Tarkus

Tarkus is the second album by British progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer, released in 1971.

The band's March 1971 live recording, Pictures at an Exhibition, an interpretation of Modest Mussorgsky's work of the same name, was to be released as the band's second album. Due to management conflicts, the recording was not released until after Tarkus. The record company was reluctant to release a classical suite as an album, and insisted it be released on their classical music label instead. Fearing that this would lead to poor sales, ELP instead decided to shelve the work. After the success of Tarkus, however, the label agreed to release Pictures as a budget live album.

Recording and concept

Emerson, Lake & Palmer began to work on their second studio album in January 1971.

The cover artwork was commissioned from the painter and graphic designer William Neal.

Keith Emerson said, "To everyone, it represented what we were doing in that studio. The next day on my drive up from Sussex the imagery of the armadillo kept hitting me. It had to have a name. Something guttural. It had to begin with the letter 'T' and end with a flourish. "Tarka the Otter" may have come into it, but this armadillo needed a science fiction kind of name that represented Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in reverse. Some mutilation of the species caused by radiation..."Tarkus"!"