The Concise Musical Guide to King Crimson and Robert Fripp (1969 - 1984)

By Andrew Keeling

Edited by Mark GrahamA Spaceward Publication

Copyright 2013 Andrew Keeling and Mark Graham.

Published by Spaceward, Cambridge, UKISBN 978-0-9570489-5-9

Smashwords edition

XII/V/MMXIII

Contents

Prologue

1. The classic King Crimson periodIn the Court of the Crimson KingIn the Wake of PoseidonLizardIslands Larks Tongues in AspicStarless and Bible BlackRed

2. The Drive to 1981 and beyond. Interregnum 2ExposureFrippertronicsLet the Power FallGod Save the Queen/Under Heavy MannersThe League of Gentlemen

3. The Incline to 1984, Discipline (the band) and King Crimson Mk IVDiscipline (the album 1981)Beat Three of a Perfect Pair Coda

Appendix

About the Author

Prologue

This is a brief introduction to the music of King Crimson and Robert Fripp, 1969 to 1984. But its not just that. It places King Crimson within the context of a personal history: my own history with King Crimson being central to the period. Although this must sound odd, the early period of my life was measured by King Crimson. Roberts music and King Crimson drove my musical interests and growth which is something Ive mentioned in previous writings.

Although I liked many other bands and listened to a great deal of other music rock and classical I would invariably return to Crimsons and Roberts music. It always seemed to epitomise whichever zeitgeist in which Id find myself. And I found myself in at least three: the counter-culture; the new-wave; the 90s and beyond. How Fripp and Crimson managed to reflect each of those moments remains a mystery to me. Im unsure whether Im actually digging for things which arent there; things which are impalpable; whether Im relying on subjective rather than objective means. I cant be absolutely sure. But, at an earlier stage of life I tended not to ask these kinds of questions. Rather, I relied entirely on intuition. I simply went with the flow. I could usually tell whether music was worth bothering about in around thirty seconds of a listening. That Im still listening to Crimson forty plus years later testifies to its power, authenticity, compositional and performance skills.

Its clearly the right time to re-assess this music by straightforward musical analysis to see if it holds water. I believe it does hence my continuing interest. Were all influenced by our philosophical orientation and are products of the dominant philosophies of our time, both personal and impersonal. There will always be that aspect to contend with.

I'd like to thank Robert Fripp for commissioning the book and for sending a selection of his music manuscripts which are represented in the appendix of this volume; Mark Graham and Spaceward for spending time collating and editing my material; David Cross for answering questions about King Crimson which I'd fire at him on Cross and Keeling gigs; Stephen Fellows of the Comsat Angels for discussing music of the 1980s and beyond; Sid Smith for his excellent book, In the Court of King Crimson: the DGM team especially Hugh ODonnell for photos and also Joanna Graham. I'd also like to thank Tim Bowness for pointing out discrepancies in the first edition which led to a second edition of this book.Andrew Keeling July 2012 and June 2013.

1. The classic King Crimson period

I am writing this forty-three years after hearing King Crimsons In the Court of the Crimson King for the first time. That moment, in December 1969, changed my life. In the space of forty minutes on that dark winter's evening the power of King Crimsons music worked a kind of alchemy on me, opening the door onto quite a different future from the one my parents had been planning for me.

What is it about King Crimsons music that so many people find not only fascinating but irresistible? What is it that pulls people in? Some people love it beyond love itself. Equally, some people hate it with a ferocious abandon. Why has the music been consistently referenced since that first, groundbreaking album? I wrote to Robert Fripp in 1970 to ask him. I wanted to know something about the music. Back then it was simply a profound fascination which, as a 14 year old, I couldnt put my finger on. Robert replied to my letter. This only aroused my curiosity even further. I wrote again and he replied this time including a pencil score of Lady of the Dancing Water from Lizard inviting me to arrange it. He knew Id begun to compose. Id sent him a hymn tune Id written which had won a school composition competition. With each subsequent King Crimson release Id try and save money and buy a copy. Id savour every detail of the sonic texture, know every last snare attack, every guitar passage and mellotron phrase; every bass note and so on. Id learn the vocal lines and wander round the streets singing them to myself imagining the band accompaniment. Id pore over the lyrics and eye the cover art as if both were some strange communication from a distant planet. It was! King Crimson lived in this city of stars London and I lived in a little backwater on the Lancashire coast in the UK. For me, King Crimson was as much myth as reality. Id scour Melody Maker, NME, Disc and Record Mirror hoping for mentions of the band; interviews, even. When they appeared Id lovingly cut them out, memorising each sentence placing them in the store-house of my memory. Other people were studying for Maths, Physics and Chemistry O Levels. I was studying King Crimson. For me, King Crimson was a mystery waiting to be solved. Whether Robert Fripp realised this, I dont know. He said King Crimson is a way of doing things. I didnt really grasp what he meant but accepted it.

I continued to write to Robert. Through the years there was something that continued to fascinate me about King Crimson that went beyond the individual members of the band. Then something strange happened. In

1998 a postcard arrived from me at DGM HQ just as my own music was being discussed by the DGM team with the possibility of a Discipline Global Mobile Records release (this eventually became Opus 20s Hidden Streams) and Robert phoned me inviting me to come and do something for Discipline. Hed sensed synchronicity at work and invited me to transcribe the music, arrange and analyse his own and the bands music. This resulted in three Musical Guides (Spaceward Publications) and an album of orchestrations of Fripps Soundscapes, The Wine of Silence, in which I discovered important musicological features. Being a Jungian, the synchronicity aspect of things helped things to click into place: I began to see that, for me, King Crimson was another signpost on the path to individuation.

During the following I plan to give an overview of what I found en-route and will deal with each album chronologically. More detailed information can be found in the three Musical Guides on the bands music available from Spaceward (www.spaceward.co.uk). I dont plan to speak definitively about King Crimson. Everyone has their own take on the music, but I hope it might highlight some of things that are actually there in the music itself; some of the things that have helped me to understand the originality and magic of King Crimson.

In the Court of the Crimson King

Robert Fripp guitar; Ian McDonald reeds, woodwind, vibes, keyboards, mellotron, vocals; Greg Lake bass guitar, lead vocals; Michael Giles drums, percussion, vocals; Peter Sinfield words and illumination.

ITCOTCK brought home one simple truth: something was in the air. It was an age of colour and prosperity coming, as it did, after the desolation of the Second World War. There was more money around for a starter, and young people found themselves rewarded for work. As a result they had more money to spend on commodity of which music and records were examples. There was also a quiet revolution going on and, in some quarters like the 1968 Paris student riots, not so quiet. King Crimsons massive sonic protest encapsulated the time and pamphleteered the airwaves. For example, how could Barry Godbers cover art go unnoticed? Its DIY approach was a direct challenge to establishment status quo and, more specifically to the corporate liberal system which was sweeping the Capitalist west. Like all alternative jazz because thats what King Crimson were and always have been: jazz musicians to the core King Crimson wished to subvert corporatism as Fripps 1969 letter to the International Times stated. How could a so-called advanced civilisation wage war in Vietnam? The only way to stop an evil such as this was to offer peaceful protest; anarchy, even. And it nearly worked. We all believed that by simply listening to music, and certainly playing it, the establishment might be toppled. What was the purpose of this? In one word: freedom. How many songs of the period underline this notion? To attack establishment goes back to Enlightenment thinking but, furthermore, the liberal conception of freedom based on values of autonomy and control over ones own life fails to provide a sense of moral space in which the individual may orientate himself. This is the downside of the optimism of the 1960s and maybe one of the reasons for the demise of the counter-culture during the early to mid-1970s leaving a vacuum for the age of punk rock. If peaceful protest didnt work, then perhaps anarchy was the way towards the destruction of the status-quo? Whatever the case, the rise of the individual was gradually being revealed. This is, however, another story but no less relevant to the situation in which we find ourselves today in the age of political-correctness.

