to do what you want, simply to expand, experiment!
“To love a woman, be married to her for 43 years, have a daughter he would be so proud of and then to cap it all a grandson who is now four years old and became the centre of his life. He then said, with a twinkle in his eye, I truly am a Lucky Man."
“The memoir not only charts the highs and lows of a career in rock music but also reflects on the death of Keith Emerson last year and living with terminal cancer and the end of life. I think Greg can best be summed up by his now-famous line: 'Material wealth is a very fleeting pleasure … when you can buy anything you want and do anything you want, you soon discover that you actually don't want any of it.'"
彼は、末期のすい臓がんで転移もしているので手術は無理と言われたとき、死に対する恐れはなかったと。また、その恐れがあるとは思っていなかったと。その理由として、彼は、自然の力を信じていて死は生の一部だと。そして、葉が散っても誰も泣かない。だって、春になるとまた新しい葉が生えるからと。『Death is Life』の概念(展覧会の絵の最後の言葉だ。)。Stewart Young のEulogy(賛辞)の最後の締めくくりが And Gabriel rode round and round and round …..となっているが、グレッグが去年のクリスマスにガブリエル(グレッグの孫)にプレゼントした自転車にガブリエルが乗って、まわっていると終えているが、自然の輪廻をそのまま受け止めているグレッグの哲学がここに現れている。