Love Beach

The band finished a ten-month North American tour in March 1978 and wanted to rest, but they still owed Atlantic an album and its president Ahmet Ertegun asked for a commercial one. They recorded in 1978 at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, where Emerson and Lake were renting homes, with Jack Nuber and Karl Pitterson as engineers. There was no dedicated producer, and Emerson largely produced and mixed the record. Relations between the three were strained and Emerson's drug use had begun to affect his work.

Pete Sinfield wrote the lyrics for every track except Canario. He found the group barely talking and left the island when he had finished, and Lake and Palmer also left once their parts were down, leaving Emerson to assemble the album. Side one is short pop-oriented songs. Side two is Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman, a 20-minute four-part story of a soldier and his fiancee in World War II. In Love at First Sight Emerson plays the first eight bars of Chopin's Etude Op. 10 No. 1, and Honourable Company includes Rule, Britannia!

Emerson disliked the title, which Atlantic took from one of the tracks. He set up a booth at Chicago's O'Hare airport to survey opinion, but the label refused to change it. The album reached 48 in Britain and 55 in the US, where it was certified gold in January 1979. The single was All I Want Is You, which the band played on Top of the Pops. It was not toured and the band disbanded in early 1979. Rolling Stone's Michael Bloom called it downright pathetic, and Emerson later called it an embarrassment against everything he had worked for.