Its difficult to verbalise what the mid to late 60s was like living as a young person. As I said, I didnt live in London, but at Oakham School in Rutland, where I spent two years from 1969 to 1971, we heard tales of what was happening in the capital. Brothers of friends were at Cambridge and Oxford Universities. Others were at London University. Theyd go and see bands. School friends saw Free. Others had seen Led Zeppelin and Hot Tuna at the 1970 Bath Festival. One said hed even seen Nick Drake play a rare concert in Cambridge supporting a band. That intrigued me. I liked Nick Drakes music. Wed read the pop press and look longingly at the gig adverts in the back of the music papers. Bands such as Taste, Yes, Skin Alley, T2, Genesis, May Blitz, Gracious, Uriah Heep, Hawkwind, Van der Graaf Generator, Audience, Quiver, Carol Grimess Delivery and many others were listed. Granted, this was slightly later, but ITCOTCK was certainly the prime-mover on this new, sophisticated progressive rock movement. Friends and I would listen to Radio 1s series Sound of the 70s on weekday evenings. My housemaster refused to allow me to go and see Wishbone Ash and Keith Relfs Renaissance perform at Leicesters De Montfort Hall. Partially as a reaction to authority, I spent my time in quiet determination listening to as much of the new music as I possibly could. There was definitely a zeitgeist. It was palpable. Ive already said that something was in the air (Thunderclap Newman even wrote a song with the same title which spent six long weeks at the top of the charts in the summer of 1969). Pop music, per se, didnt concern me at all, but the underground was something else. It was a place where I could be myself - or at least, someone other than myself - by inhabiting an alternative world.

Arriving as they did in 1969 King Crimson took up the mantle of the Beatles heralding-in this new age of progressive rock and pointing-up the contradictions and confusions of the time which were manifesting as one word: paranoia. It was all part and parcel of the so-called permissive society. Its subtitle, An Observation by King Crimson, validated the albums presence within the popular culture of the time. In the work meaning is continuously deferred but ITCOTCK collects these differences painting them as a countercultural metanarrative. Indeed, ITCOTCK unlocks the entire semiology of the counter-culture creating THE contemporary discourse par-excellence. To be seen walking around town with a copy of ITCOTCK under your arm gave clues as to which subculture one belonged. It continues to amaze me when re-acquainting myself with the album that its sheer scope, power and broad subject matter resonates even today. Perhaps this is why so many musicians continue to reference it?

King Crimson had its beginnings in the Bournemouth-based trio Giles, Giles and Fripp whose one album, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp (Deram), laid the basic groundwork of the nascent King Crimson. With the addition of Greg Lake, formerly of The Gods, and writing team Ian McDonald and lyricist and conceptualist Peter Sinfield, the stage was set. Their rise from local obscurity to international success was meteoric. It took just nine months, from January 1969 to December of the same year, to conquer the musical world. Nine months: the gestation period of a child. Whereas it took other bands a period of time to grow, King Crimson appeared fully-formed. And then, implosion! The band never ceased to exist but that initial impulse, that would spawn an overwhelming amount of subsequent music as well as influence, died; or, at least, it created a shockwave that would resonate through the years. Its as though King Crimson was a personality of its own, using the players as vehicles for its various incarnations. C.G. Jung might have seen this as an archetype incarnating though the players, composers and lyricists themselves. When I read that King Crimson had stopped I felt crushed. How could this happen? It was yet another part of the King Crimson mystery. Jimi Hendrix called them the best rock nroll band in the world.

Part of the bands musical success came from the diverse musical experiences within the band itself: Fripp as jazz guitarist/guitar teacher/former member of Giles, Giles and Fripp; McDonald as army bandsman/composer/arranger/formerly of soft-rock act, Tintagel; Lake as rocker/former member of the Gods; Giles as jazz/pop drummer, also formerly of Giles, Giles and Fripp; Sinfield as poet/musician. It made for a heady brew. They were the new spokespersons for this new generation known as the hairies or heads. Their influences were wide encompassing not only jazz such as Tal Farlowe, Eric Dolphy, the Tony Williams Lifetime, Miles Davies and John McLaughlin but also Love, Iron Butterfly, Donovan, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, the Electric Prunes, the Yardbirds and, perhaps most importantly, the Beatles.

Whereas its impossible to discuss the actual playing itself always THE main thing about Crimson: they were players it is possible to discuss something of the essentials. For example, improvisation has always played a massive part in the creative process. Songs and pieces begin life from this element or as pre-written sketches (as The Court of the Crimson King) which subsequently become band collaborations. In other words, the music becomes alive at rehearsal stage. As an example, 21st Century Schizoid Mans main riff was written by Greg Lake with the rising -tone ascents added by Ian McDonald; the short verses were written by Lake, Fripp and Sinfield; the instrumental choruses by Ian McDonald were culled from big band piece written by McDonald called Three Score and Four; the fast rhythmic unison breaks which serve as the climax are by Fripp. The main features picked-up by a listener is the incredible directional thrust of the music, the dynamic contrasts (here was a band that could play ff and pp in one fell swoop) and the strange timbres such as the vocal, the incredible double-tracked alto sax solo and Fripps un-rock-like guitar solo. Few from our generation had heard anything like this before. It stood alone. It stood out from the crowd.

Structurally, ITCOTCK set a standard and a model for the subsequent albums of the classical King Crimson period (i.e. 69 74). I will briefly list some of the essentials:

1) There are five long songs/pieces: 21st Century Schizoid Man (including Mirrors); I Talk to the Wind; Epitaph (including March for No Reason and Tomorrow and Tomorrow); Moonchild (including The Dream and The Illusion); The Court of the Crimson King (including The Return of the Fire Witch and The Dance of the Puppets);2) The songs are strophic (the music of the verses repeat to the same music);3) There is dynamic contrast reinforced by intense melancholy;4) The songs display ritornello/episodic structures or, as in jazz, heads and choruses or, as in pop, refrains and verses;5) There are instances of rising -tones to reinforce the sense of melancholy (i.e. the acoustic guitar parts of the title song and Epitaph specifically the E minor 9th chord which became the King Crimson fingerprint);6) Keys are important in creating quasi-Baroque affect (i.e. each key is associated with a psychological state). Schizoid Man is in C modal minor; I Talk to the Wind E major; Epitaph E modal minor; Moonchild A modal minor; The Court of the Crimson King E minor.

The incredible contrasts in song-types are felt to great effect during the album. The fast, claustrophobic and aggressive opener Schizoid Man is offset immediately by I Talk to the Wind in terms of pace and key, with its sparing texture, and soft, rounded timbre of voice(s), two flutes, clarinets, electric piano, guitar bass and drums. As such, there is no guitar strumming on the album. Each song has a meaningful arrangement unparalleled in rock music, although its possible to hear sonic sketches for the song on the Giles, Giles and Fripp album The Brondesbury Tapes (Voiceprint). Noticeable are the memorable vocal lines used to paint Peter Sinfields visionary lyrics about the conversation between a straight and a hairy (a suit and a hippie) as Ian McDonald told me.

The regal and anthemic Epitaph (or rather, anti-regal), with its message of extreme pessimism in terms of religio-establishment decay, is one of the most memorable songs on the album. To say its doomy is an understatement. The dark timbre is reinforced by such timbral features as the inclusion of bass clarinet, soaring mellotron phrases, and acoustic guitar played sul-ponticello. The long coda with its oft-repeated Phrygian cadences, underpinning the words But I fear tomorrow Ill be crying is hammered-home by triplet rhythms in the mellotrons and rolled timpani. The mellotron was brought into the band by Ian McDonald and is used to great effect on all albums of the classic King Crimson period. Moonchild looks backwards to Renaissance consort music, except for the lengthy improvisation for guitar, vibes and muted percussion which points to free jazz, Boulez and Berio. Its fleeting textures serve as the introduction for the title song, The Court of the Crimson King. With its blazing D major mellotron ritornello at the outset the music falls to the soft, melancholic verses underpinned by its E minor 9th arpeggios in the acoustic guitar part. Once again, anti-establishment views are set in a mythical/allegorical landscape of the Crimson Kings court peopled by such characters as the Black Queen, the Yellow Jester, the Fire Witch and the Purple Piper, all poetic symbols for the contemporary age. The huge coda, following the fragile Dance of the Puppets (performed by McDonald and Giles), balances with the coda of Epitaph and features a devastating and sudden cut-off as if symbolising the fate of the establishment.

