The success of the group's debut, as well as Greg Lake's prior association with them while a member of King Crimson, led to ELP's signing management and recording contracts with E.G. Records, who distributed their records through Island Records in the UK and Atlantic Records' Cotillion Records subsidiary in North America. Emerson believed that Atlantic's chief Ahmet Ertegun agreed to take the band on "because we could sell out 20,000-seaters before we even had a record out. That was enough for him to think that a lot of people would go out and buy the record when it did come out."