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They may have called themselves The Nice, but they managed to find trouble both on and off stage in their late 60s heyday. In 2011 – five years before his death – keyboard maestro Keith Emerson explained why he’d burned the Stars And Stripes flag during their cover of Leonard Bernstein’s America, and the effect it had on their career.

In 1967 keyboardist Keith Emerson, guitarist Davy O’List, bassist Lee Jackson and drummer Ian Hague came together to form the backing band for American soul singer PP Arnold, who’d decided to develop her solo career in the UK. As part of the deal, the group were able to perform their own set before Arnold joined them, and their unusual approach to making music meant they’d come to be seen as one of the earliest proponents of progressive rock.

Named The Nice, and featuring Brian Davidson in place of Hague, they stepped out on their own with 1968 album The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack (the character’s name a concoction of the members’ names). One of its most notable tracks was a reinterpretation of jazz icon Dave Brubeck’s Blue Rondo a la Turk, retitled Rondo. As the late Emerson told Prog in 2011, Brubeck liked what they’d done: “He gave me his autograph. He’d signed it: ‘Thank you, Keith, for your 4/4 version. Which I cannot play.’”

The Nice were to become notable and notorious for a different cover – their 1968 version of Leonard Bernstein’s America, which tore out all the positivity regarding the United States and became something much, much darker. “We’d just done a gig on the Isle Of Wight when we found out that Senator Robert Kennedy had been shot dead,” Emerson said.

“He was trying to get the Democratic party nomination to run for the presidency of the US. That got me thinking. A few years earlier John F Kennedy had been shot, then Martin Luther King. It seemed to me that American was ruled by the gun; so I decided to turn it into the first instrumental protest song.”

He continued: “I took a line from a song I’d written for the first album called Dawn: ‘Dawn is pregnant with promises and anticipation, but is murdered by the hand of the inevitable’. I changed ‘Dawn’ to ‘America’ and we got singer PP Arnold’s three-year-old son to say the words.”

It was their performance at an anti-apartheid concert in London’s Royal Albert Hall that really turned heads, when Emerson burned a US flag as part of the show, in the presence of the American ambassador to Britain. The Nice heard via radio on the way home that they’d been banned from the venue for ever.

“The next day we did a gig in Norwich, and arrived to find the queue round the block,” Emerson said. “They were hoping to see me burn the flag. But to it again would have lost the impact of the gesture.” Although he later told Classic Rock he’d repeated the stunt during a tour of the States: “They had us swear on a stack of Bibles that there would be no more flags burnt. I did do it one more time, which horrified Lee.”

Bernstein was furious about what The Nice had done, saying: “They’ve corrupted my work.” He and Emerson met nine years later. “I’ve met composers of the music we covered and got on with them all,” the ELP star said. “And then there’s Bernstein. I’ll leave it that he liked my leathers, if you get my drift.” He added: “It was done to highlight what a corrupt society America was – and still is: if you don’t like the President, shoot him.”

Guitarist O’List upset his former colleagues in 2010 when Prog asked about the creation of Emerlist Davjack and he took what they thought was an unreasonable amount of credit for the work. “After I wrote [title track] Thoughts, I began getting Lee and Keith to write, and then applied further ideas to basic melodies and words,” O’List said.

“I was the only one able to make them commercial enough for release. Although I wasn’t credited enough on the cover, I produced it and, in so doing, coined the format of classical rock.” He added that Mick Jagger had been lined up to produce, but was too busy. “I had experience as a producer… I’d invented the sound and understood it better than anyone else,” he explained. “The ‘EmerList DavJak’ credit was just an advertisement for the band: I produced it from scratch.”

Emerson and Jackson countered in a follow-up interview with Prog. The keyboardist said the band had landed their deal with Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate label after Arnold’s visa ran out and she had to return to the US. “I expected him to tell me we were being fired,” Emerson recalled. “He wanted us to go into Olympic Studios in London and do an album. But he insisted it had to be a record of original songs, although our set at the time was all covers.

“Andrew asked if we were songwriters. So of course I said we were, and then I had to go away and figure out how the hell you wrote songs! I’d written some pieces when I was 10 years old, but nothing since.” He highlighted his composition Azrial, saying: “I incorporated a piece from Rachmaninoff called Prelude In C# Minor – and that was at the start of classical music infiltrating into rock.”

Emerson and Jackson decided to fire O’List after his behaviour became increasingly erratic. “He’d always been a little weird, but finally went over the edge when he had a drink spiked while we were in Los Angeles,” Jackson said. “From then on he missed a lot of rehearsals and even some gigs.”

“He took it really badly,” Emerson said of the split. “But we had no choice. Besides, he should take satisfaction from the fact that we never replaced him. We did try out Steve Howe, but then he left for Yes. By that time, though, the band was working really well as a trio, so we didn’t need another guitarist.”

The Nice continued until 1970, when Emerson quit to form ELP. “When they found out who I was gonna be working with – Greg Lake and Carl Palmer – they both said, ‘Good luck. You’ll need it!’” he recalled.

In 2015, O’List – who went on work in music education and TV soundtracks – reflected on his former colleagues’ dispute with his version of events, telling Prog he hadn’t been surprised by their comments. “But they have their reasons, and I know better now than to get into all that history,” he said. “It only brings trouble.

“I have meet Lee in the street in the past, and it’s been very pleasant. Keith and I exchanged emails when my son was born, and discussed fatherhood. He was friendly. So, I think as long as we avoid the subject of The Nice then I’m on good terms with Keith and Lee.”

The guitarist also reflected on his brief stints with Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd and Roxy Music, rejecting the suggestion that he was a ‘nearly man’ of prog. “I know why you say that, but it’s not the way I think. To be honest, I was too young when I got those chances to take full advantage. I was 19 when was in The Nice, and the rest of them were about 25, so that caused its own problems.

“I did one gig with Floyd in Liverpool, standing in for Syd Barrett, and the guys did come to see me play a few times with The Nice when they were looking to bring in a permanent second guitarist. I really should have grasped the opportunity and pushed myself forward, but, again, my inexperience held me back. I waited for them to come to me, and instead they offered the job to David Gilmour.”

Confirming he’d have taken the Floyd position if he’d been offered it, he went on: “As for Roxy, I had a verbal agreement when I was with them. I was naïve enough to think that was as good as a contract, which it wasn’t. So, I learnt that lesson from my time with them. If I’d been older, then I think I’d have been better placed to make my mark. As it is… well, at least the ‘nearly man’ now has a second life.”