Make no mistake. This is music of epic proportions which never slides into cheesiness. It is classic in its dimensions by fusing several musical types jazz, folk, rock and classical creating a paradigm for King Crimsons close contemporaries. Whereas bands such as Yes and Genesis, particularly on the Yes Album and Nursery Cryme, had clearly listened hard to Crimson, the difference lies in the organic nature of the material and musical structures. With King Crimson the music grows motivically. Everything adds up. Harmony, melody and rhythm are fused by dynamic shaping, whereas one gets the impression, in the case of Yes and Genesis, that the structural seams show. More often than not this is usually through the technique of bolting-on one idea not necessarily related to another. Yess Starship Trooper clearly demonstrates this to good effect. King Crimsons music was made in the moment through improvisation and then fused carefully, or back-composed, with compatible pre-composed songs/musical ideas fleshed-out by the band. Clearly, the unconscious was at work in the process of generating related musical materials. Ive personally experienced this dimension at work in both my own composing and improvising. Another influence are the subtitles, the includings, such as Mirrors in Schizoid Man. Yes began to use them and perhaps, more importantly, so did Van der Graaf Generator. Fripp guested on Van der Graafs albums H to He Who Am the Only One and Pawn Hearts. Sid Smith notes in his book, In the Court of King Crimson, that both Bill Bruford of Yes (Bruford would later leave Yes to join King Crimson) and Steve Hackett of Genesis both saw the early King Crimson. Peter Sinfields lyrics also had a profound effect on those of other, emerging progressive-rock bands. For example, Renaissances Kings and Queens bears the unmistakable hallmark of The Court of the Crimson King. Their first album also includes five long song-pieces. Jon Anderson of Yes also referenced Sinfields poetic style not necessarily in content, but certainly as a primary influence.

That King Crimson provided the initial impetus to a whole generation of musicians and beyond is an achievement in itself and a fact that has gone massively unnoticed.

Key points: harmony not blues-based, rather jazz/classical; Minor 9th/Phrygian fingerprints; unison riffing. Probably initiated progressive-rock in all its forms. Striking cover-art, lyrics, unparalleled sound production and original structure.

In the Wake of Poseidon

Robert Fripp guitar, mellotron and devices; Greg Lake vocals; Michael Giles drums; Peter Giles bass guitar; Keith Tippett piano; Mel Collins saxes and flute; Gordon Haskell vocal; Peter Sinfield words.

Following the departure of Ian McDonald and Michael Giles to form their own duo and record an album, McDonald and Giles (Island, 1970), King Crimson were effectively left as a duo. Robert Fripp had been devastated by the demise of the first band but felt, along with Peter Sinfield, that the band should continue and, until suitable replacements were found for McDonald and Giles, become a recording unit. Greg Lake

was to leave shortly after joining Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer in Emerson, Lake and Palmer. This period of King Crimson history is often referred to as the Interregnum and was a time when Fripp and Sinfield enlisted the help of session musicians and friends to flesh-out live material from the first band and record new material.

The first album to emerge from this period, and King Crimsons second album, was In the Wake of Poseidon. On its release Melody Maker ran the headline If Wagner were alive hed work with Crimson. Its structure is similar to its predecessor but not quite. Essentially it is the five-song paradigm from the first album except that the three-part Peace introduces, partitions and closes the record creating structural unity. The songs include three left-overs from the repertoire of the first band. A Man, A City was rewritten as Pictures of a City (including 42nd at Treadmill) sharing a similar position in the structure to that of Schizoid Man on the first album. As a song it bears certain similarities to Schizoid Man (three short sung verses, fast guitar lines and rhythmic unison passages and a manic free-form coda) and features Mel Collinss strident saxophone playing. Originally a member of the Transatlantic Records band, Circus, Collins had recently joined Crimson as a full-time member.

Fripp and Sinfields re-write of Ian McDonalds Cadence and Cascade was placed second to offset the edgy Pictures of a City. The song is in a rounded and luscious E major, with its subject about two groupies, and occupies the same place as I Talk to the Wind on the first album. It features two virtuosic flute solos by Collins.

The title song, In the Wake of Poseidon (including Libras Theme), is the only original Fripp/Sinfield composition on the album and is, perhaps, the most remarkable. A huge counter-cultural anthem, notable for Michael Giless awesome drumming (Giles had returned for the album as a session player), it embodies the central concept of the record: Tammo de Jonghs vision of Natural Psycology laid-out in his book The Magic Circle. This is a contemplation of the inner workings of the psyche to achieve psychological wholeness. Here, Peter Sinfields lyrics, found as archetypes in de Jonghs work, are re-imaged as Dame Scarlet Screen, The Midnight Queen, Harvest Hag, The Mad Man, Mother Earth and so on. In this way Sinfield resolves the iconoclastic tension of the symbols found in The Court of the Crimson King. Fripps music heightens the lyrics in dramatic fashion, owing much to Epitaph and The Court of the Crimson King, especially as it is in E modal minor.

Catfood, a Fripp/McDonald/Sinfield song, also became a single with the band appearing on BBC TVs Top of the Pops. Although its main riff owes something to the Beatles Come Together from Abbey Road, its subject deals with fast foods.

The album climaxes with The Devils Triangle, divided into Merday Morn, Hand of Sceiron and Garden of Worm, Fripps tripartite re-working of the original bands version of Gustav Holsts Mars from the Planets Suite. The final section includes quotations found on the mellotron samples and also reintroduces the introduction of the recording of The Court of the Crimson King amidst its chaotic free-form improvisation. The technique of musical collage, probably discovered by American composer Charles Ives and re-invented by John Cage, found its way into Roxy Musics song Remake, Remodel from their first Peter Sinfield-produced album.

If the original band had remained together its likely that side two of the album would have included Ian McDonalds Birdman suite found on the McDonald and Giles album. Robert Fripp was disappointed that they took the piece for their own album. We can only speculate on what this remarkable piece would have sounded like performed by the original band.

Key points: word painting acoustic guitar part in the title track, unaccompanied vocal introduction aimed at heightening lyrics; meaningful concept; skilled/inspired production; virtuoso performances.

Lizard

Robert Fripp - guitar, mellotron, electric keyboards and devices; Mel Collins - flute and saxes; Gordon Haskell - bass and vocals; Andy McCulloch - drums; Peter Sinfield - words and pictures; Robin Miller - oboe and Cor Anglais; Mark Charig - cornet; Nick Evans - trombone; Keith Tippett - piano and electric piano; Jon Anderson - vocals on Prince Rupert Awakes.

Lizard followed Poseidon by some nine months. One gets the impression that as soon as Poseidon was complete, work began immediately on Lizard. Again, the album is a counter-cultural statement presented in the context of a surreal circus atmosphere. Peter Sinfield had been brought up in a circus environment, his mother having worked the high-wire. There is an allusion to the Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and the members of King Crimson have made no secret of their admiration for the Merseyside quartet. The third song, Happy Family, is a summary of the Beatles careers.

Lizard, released in December 1970, is the second album made while Crimson were a recording unit. It is also pivotal looking both forwards and backwards: while referencing the previous two albums is also anticipates what lay ahead. For example, Robert Fripp utilised Octatonic pitch materials to the opening song, Cirkus, later quoted by the mid-1990s version of King Crimson during their song, Dinosaur from the album, Thrak. Octatonicism was also widely explored by Fripp from Larks Tongues in Aspic (1972) onwards.

