Keith Emerson and The Nice performing a wild live version of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s “America” from West Side Story. “America” was the second single from The Nice, released in 1968 on Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate Records..

This is the earliest color live footage that exists of the band, a clip from the Swiss television program, Hits a GoGo. Emerson does that thing with the knives stabbing his keyboard that he continued to do onstage with Emerson, Lake & Palmer. In the interview afterwards with co-hosts Suzanne Doucet and Hardy Hepp, Emerson gets asked “what’s with the knives?” Aside from the practical (he can hold down notes with the knives and play other things) and that it looks really cool, he says they’re symbolic of the violence and assassinations gripping America that year. In a protest against the war in Vietnam, Emerson once burned the American flag onstage during this number.

Emerson would often embellish the tune with melodies heard in Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” and Dave Brubeck’s jazz standard, “Blue Rondo ala Turk.”