Nobody's Favorite Record Reviews, Vol.2 #1
I listen to 'em so you don't have to. Today, let's look at Emerson, Lake & Palmer's LOVE BEACH!
Continuing a series of overviews of records that seem to be universally unloved, but in many cases I actually find something worthwhile lurking in the grooves of these scorned efforts, and I hope to make a case. And other times, I find nothing and I’m compelled to discuss that as well. So… as I usually say when I begin these things:
1979’s Love Beach is, dare I say, nobody’s favorite Emerson, Lake and Palmer album.
Riding high as one of the (as Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson once put it) “Big Four” of Progressive Rock (others being Yes, King Crimson, and Genesis), ELP put out album after album that placed high on the charts and when they toured, they played to larger and larger arenas every year. This culminated in 1973’s Brain Salad Surgery, in which they teamed with onetime King Crimson lyricist Peter Sinfield to give us one of their most enduring works, the “Karn Evil 9” suite of songs that took up part of one side and all of the other. It was, to this writer anyway, the high point of their career. Of course, those who dug Prog were effusive in their praise, while others, like most music journalists slash critics of the day, turned up their nose at what they deemed “pretentious, grandiose, and excessive”. After BSS, however, something changed.
By many accounts, relationships between the band members had begun to fray, which led to the next album release being a excessive(?) triple live LP placeholder… then it was announced that the next release of original ELP music would be, a la similar efforts by groups as distaff as KISS and Yes, solo releases by the three, with one side of the double album set being a group effort. The result, Works Vol. 1, pleased no one, really, except perhaps the bean counters at Atlantic records… though I personally liked the Greg Lake side, which featured mostly symphonic-assisted ballads with lyrics again by Sinfield (I’m a fan of his, y’see), and the side four group instrumental, a cover of another Copland work (they had had success with a cover of his “Hoedown” a few years prior) Fanfare for the Common Man, which was a minor hit for the fractured trio. By this time, too, the landscape-changing influence on the charts, radio, and record buying public, those ol’ debbils Punk and New Wave, laughed at groups like ELP and their pretensions. In 1977 they couldn’t have been more unfashionable. 1978’s grab bag collection of odds-and-sods, Works Vol. 2, came and went too and didn’t do much to improve the group’s fortunes. Then, probably the most disastrous decision of all- they decided to tour the US and Canada early on in 1977 with a full symphony orchestra, which, despite many of the shows selling out, became a colossal black hole of money, leaving the band broke and even more put out with the whole thing. The tour finished 10 months later sans orchestra.
And this is where the great president of Atlantic Records Ahmet Ertegun got involved. Although the group wanted to take an extended break, Ertegun reminded them that they still owed the label one more record, and hey, fellas, try to make a “commercial” one this time, ok? When they all expressed reluctance, Ertegun played hardball and threatened not to even consider the solo albums that they wanted to do. Reluctantly, they all agreed to convene in the Bahamas- tax exiles they all were and Lake & Palmer already had homes near Nassau- to record what became their final 70s album, Love Beach. They invited Sinfield to come down and collaborate as well, which he also reluctantly agreed to do because he and Lake weren’t getting along by then either… but he wanted a vacation so down he came. Despite Emerson’s reported coke problem and the general feeling of “we don’t wanna BE here”, they still managed to somehow create some music.
For the first time in decades, I decided to give this record a spin so I could write this, and I have to say that it was not quite the total disaster I was expecting. It sounded like ELP in places, Lake’s voice hadn’t yet begun to deepen and give out on him as it would do in subsequent decades, Palmer was still a wild man on percussion, and Emerson was still bringing it on keyboards (said with reservations, more on that later). But there was a big black hole in the middle of all this, a certain don’t give a fuck about the whole enterprise. They had shot their collective wad five years earlier, and were going through the motions. So track by track, what do we have here exactly?
The album opener, “All I Want is You”, is a love song with dismayingly generic lyrics, given that the verbose Sinfield was involved; designed for what they thought might get some play on AOR radio or soft rock-oriented stations, it begins with typical ELP bogus pomp, lyrically similar to Lake’s solo songs on Works, with tootling synths and Lake bellowing out the words confidently, but eventually starts shifting tempos because they can, and it just becomes chaotic before it clatters to an end. No commercial potential, as the saying goes.
The title track is next, and perhaps shows that the boys weren’t quite so insulated from prevailing musical trends as it would seem, because it does surge forward in a upbeat power poppish fashion… and if it had a stronger melody it might have been a secret keeper. As is, it’s ok, but just, and probably the best of the three atypical-for- ELP opening tracks. The lyrics are Sinfield at his moon/June/spoon worst:
Now that the coast is clear,
I'm moving out of here.
It's time to disappear - with you, .
To where the skies are blue.
I want you by my side,
Don't look so mystified.