The playing on Lizard is virtuosic contained within finely-wrought textures and sophisticated arrangements, aided and abetted by members of the Keith Tippett Group. Fripp hoped pianist, Keith Tippett, would join the band during this period, but Tippett declined the offer. The opening Cirkus, a song dealing with the establishment, includes see-sawing Minor 3rds (Bb-G over a G pedal pitch) in the phased mellotron included as part of an Octatonic aggregate (E-F#-G-A-Bb-C-C#-D#), which is all part and parcel of the extraordinary word-painting which appears throughout.

Indoor Games and Happy Family both include incredible attention to detail, sometimes including polyrhythmic interplay typifying Fripps interest in free-form jazz.

In contrast to Cirkus, Lady of the Dancing Water, placed at the end of side one of the vinyl, with its sparing texture of vocal, flute, trombone, acoustic guitar and finger-cymbal and luminescent E major tonality, completes part one of the work as a kind of textural sorbet.

The multi-sectional piece Lizard comprises the entire second side of the record. Again, this is a counter-cultural anti-establishment statement. Predecessors of the rock suite-like genre were Pink Floyds Atom Heart Mother, The Nices Five Bridges Suite and Colosseums The Valentyne Suite. T2s Morning, from Itll All Work Out in Boomland, owes something to all these, as well as Eggs Symphony No. 2. Lizard is notable for Fripps memorable melodic writing, fine harmonic thinking and impeccable pacing. From the very start, with its redistributed, downward arpeggiated E 13th chord in the mellotron, a listener is plunged into a veritable musical garden of earthly delights. Jon Anderson, of Yes, was the perfect choice for vocal duties on the opening Prince Rupert Awakes. (Prince Rupert Awakes might allude to Prince Rupert of the Rhine, nephew of Charles I, who upheld the Royalist cause as a General during the English Civil War). The remarkable Bolero The Peacocks Tale, is modelled on Ravels Bolero with its snare-drum ostinato but in the Crimson version the music is taken into free-form jazz territory. The oboe melody which begins and ends it is, perhaps, one of the most beautiful and memorable melodic moments on any of King Crimson album. The Battle of Glass Tears is glued together by the constant 0-3-5-3-0 (G-Bb-C-Bb-G) riff allowing the virtuoso free-form improvisations and claustrophobic textural detail to be thoroughly grounded. There is also a hint of big band styles peering through the textural cracks, perhaps referencing Fripps days playing in Bournemouths Majestic Hotel. Fripp has recently said: For any young player who worked the hotels, played standards and had "conventional" skills, there was some familiarity with the bands of the 1930s and 1940s, and then Ted Heath, Jack Parnell in the 1950s. Then the trad bands I saw at the winter gardens c. 1960: Acker Bilk, Chris Barber, Monty Sunshine et al. The Majestic band went to see the Duke Ellington Orchestra at the Winter Gardens in 1965. The big bands didn't stir my passion: they were more part of my education. Ellington was something else, however. I enjoyed trad but it wasn't an epiphany. Centipede was very different! Fripp produced Keith Tippetts big band, Centipede, in November 1970. The result was the magnum-opus double album, Septober Energy which comprised a 55-piece orchestra, including the likes of Ian McDonald, Elton Dean, Alan Skidmore, Karl Jenkins, Nick Evans, Harry Miller, Robert Wyatt, Julie and Keith Tippett and many others. The nucleus was the Keith Tippett Group several of whom played on Lizard. Prince Ruperts Lament is the first real instance of hearing the remarkable long-sustained guitar tone of Robert Fripp stripped of any sonic surroundings. There is no allusion to Hendrix, Clapton, Kossoff or anyone else. Instead, the solo is placed so as to heighten the subject-matter.

Lizard closes with the loop-like Big Top (originally the albums working-title) bringing the structure full-circle by resolving all tensions and a final poke at pointless, merry-go-round establishment values.

Compared to other music of the period Lizard has a completeness that cant be overestimated. This isnt musical posturing. At one end it conveys extreme light, while at the other there is an overwhelming sense of dark power and intensity. At the time of recording, there were hostilities within the band and, to some extent, The Battle of Glass Tears conveys this. For example, both Fripp and Sinfield had reached an all-time low in their creative collaboration and bassist/vocalist Gordon Haskell and drummer Andy McCullough left shortly after the album was made.

Key points: texture extreme opposites heightening both concept and lyrics. Experimenation with octatonicism. Original arrangements. Carefully considered word-painting. Virtuoso performances. Influential music and lyrics. Original cover-art with striking attention to detail.

Islands

Robert Fripp - guitar, mellotron, pedal harmonium, sundry implements; Mel Collins - flute, bass flute, saxes, vocals; Boz - bass guitar, lead vocals and choreography; Ian Wallace - drums, percussion, vocals; Peter Sinfield - words, sounds and visions; Keith Tippett - piano; Paulina Lucas - soprano; Robin Miller - oboe; Mark Charig - cornet; Harry Miller - string bass.

King Crimson returned to active service as a road band in the Spring of 1971 following four warm-up gigs at the Zoom Club in Frankfurt. Islands was the first release from this particular line-up in December of the

same year, featuring newcomers Boz Burrell (vocals/bass) and Ian Wallace (drums/percussion) alongside Fripp, Mel Collins and Peter Sinfield. Rick Kemp had previously joined as vocalist and bassist but left after less than a week of rehearsals to join Steeleye Span, to be replaced by Boz.

I saw the Islands line-up in 1971 at Birmingham Town Hall and Preston Public Hall when I first met Robert Fripp, Peter Sinfield and Mel Collins. The performances were superb and left a huge impression on me featuring new songs such as Islands, Formentera Lady, Ladies of the Road (then called Road Ladies) and the exciting Sailors Tale as well as more established Crimson repertoire. The recent King Crimson Club releases of this period testify to the intensity and spontaneity of the band at this point in time.

Islands is simpler though no less sophisticated as compared to its predecessors. Altogether, there is less orchestration on the album and the playing and arrangements are placed within a more live and drier context. It comes over as a reaction to Lizard not only in terms of production values, but also with the cover-design. Also missing are the subtitles (the includings) which may have been part of Fripps gradual dissatisfaction of poetic qualities associated with the declining counter-culture. Peter Sinfields lyrics no longer deal with counter-culture versus establishment concerns, either. Looking at King Crimson history, clearly Fripp always keeps an ear to the ground in terms of the ever-changing zeitgeist.

The overall concept deals with islands used as a metaphor for romance. The ocean is central to this perhaps as a symbol for the vastness of the collective unconscious. The opening Formentera Lady, a deeply felt, long-spanned melody carrying Sinfields lyrics, deals with the island of Formentera. The songs chorus and coda are structured over a pedal pitch (A natural) with the verses in the Dominant E major. The long improvisation of the coda features Mel Collinss sprawling solo sax, solo soprano (Paulina Lucas) as a musical metaphor for the lady of the title (a siren, perhaps?), string bass (Harry Miller), acoustic guitar, an off-beat hi-hat and percussion locked-together by a dotted rhythm. The main thematic material for the following Sailors Tale is heard in the saxes and arco double-bass at 8:36.

Sailors Tale is cast as a ternary structure. With its persistent 0-3-0-11-7 (A-C-A-G-E) bass riff, transformed and lengthened by rhythmic augmentation during the B section and grounding the expanding material in the sax and guitar (E/E-G/E-G-A/E-G/E-G-A-C/E-G etc.) there is a gradual slow collapse into Fripps remarkable, flailed, Sonny Sharrock-like, echo-drenched solo quite unlike anything ever heard previously in rock. With the gradual recapitulation of the A section, a listener is hit by the full-force of the swirling mellotronic maelstrom at 4:32. After the surging climax, between 5:50 and 6:52, the storms aftermath is captured in the soft, distant dissonant semitones in the mellotrons. This is a musical seascape par excellence.

