Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Label: Atlantic Records
Released: 1978
Length: 41:03
Rating: 1.5/5
“Love Beach” is the worst album in the history of the legendary prog rock trio Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP for short), and one of those utterly botched studio efforts that would have been far better off never seeing the light of day. The answer to why ELP even recorded this ‘rotten egg’ says a lot about the glaringly bad quality of this half-baked product, which has no soul and no ‘balls’ whatsoever: it was made purely because the band was still contractually obliged to Atlantic Records, to whom they owed one more studio album before splitting up.
“Love Beach” is so bad that it’s a shame to waste many words on it, because ELP sound like a bad parody of themselves here. The fact alone that “Love Beach” was the last Emerson, Lake & Palmer album, until “Black Moon” came out in 1992, to feature all three legendary musicians, who went their separate ways right after its release and threw themselves into (not very successful) solo careers, says it all about how little motivation and interest there was to write new material when the trio, at the label’s request, headed off to their studio in the Bahamas.
By the late seventies, Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer were fed up to the back teeth with each other, apathetic and burned out (these days they’d surely record an album like this in complete isolation from one another, over the internet), and good songwriting ideas were nowhere to be found. In the end it was keyboard wizard Emerson who finished the recording and handled the production, and he was the last to leave the Bahamas, hugely relieved that it was finally all over. Just how low an opinion individual members of the legendary trio still have of “Love Beach” is clear from Palmer’s sarcastic remark that ‘on the album cover ELP look like a bad copy of disco stars Bee Gees’.
Once again, Lake called on a former King Crimson comrade to help with the lyrics: poet Peter Sinfield, who had been a longtime ELP collaborator since the album “Brain Salad Surgery” (1973). Sinfield’s lyrics weren’t much better than the music, either. Apart from the thoroughly conceptual “Memoirs Of an Officer and a Gentleman”, which tells the memories of a ‘gallant’ English officer and so isn’t purely romantic in nature, it’s nothing but love litanies that have absolutely nothing in common with the metaphysical, apocalyptic, sci-fi, historical and mythological lyrics from Peter’s best days.
From start to finish, the album has no real artistic vision that would leave even a tiny emotional impression on the listener, while on most of the “Love Beach” tracks all three masters of their instruments sound almost completely washed out. Even keyboard megalomaniac Emerson couldn’t be bothered to improvise at the level you’d expect. He only shows a bit more soloing energy on “Canario” and on the closing piece, the aforementioned “Memoirs Of an Officer and a Gentleman”, which, despite its epic 20-minute length, is merely a parody of their former super-epics that went down in prog rock history in golden letters. In an era (the late seventies) when 20-minute compositions were getting rarer and rarer, Lake and Sinfield came up with a conceptual suite about a pathetic, lovestruck officer who writes letters from the front to his beloved and, after the war, is rewarded with a ceremonial march past King George VI and Churchill.
The first part of this four-part suite, which lacks any flow between the individual ‘chapters’, “Prologue/The Education of a Gentleman”, doesn’t come off badly, as Lake delivers the vocal performance you’d expect and Palmer impresses with his trademark drum combinations. The second part, “Love at First Sight”, is completely classical and piano-driven, and with decent help from Lake’s suitably engaged vocals and Palmer’s percussive embellishments it sounds solid too. From here on, sadly, things go downhill fast, as if they’d suddenly run out of ideas altogether. The third part, “Letters From the Front”, is totally washed out, with no head or tail, while “Honourable Company (A March)” is just a boring march that reminds you of Santa’s festive parade.
The individual compositions are so uninspired that you can feel at every turn that the trio, to put it plainly, couldn’t have cared less what “Love Beach” would end up sounding like or how it would do commercially. Lake was still an excellent singer and his bandmates still fanatics on their instruments, but already on the opening love power ballad “All I Want Is You” there’s none of the chemistry and energy that once bound them together and helped them create their best work. Lake sleepwalks through the vocals, Palmer plays the drums at half the expected power, and Emerson on the keyboards swears only by high notes.
The title track comes off even worse: Emerson, stuck between a washed-out melody and a forced chorus, annoyingly repetitively fiddles around with his favorite synth toy. Pieces like the soulless ballad “Taste Of My Love” and the third-rate blues rock abomination “The Gambler” are simply a shame to describe in detail, since they’re among the worst things in the story of the legendary trio. “For You” turns out reasonably decent, with Lake showing off his often overlooked guitar talent in a subtle enough way through a series of melancholic passages, even though the vocal performance lacks the fire that adorned his best singing.
Arrangement-wise, the best of the bunch is the commercially minded instrumental “Canario”, also released as a single, which is, ironically, an adaptation of a piece of the suite “Fantasia para un Gentilhombre” originally written by Spanish classical composer Joaquín Rodrigo. Here all three instrumentalists demonstrate their highly regarded improvisational chops in sync. Emerson’s improvisational orgies on the Moog modular are up to expectations, Palmer stages a veritable drum cataclysm, and Lake serves up some seriously juicy bass lines. The fact that it’s the only “Love Beach” track Palmer still often plays at his solo shows today also tells you it’s one of the album’s very few bright spots.
“Love Beach” is one of the most embarrassing chapters in the career of the legendary trio, who had to honor their record contract and cranked out a studio album way below expectations, one you’re better off laughing at than crying over today. For a long time “Love Beach” held the title of worst ELP album, until “In The Hot Seat” ‘dangerously’ closed in on it in 1994. After all three musical masters went solo in the eighties, and Emerson and Lake, together with Cozy Powell, tried in 1986 as Emerson, Lake & Powell to revive some of the old magic (which at least partly worked, and the 3 project deserves a mention too), the three prog rock grandees didn’t get back together until 1991. After a promising (new) start it all (once again) went sour and another (fresh breakup) followed, but that’s a different story.
Line-up
Keith Emerson – keyboards
Greg Lake – vocals, guitar, bass guitar, harmonica
Carl Palmer – drums, percussion
GUEST MEMBER:
Peter Sinfield – lyrics
Production
Keith Emerson
Track list
1. All I Want Is You (2:35)
2. Love Beach (2:46)
3. Taste Of My Love (3:33)
4. The Gambler (3:23)
5. For You (4:28)
6. Canario (From Fantasia Para Un Gentilhombre) {J. Rodrigo} (4:00)
7. Memoirs Of An Officer And A Gentleman (20:16)
– 1. Prologue / The Education Of A Gentleman (5:33)
– 2. Love At First Sight (5:37)
– 3. Letters From The Front (5:20)
– 4. Honourable Company (A March) (3:46)
