Carl Palmer on How 'Love Beach' Came Together in Nassau

Carl Palmer admits that Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s 1978 album Love Beach had very little going for it and explains that its creation was the result of a secret plan made behind their backs.

But the drummer also named two tracks that showed the trio hadn’t completely run out of creative energy at the time.

“We had basically broken up by the summer of 1978 when we started on that album,“ Palmer told MusicRadar in a recent interview.

“We weren’t like big friends, but we used to hang together. We used to go out to the odd restaurant together. And in ’78 we’d gone to Nassau in the Bahamas because Keith had got a house there.”

He continued: “So we were just hanging out on the beach, and that’s where we were when Ahmet Ertegun from Atlantic Records called and said, ‘Why don’t you try once more in the studio?’”

The band members tried to put their boss off. “At first we said, ‘Well, we’ve got nothing really written.’ Keith [Emerson] was a little bit panicked because he would [usually] come up with a lot of the big ideas, and Greg [Lake] hadn’t got any acoustic stuff.”

Palmer said Ertegun wouldn’t give up, and soon brought reinforcement in the form of Island Records boss Chris Blackwell, who owned the Compass Point studio in Nassau.

The drummer went on: “Chris told us all about the studio and said, ‘I’ve got some free time for you if you want it.’ So we realized that they were ganging up on us behind the scenes. And in the end we went into the studio and gave it a go.”

Carl Palmer Thought ‘This Is Wrong’ During ‘Love Beach’ Photo Shoot

If ELP weren’t confident in the songs they tracked, worse was to come when they decided to name the album after the recording location, and pose in beach-attired clothes for the sleeve.

“We called the album Love Beach because that was the name of the beach in front of the studio,” Palmer said. “We had that dreadful picture on the cover with the three of us looking like the Bee Gees. I remember standing on that beach and thinking, ‘This is wrong.’”

Naming “Canario” and “Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman” as the work’s highlights, he reflected: “The album really wasn’t that bad, but we never promoted it. It might have sold more if we’d promoted it, but we were tired. We’d toured so much.

“People often crack jokes about that album," he concluded. "Maybe somebody should have stopped us before we ran out of gas.”