The Letters, a re-working of King Crimson Mk Is song Drop In, also includes the Minor 3rd motif found in Formentera Lady and Sailors Tale, though during the central section it is transposed up a semi-tone to F-Ab-Bb. This creates dramatic musical unity. One of the main strengths of the first side of the record are the tension-spans, held together and reinforced by imaginative arrangements in the service of the lyrics/concept. This is nowhere better exemplified than during verse three with the gradual liquidation into the a capella vocal of verse four, done as if to ram-home the poignancy of the subject (i.e. murder and suicide).

Then there is Ladies of the Road with its misogynistic lyrics. In defence of Peter Sinfield, back then things were quite different. In some quarters it really was a case of sex, drugs and rock nroll which were, after all, the mainstays of counter-cultural reaction to what was seen as hypocritical church and establishment. Free love and sex were well-known in rock and in circles. And this is what Sinfields lyrics document. Its difficult for todays culture to accept this, where everything, both good and bad, is held safe within the guise of political-correctness, health and safety and the so-called nanny state. Today we live in a culture of copycat creativity where nothing original does, or can exist mainly because art has become commodity; a situation were legitimation has won at the expense of quality. The term dumbing-down encapsulates the situation in which we find ourselves. The playing safe approach in musical circles stems from the template laid-down from 1965 c. to 1974 from which todays popular music derives. Sadly, the creative bohemian spirit, which spawned the classic period of rock (as well as other art forms), ceased to exist in the mid-1980s when style and business eclipsed it. Postmodernism emerged with its ethos of kitsch and mix

nmatch perhaps as a necessary reaction to the excesses of what was perceived as a bygone time. Beyond that, Ladies of the Road is notable for its orgasmic guitar solo and carefully placed climax of the final chorus.

Fripps Prelude: Song of the Gulls, with its transformed Minor 3rd melodic motif in the solo oboe accompanied by string ensemble, serves as a fitting anacrusis to the beautifully felt, long-phrased title track, Islands. Beginning in C# minor, with its piano and bass flute obligato, Fripps melody enhances Sinfields words bringing the album to a satisfactory close climaxing on the majestic, mellotron and pedal harmonium-led instrumental ritornello derived from the refrain Beneath the wind-turned waves over circular E major and A major chords. This owes something to McDonald and Giless Wings in the Sunset from Birdman. Ive already drawn attention to the Minor 3rds found in the song. The vocal melody of verse one is saturated with them and its though this interval, represented throughout, has been collected, redistributed and used as the motivic building-blocks for the verses. For example, the shapes of the lines in the consequent phrase, beginning with (Dawn brides veil...) (3-2-0 E-D#-C#), are the retrograde version of those found in the sequential lines of the antecedent phrase (Earth stream and tree) (0-2-3 C#-D#-E). On the one hand, even though the melody seems simple enough, on the other hand its clear that Fripp was fastidious in making it as memorable as possible by shaping lines sequentially through the deployment of short, connected motives and accompanying them with simple i v iv (C# minor, G# minor, F# minor) chords. What makes the song so powerful is the arrangement together with the gradual accumulation achieved by harmonic tension and release. Along with the motivic unity, Islands is structurally successful with harmonic balance present throughout: minor for the verses; major for the refrain/ritornello. This reinforces the textural accumulation in the coda except, here, the other way round: mainly major resolving minor at the end. It makes Islands one of Fripps and Sinfields strongest musical offerings and a fitting way to end their musical collaboration and conclude the Romanticism for me, the epitome of bohemian, counter-cultural London which it wonderfully encapsulated - so important to the early period.

Even as Islands was complete Peter Sinfield left the band. Fripp, Collins, Boz and Wallace were to tour America one last time before disintegrating. The early King Crimson had come to an end. An island is a symbol of isolation and, for a time, both Robert Fripp and Peter Sinfield would have to work in isolation prior to their next respective projects. But a very different King Crimson lay just around the corner which had its beginnings in the 1971 band as a recently unreleased piece, A Peacemaking Stint Unfolds (see Islands 40th Anniversary edition DGM/Panegyric), reveals.

Key points: sophisticated simplicity; vast-ranging tension/release-spans; poetic imagery; virtuoso front-line performances over a solid, muscular rhythm section; melodic-motivic unity.

Larks Tongues in Aspic

David Cross violin, viola and mellotron; Robert Fripp guitar, mellotron and devices; John Wetton bass and vocals; Bill Bruford drums; Jamie Muir percussion and allsorts.

From 1971 I became engrossed in my own band projects. The model for these was King Crimson although I was mainly unaware of the compositional techniques and musical models with which Robert Fripp and his colleagues were engaged. In 1973 I returned from a tour of Ireland and heard Larks Tongues in Aspic for the first time. Again, I listened to it from start to finish but, being virtually penniless, had to save money to buy my own copy.

In a sense, LTIA turned me around. Intuitively I recognised something was going on it. At the time I hadnt read that Robert Fripp had said the album represented something precious trapped in matter. I was far too young to appreciate what that might be, but overnight I decided to stop mucking about in the appalling bands in which I found myself and auditioned for Huddersfield University (Polytechnic) to study the flute realising that my talent needed to be backed-up by some serious and disciplined work.

I was struck by the denuding of poeticism in LTIA as compared to the previous King Crimson records. Id sensed that Earthbound, the live album from 1971/72, had already begun the process largely through the absence of Peter Sinfield who had left at the end of 1971. Earthbounds black cover was, I felt, symbolic of death, perhaps even the death of first-period King Crimson. In LTIA its as though the traditional way that musicians did rock, and certainly early King Crimson, had been dynamited. Gone is the romantic/nineteenth century reference, nor is there the grandiose classical stance that inhabited bands such as Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Theres no hard rock posturing that a band like Deep Purple might have embraced. Instead, theres an unpretentious gravity, tritone-based riffs, piled-up quartal chords, ferocious rhythmically-charged improvisations bearing some resemblance to the Mahavishnu Orchestra, but not quite. Fripp had already asked the question, What would Hendrix sound like playing Stravinsky? and, this, to a point, is a listeners experience of LTIA although it goes far beyond even that.

The change in personnel was a huge signifier in itself. Gone are the saxes of Ian McDonald and Mel Collins replaced by the gritty violin timbre of David Cross. The rhythm section, now comprising former Family bassist John Wetton (who also sang) and Bill Bruford from Yes, provided a rhythmic fire of incredible precision. In addition, improvising percussionist Jamie Muir was added to provide a freer in the

moment approach to the rhythmic dimension. Alongside Robert Fripp, these players provided an impetus to reach into the darker and unknown recesses of a new and original musical psyche. The lyrics were written by Richard Palmer-James, a friend of John Wettons who had originally played with Supertramp. Fripp had decided to abandon the overriding poetic counter-cultural references of early King Crimson in favour of a harder-edged Modernist approach. The change also mirrored the times. The optimism of the 60s had given way to the pessimism felt in the early 1970s. In the UK it was the time of civil unrest brought on, in part, by an unsympathetic Tory government, the miners strikes and the rise of the Trade Unions.

The album is at once striking and monumental, but certainly not in the style which classical progressive-rock bands were becoming associated. There is a radical stripping-away of musical and lyrical rhetoric and Stravinsky and Bartok are both referenced but never quoted. Fripp has said, I spent my unemployment in London with Stevenss volume Bartok while practicing guitar. We might recall that the young Stravinsky didn't know what he was doing: for him it was more instinctive and intuitive process. And Bartok described his own compositional processes as instinctive and intuitive. (see Andrew Keeling Musical Guide to Larks Tongues in Aspic [Spaceward]. p. 42). He has also said that while LTIA gives voice to Englishness, In Larks my Englishness drifts towards the continent. (Ibid. p. 33). David Cross has since added, Everyone was aware of Stravinsky and not just Robert. There were a couple of methodologies at work (in King Crimson): first, jamming particularly Jamies view of being in the moment and letting things happen; secondly, composition and song-writing. (Ibid. p. 20). Cross again comments, The music emerged as a collision of experiencewe made it up as we went along. Like The Rite of Spring, in LTIA all the original sounds of rock melodic, harmonic, rhythmic and timbral are melted in the alembic of Modernist contemporary classical music to produce a new and original alloy. Its at once an abrasive and primitivist work. By primitivism I mean that repetition is at its core.