Sure seems like Pete was already looking ahead to the professional songwriter phase of his career. But first, a throwback to times past:
In 1972, Sinfield’s former gig King Crimson recorded one of his songs, “Ladies of the Road”, which was, even for the less enlightened times, rather reprehensible in its sexism. A song about groupies, it had some clever lyrical twists but overall it was just crass and especially glaring in the company of the other songs on the Islands album, which was a more reflective set with nautical themes. On ”Taste of My Love”, song three, Sinfield makes “Ladies” seem like it was written by Lord George Gordon Byron.
This one’s more four-to-the-floor rock and roll, with more tootling Emerson synths- and it’s at this point there’s something I’ve observed about the songs so far. All three of these have Keith noodling around, seemingly independent of what’s happening in the song.. and I have to wonder if at some point in the mixing process, the notoriously cranky Mr. E didn’t think “Hmm… I don’t hear me enough here…” and overdubbed a bunch of random squiggling pieces over both “All I Want is You” and this one. It’s not quite as pronounced on “Love Beach”, but it does kinda jump out at me.
Anyway, “Taste” isn’t all that terrible, keyboard squiggling aside, musically but the lyrics are just artlessly (something I never thought I’d see from Sinfield) awful. To wit:
“Down on your knees
With your face to the wall
Saying please, please, please
My friend said I should call”
and
”Call up room service
Order peaches and cream
I like my dessert first
If you know what I mean”
Nudge nudge wink wink.
Moving write, I mean right, along.. next up is a rebound. “The Gambler” hearkens back to previous ELP mood-breakers like Trilogy’s “The Sheriff” in its ramshackle rhythm and lighter presentation. Gambling metaphors are the order of the day here, and it’s the most enjoyable track on this thing so far. It could almost be a song from earlier days, dusted off and included on this album.
Having gone light, then it was decided to go dark with the ominous, minor-key, and downbeat “For You”. A song addressed to the titular “You”, it’s one of those “It’s all your fault, you slag, but at least we got to fuck” breakup songs. Despite this, at least Sinfield waxes a bit more poetic lyrically. British (and yeah, many American) rockers’ attitudes towards women in the 1970s just grate now when I pay attention to them. It at least sounds more like a classic ELP slow track.
The next track, “Canario”, also is reminiscent of ELP in its heyday in that it’s another instrumental adaptation of a classical composition, as they did on Pictures At An Exhibition as well as with Ginostero’s “Toccata” from Brain Salad Surgery. In this instance, Joaquín Rodrigo gets the treatment, as they take his “Fantasía para un gentilhombre (Fantasia for a Gentleman)”’s fourth movement and give it the works. Perhaps the most innovative track on this record, possibly because the fellas didn’t write it.
I wonder if there isn’t someone somewhere even today who has a pair of Love Beach swim trunks in their possession.
Finally, in tried and true Prog tradition, the album’s second side is a sidelong suite entitled “Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman”, divided into four parts:
a. "Prologue/The Education of a Gentleman"
b. "Love at First Sight"
c. "Letters from the Front"
d. "Honourable Company (A March)"
Why yes, I cut and pasted them, why do you ask? Anyway, it purports to tell the story, in letters, of star-crossed lovers in the advent of World War II. Movement A and Movement B are a stately introduction in a more or less steady 4/4 time, with some space made for Emerson piano gymnastics in between. Sinfield here is in better form, you can tell he has a bit more affinity for the subject matter and it’s allowing him to be more, well, poetic than the c’mon mama love me of the first three tracks. Movement C gives us the resolution; the tragic fate of the young couple, in the hands of a group of musicians who had a feeling for the material, might have become something special. Alas, what we have, however, is the disgruntled gentlemen who go through the motions of giving us an epic and I don’t believe for a minute that any of them feel anything for the song. Movement D concludes this thing with a very odd choice; an instrumental march. Now, if all had been on the top of their game, this could have underscored the pathos of the unfortunate lovers; but Emerson tacks on this upbeat, merry processional that maybe, just maybe, be an intended comment on the proverbial English tendency towards stiff upper lip, carry on, all that rot. Something downbeat, minor key, reflective would have been a commentary on the unfortunate state of the world at war and its toll on its soldiers, but this ain’t that. It’s as if Emerson had an unused composition that he thought might pad the runtime. It’s a puzzling decision.
So… this is the legendary fiasco, Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Love Beach. I found some tracks to like here; I might salvage the title track, “Cantario”, and “The Gambler”, but I found the rest lacking to say the least. So did fans; even the hard core Prog/ELP lovers tend to turn their nose up at this one, with only the 1994 reunion album In the Hot Seat regarded as worse. Love Beach is most certainly not MY favorite ELP record, and it certainly seems that it’s Nobody Else’s Favorite ELP Record either. There’s a lot to be said for knowing when you’re done. The three deceptively grinning fellows on the album cover, all decked out in their finest 1979 outfits, didn’t.
Stream this album, if you dare, on the service of your choice.