At the centre of LTIA, then, are some of the musical techniques used by Stravinsky and Bartok put through the prism of Jimi Hendrix. There is also an overt primal sexuality. LTIA, Part 2, to quote Robert Fripp, accesses the same stream of primal, procreative energies as The Rite. LTIA Part 2 is a description of the sexual act from one point of view. (Ibid. p. 26). The album may be compared to a ritual or primordial rite underlined by the use of traditional instruments such as kalimba and talking drum juxtaposed with the barbaric approach of the electric instruments. The huge textural accumulations and climaxes may be read as metaphors for sexual arousal and orgasm and, during LTIA Part 2 from 2:31 to 3:34 and 4:45 to 5:48 the ascent from G to D (I V), the repeated, hammered D open 5ths validates this. The overall structural shaping may be broadly termed ritualistic by including tableaux-like blocks. Within these blocks the musical materials are drawn from a pitch-pool, sometimes intuitively conceived (as in the introduction to LTIA Part 1), or pre-compositionally through the use of Octatonic pitch-collections (as in LTIA Part 2). Modality is also represented during the second and third songs, Book of Saturday and Exiles. Pentatonicism is also explored during the central section of LTIA Part 1 with its allusion to Vaughan-Williamss Romance, The Lark Ascending. Each technique and language allows the music to grow organically though improvisation with each members input heard as part of the whole making it a wholly original approach to orchestration in rock music.

However, the most telling feature of LTIA is the rhythm. Irrational and shifting metres are present throughout. The alternating 5/4 and 7/4 of the first loud point of arrival in LTIA Part 1 demonstrates this, as well as the 5/4 (10/8 subdivided 3+3+2+2 quavers) followed by 4/4 (subdivided 3+3+2 quavers) metal chords of LTIA Part 2 recalling The Augurs of Spring from The Rite of Spring. Polyrhythm is also represented. For example, theres the 7/4 vocals against 4/4 accompaniment in the verses of Easy Money but, most strikingly, the polyrhythmic central section of LTIA Part 2 (4:24) which triggers the recapitulation of the rising violin melody (4:55).

Occult signifiers also saturate the work such as the 5/4 metres, five musicians, the cover art and the five pieces (LTIA Part 1, Book of Saturday, Exiles, Easy Money, The Talking Drum/LTIA Part 2). These are positioned within a symmetrical key structure: LTIA Part 1 (G Dorian); Book of Saturday (A Aeolian); Exiles (D Mixolydian/E minor); Easy Money (E minor Dorian); Talking Drum (A Aeolian); LTIA Part 2 (on G).

Robert Fripp has said the players were too young to fully present the music of LTIA and that the live recordings of the period (especially The Great Deceiver CD box-set) better represent the band. Whatever the case, LTIA packs an incredible punch stylistically, technically, compositionally, improvisationally and conceptually. In it King Crimson access an aspect of the invisible, geometric world of the collective unconscious through metre and number.

Key points: reaction to the early version of the band; stripped, Modernist musical language; explosive collective improvisations; strong pre-composed pieces.

Starless and Bible Black

David Cross violin, viola, keyboards; Robert Fripp guitar, mellotron and devices; John Wetton bass and voice; Bill Bruford percussives.

In 2008 I met David Cross after hed discovered Id arranged Trio (an improvisation found on Starless and Bible Black) for Renaissance flute, treble viol and bass lute for lutenist Jacob Heringmans Early Music consort, Virelai. The piece was recorded on their Sad Steps album (Riverrun Records). David and I recorded an album of improvisations called English Sun (Noisy Records) and performed several concerts as well as leading workshops on improvisation. This was my first encounter within a playing context with a former member of King Crimson and it had a positive and profound effect on my own music. It was only after playing with David that I began to appreciate Starless and Bible Black more fully, for within it is contained an important aspect of the band I hadnt fully engaged with. This is, of course, improvisation. At the time of its release in March 1974 I played it repeatedly, but then didnt listen to it as much as some of the other albums.

During 1973 and 1974 King Crimson played widely throughout the UK, Europe and the USA. Written material was slow to arrive with the exhausted musicians and, as a result, a high degree of improvisation features on it in a number of interesting and resourceful ways: a) as stand-alone pieces (the title-track); b) improvisation is used for back-compositions (The Mincer); c) as introductions for written songs (The Night Watch); d) enhanced by over-dubbing (Fracture). The album features three written pieces The Great Deceiver, The Night Watch, Fracture and a fourth Lament which had been partly conceived during the Islands period of the band. Two sections from this are heard on the previous Larks Tongues in Aspic Part 1 and here on Lament. This, then, makes SABB an important and primary research document for contextualising improvisation. Improvisation had always been at the root of King Crimson (21st Century Schizoid Man, Moonchild, The Devils Triangle, Bolero [from Lizard], Formentera Lady etc.) but had never been quite as widely mined for its sonic potential. If Stravinsky had felt that he was the vehicle through which The Rite of Spring passed, then surely improvisation, especially within the context of SABB, operates as an invisible presence possibly that of King Crimson passing through the players in the moment. Nor does the large percentage of improvisation make for structural flabbiness. The pacing and positioning of pieces, as ever, is finely wrought, and unlike Crimson 69 to 71, the production is more direct and live in the hands of the 72 to 74 band probably as a result of their recent large-scale gigs and Fripps feeling that their should be a kind of sonic truth about the albums.

The Great Deceiver, which opens the album, is in A Aeolian, with a riff based on chromatic pitches and Minor 3rds belonging to the same lineage as 21st Century Schizoid Man. Richard Palmer-Jamess and Robert Fripps lyric about the demonic are conveyed by a rapidly shifting texture combined with shifting metres (4/4 to 7/8 to 12/8 to 3/3 [3+3+3 quavers]) along with abrupt stops and starts, guitaristic angularity and quasi-funk octaves, vocal/melodic directness and a manic final violin solo. It is all driven along by Brufords precision drumming.

Lament, with its F# minor inner-voiced chromatic chords, gradually ascends by tones and semi-tones to the sensual mellotron entry and the imitative section of violin and bass guitar. The material, tried out in the Islands band, here catches fire in the hands of the new band. In the past people have criticised this particular song, but the performance is excellent throughout. The 7/8 coda of parallel tritones (F#-C-F#, G#-D-G#, A#-E-A#) outline a whole-tone scale (F#-G#-A#-C-D-E) which becomes important for the albums architecture.

The following improvisation, Well Let You Know, is at once both immediate and surprising. It is built on A with the guitar parts A, C#, G and D# again outlining a partial whole-tone aggregate. Wetton improvises largely on a blues scale which ultimately takes the music into a funk-like section.

The Night Watch, based on Rembrandts painting of the same name, opens with a section culled from a live performance. It resembles a massed Early Music or mandolin ensemble together with metal percussion instruments played over D major and G major bass guitar arpeggios. The Night Watch is the only tonal piece on SABB and, together with Trio which follows it, is placed in the centre of the work. The main body of the song is in B Aeolian (together with IV = E minor and V = F# minor). The Crimson fingerprint Phrygian shift also makes an appearance. Fripps central guitar solo is a feature of the song to which he refers to as an example of aspirational octaves. (See sleeve-notes to 40th Anniversary Series, Starless and Bible Black. DGM/Panegyric).

Trio was recorded live at Amsterdams Concertgebouw and features violin, mellotron flute and bass guitar. The drums remain silent throughout. The piece oscillates between C major and A Aeolian eventually falling to F. The piece connects to The Great Deceiver but smooths-out its angularity. It is a piece of great beauty and fragility.

The Mincers sinister clustering, with volume-pedal electric piano and accumulating mellotron accompanying Fripps edgy tritonal guitar over rim-shot drums and bell-like percussives, serve as a back-drop for Wettons back-composed, two-part Beatles-like vocals appearing at the end. Again, its in A Aeolian and features an abrupt and sudden cut-off.

The title track begins atonally with high, sustained guitar, creeping bass and glockenspiel, gradually accelerating and centering on A. Following Brufords extended percussion work-out, bass and drums serve as a backdrop for Fripps searing guitar and Crosss angular mellotron lines. The piece gradually diminuendos into soft bass arpeggios and angular mellotron flourishes. Starless and Bible Black is one of King Crimson Mk IIIs most powerful and extraordinary improvisations with a sudden coda of violin and guitar over precise bass and drum attacks ending on a wide G#/E dyad.

Fracture follows as if out of nowhere, Fripps episodic, etude-like piece fading-in over Crosss wah-wah, pizzicato violin, supported by short stabs from the bass guitar. The introduction leads into the ritornello riff, F-G-B-A, rising to A-B-D#-C# and C#-D#-A-G. These pitches outline a complete whole-tone scale A-B-C#-D#-F-G previously heard in Lament and Well Let You Know, though here metrically supported in 3/4 + 3/4 + 4/4. The rhythm sections inventive performance is at once precise and astonishing. The virtuoso solo guitar of the central section takes centre-stage utilising whole-tone pitches: G-C#-B-C#/ A-C#-B-C#/G-C#-A-C#-A-G-C#-B-C# etc. gradually rising to be accompanied by the band, in particular glockenspiel, marimba and bass with added guitar overdubs. At this moment the albums whole-tone structures can be heard as accumulative. The subclimaxes gradually rise to the moment the tutti enters at 6:05 with the incredible rhythmic precision that characterised Crimson 74. Fractures fast final section, looks back to the octaves of The Great Deceiver creating structural symmetry. Here, the ritornello is

developed outlining an A major chord (A-C#-E). E natural isnt part of the pieces whole-tone aggregate but, by its inclusion, the music suddenly includes the Dominant (V). The problem with any whole-tone piece is the harmonic stasis produced by the absence of the Dominant (in this case E natural), but with this added, together with the rhythmic drive, the music is provided with tension and directional thrust. The final section has the bass rising from A-B-C# and then B-C#-G-G-B over a shifting-metre of 4+3+4+4, the violin and guitar unison lines (A-C#-D#-E) over a circular F-Eb-D/A-G-F#/C#-B-A# in the bass, eventually resolving on a Tierce da Picardie A major chord.

I first heard The Great Deceiver and Lament on a Friday night radio show just prior to its release. Robert Fripp was interviewed and I remember that at the time he was thinking of taking King Crimson out as a duo (David Cross and himself) because the costs of keeping a band on the road had become excessive. I taped the show on my fathers ancient reel to reel tape recorder and listened to it often. The main thing that struck me was the music's immediacy. Gone were the myths and fables of early King Crimson. Now it was more about treading the rock n roll stage. I also got the impression that the members of King Crimson sounded free and that the label of progressive rock music no longer applied. They now sounded worlds apart from the likes of Yes. The music on SABB conveys that King Crimson were in a completely different league. I saw them play at Liverpools Empire Theatre and remember the strong, direct performance, absence of theatrics, as well as a fairly standard lightshow. Having ditched the counter-cultural stance, the band had musically matured. I discussed this with friends after the show on the drive home. They preferred Crimson Mks I and II. I remained neutral, but it was clear to me that things had changed.

Key points: greatly contrasting improvisations; balancing songs and instrumental pieces; wide ranging, virtuoso performances; tightly-knit symmetrical structure unified by whole-tone scale.

Red

Robert Fripp - guitar and mellotron; John Wetton - bass and voice; Bill Bruford - percussives; David Cross - violin; Mel Collins - soprano saxophone; Ian McDonald - alto saxophone; Robin Miller - oboe; Mark Charig - cornet.

In September 1974 I went to the University of Huddersfield to study the flute with Atarah Ben Tovim and Trevor Wye. The university was to host one of Europes largest contemporary music festivals which, though I didnt know it then, would present some performances of some of my own pieces some thirty years later, including my arrangement of Fripp and Enos Evening Star performed by Contact in 2010.

During the same month I went to university King Crimson ceased to exist. Robert Fripp had brought the band to a halt. Somehow I felt that the changes in my life coincided with the band stopping. Around a month later I bought Red, the final release by the Mk III line-up. I listened to it in my flat with my girlfriend. The memory I have of that moment is the sheer power of the title piece, the grand play-out of the Starless coda and the melodic lines of Fallen Angel. Id also read an article in Melody Maker where Fripp had talked about musicians utilising head, heart and hips. I wasnt completely aware of what he was saying, but vaguely got the gist of it. However, it stuck with me. Along with the other King Crimson albums I listened to Red a great deal, in between practising Poulenc, Bach, countless studies, technical exercises and tone studies. For a time, I also shared a flat with the bass player Martin Alcock who went on to play with Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull. We shared an appreciation of King Crimson, Hatfield and the North and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Then, in December 1974, I heard that Nick Drake had died. I felt that Red and Drakes death signified the stop sign for anything vaguely counter-cultural. Previously Id bought Fripp and Enos album No Pussyfooting and then, later, Evening Star and loved them, but felt from that time on something else was in the air. Id watch BBC TVs The Old Grey Whistle Test and felt the bands were becoming hackneyed and bland. Id seen Lynyrd Skynyrd on their first European tour supporting Golden Earring and while I liked them thought they were copyists emulating their heroes Free and Cream. At the time friends were listening to Bowie and Tangerine Dream and so on, but I wasnt overwhelmingly impressed. In the summer of 1974 I travelled to London twice to see the newly-reformed Van der Graaf Generator and bought Peter Hammills Nadirs Big Chance, an album that would inspire John Lydon. By now I was playing more and more classical music after feeling the need for something more challenging. I also began writing songs one, or two, of which appeared on my now deleted First Things album recorded many years later. However, I missed the instinctual energy of rock music.

Red was maybe the most direct of any Crimson album to date. Symbolically, red denotes instinct, passion and energy. John Wetton has since spoken about the album sequence being like a live show (Sid Smith In the Court of King Crimson. p. 199). Following the concerns of SABB, the comment is entirely appropriate. It is also connected to the previous album in subject-matter: the piece and title, Starless and Bible Black, was also represented as the song Starless (on Red) originally called Starless and Bible Black. Both were influenced by Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood which John Wetton had been reading at the time. The album also includes performances from former Crimson members: David Cross (violin who had left the band some months prior to the recording), Mel Collins (soprano sax), Ian McDonald (alto sax), along with session players Robin Miller (oboe) and Marc Charig (cornet). With the inclusion of these players things had come full-circle or, rather, the circle had been closed.

The title track, Red, is cast as a modified ternary structure, but subdivided in a symmetrical A1 A2 B A2 A1 form. Its scored for triple-tracked electric guitar, bass and drums and features cello in the central section. The opening (A1) is a loud and dramatic series of ascending Octanonic scales followed by a ritornello (A2) on E. The central B section is a series of repeated dyads in the guitar with syncopated 3+3+2 octaves in the cello and bass followed by the recapitulation of A2 and then A1. Later, Id arrange Red for string ensemble Opus 20 and the Metropole Orkest and while doing this discovered that Fripp employed Golden Section structuring (see Musical Guide to Larks Tongues in Aspic. p. 165) as well as structural symmetry. As far as I can tell this is unique in the history of rock music. And Red is rock music through

and through. The piece would have a dramatic impact on the King Crimson of the 1990s and beyond, particularly on Vroom from the album, Thrak.

Fallen Angel, a song about fallen youth, begins on a pedal note E picked-up from the end of Red before ascending to G major followed by a standard tonal chord progression underpinning the vocals: G, C, B7, E minor, C, G/B, A minor and D. The vocal line is counterpointed by oboe making it purely Crimson, and Fripps B minor to A minor acoustic guitar chords and harmonics punctuate the structure giving the song structural subtlety and taste. This is a song about danger, with its easily identifiable 12/8 Phrygian riff underlining the chorus and solo cornet section pointing backwards to Lizard and Islands, although the sonic beauty of those albums is displaced by the aggressive momentum at the heart of 74 King Crimson. The guitar, bass and drums take a proto-punk stance later found on Fripps album, Exposure. This, essentially, new-wave album would jettison classical instruments including mellotron regarded as a bridge too far in 1979 with the dinosaur-like aspirations of classical progressive-rock, something to be avoided at all cost.

The high-powered One More Red Nightmare again an allusion to the albums title opens with an ascending whole-tone riff, 0-4-6 etc. (E-G#-A#-E-G#-A#-E-G#-A#-E). The verses, on C# minor, A major and F#major chords, are accompanied by sustained Frippertronic-like guitar lines as well as a rhythmic section of 3+3+2+2+2 on arpeggiated E minor, G minor and Bb chords which outline a tritone. These chords also accompany Ian McDonalds alto sax solo. Superficially, its as though this section alone anticipates some of the musical concerns of the output of early Foreigner. Set in the centre of the structure, the chords E minor to G minor are the minutiae of the first and fifth pieces as though in microcosm. One feels, at this point in time, that John Wetton was at the helm of King Crimson with Fripp refusing to pass an objective musical opinion. It could have been that the term objective (a term coined by Gurdjieff to define true artistic works) wasnt yet available to Fripps understanding, having read J.G. Bennetts and Gurdjieffs ideas just prior to the recording of Red. Later, Fripp would follow Bennetts ideas with a singular vision.

The fourth track, Providence, an atonal improvisation, is one of the strongest of its kind. Featuring Crosss dissonant violin double-stopping, Fripps staccato mellotron flute timbre, tritone bass stabs from Wetton and Brufords short, sharp percussion articulations, it adds exactly the right balance needed and continues what was begun in Starless and Bible Black. Gradually becoming a ferocious rhythmic tour-de-force centred on B, one hears why David Cross was to find himself musically distanced in the band, yet its Cross who has the final say in this improvisation.

In the lineage of epic Crimson ballads, Starless marks the grand recorded play-out from the band with its G minor modal centre, its Phrygian Eb major to D minor cadences and Wettons plaintive vocal melody underscored by a Neopolitan chord progression (G minor Ab major G minor). Mel Collinss tender soprano sax obbligato and the affirming Perfect cadences at the end of verses add to the darkness of the song. Essentially a modified ABA piece with its ominous central bass riff on C minor, 0-6-7-0-6-7-3 (C-F#-G-C-F#-G-Eb) moving to F and back to C held fast in a repeated 13/8 (3+3+2/2+3) metre, it features Fripps one note, two string/one pitch bent upwards, stripped-down solo. This is the epitome of anti-virtuoso, post-progressive guitar soloing. It is one of King Crimsons great moments, eventually building in rhythmic and dynamic intensity to explode in the fast section and McDonalds manic alto sax solo. A telling moment is McDonalds and Collinss unaccompanied alto and soprano sax octave unisons duet of the melody during the quiet, yet rhythmic, central section. The recapitulation of section As ritornello is masterfully achieved with the saxes declaiming the melody and the bass taking the weight of the whole, finally coming to rest on the tonic G minor.

Key points: direct impact; influential; epic King Crimson ballad (Starless); attention to architecture and structural symmetry; powerful performance.

2. The Drive to 1981 and beyond

Interregnum 2

For me, 1974 to 1977 was spent at the University of Huddersfield (then Huddersfield Polytechnic) studying the flute. I also worked hard on piano, continued to teach myself guitar, write songs and generally prepare for adult life. The mid-1970s was a changing cultural landscape. I went to Italy with my girlfriend in 1976. Leaving to Richard Williamss Melody Maker headline about the brilliance of Joan Armatradings third album I returned to the UK six weeks later to a country possessed by the phenomenon of early punk rock. Manchester was littered with posters advertising The Damned and The Buzzcocks. And thats when it began. The Sex Pistols descended on the culture like a thunderbolt from the blue. I often watched ITVs teatime Granada Reports news show where Tony Wilson, who subsequently led Factory Records, would introduce the likes of Elvis Costello and, later, Joy Division to a public hungry for the new music.

In the UK the transformation had begun earlier in 1972 with the release of the first, Peter Sinfield produced Roxy Music album but it took time for the listening audience, brought up on the Beatles and progressive rock, to catch up. Its as though the intuition Id had in 1975 had been realised: the old, progressive music was now jaded and something new was happening. Earlier on in London pub rock, with the likes of Ducks Deluxe, Bees Make Honey, Dr. Feelgood and others had already prepared the ground. This harder, less pretentious, street-level rock nroll had previously been explored by the likes of Brinsley Schwarz, Quiver and Cochise all country-oriented acts and, even, by the louder rock nroll of the Pink Fairies and Marc Bolan. David Bowie had referenced the likes of Scott Walker, Iggy Pop and the New York Dolls who, in turn, had bypassed the classical progressive rock of those bands like Yes and Genesis, who were now being regarded as extinct. They had become dinosaurs. Flared trousers were out and straight-legs were in. Pin striped ties and short hair became the dress-code of the new subculture. Anything remotely prog was now scorned. Musicians began to abandon the major record companies. Garage-bands populated this new musical landscape. One fanzine declared heres a chord, heres another, now form a band! The anyone can do it rationale started at this point, taken up later by Minister for Education, Kenneth Baker, who restructured the UK exam system introducing the GCSE. This was a new, hands-on culture and a reaction to everything that went before. It was possible to feel a suddenly changing zeitgeist along with the demolition of any existing metanarratives. It was the age of Postmodernism. However, Stephen Fellows of the 1980s band The Comsat Angels has said, Punk was all an industry construct. PIL (Public Image Ltd), and all that came after, was much more interesting. There was a great distinction between Oi! and the art school punks. Journalists refer to punk as year zero but its just a fabrication. The good things in the 80s were a continuation of the 70s with bands like Pere Ubu, Bowie and the American artists not subject to the fashion of the UK. In those days people would buy Aja by Steely Dan and the first Damned album in one week. This shows that changing collective musical tastes, often media-perpetuated, weren't always mirrored by personal musical preferences.

The mid to late 70s UK was dominated by Arthur Scargill, the Trade Unions and a declining Labour government. However, the tide was turning as, in 1979 following the winter of discontent, the political arena became dominated by Margaret Thatcher as Britains first woman Prime Minister. During her three terms of office, she encouraged the entrepreneur, promoted morality after the counter-cultural liberties of the late 1960s and early 1970s, sold-off the countrys assets, presided over the decline of industry and a widespread programme of privatisation, massively increased dependence on credit card spending and de-regulated the banks. Some regarded her as the devil incarnate; others as a revolutionary. Thatchers utopian vision of a country free from the industrial strife of the early to mid 70s was also a view of unfettered capitalism. Her unpopularity spilled-over into music and alternative comedy particularly from 1980 onwards. Bands came out in force denouncing the greed epitomised by the Tories and particularly, making a stand against class and the cold war which Thatcher and American President, Ronald Reagan, appeared to be stoking. The NME ran headline after headline, week after week attacking the government. Britain became a dog eat dog culture which accelerated as the 1980s wore on in the guise of yuppies (young urban professionals), with the innovations of the 70s gradually becoming stylised. Money, and the accumulation of it, was the raison detre for just about everything. Here was the perpetuation of mass culture and the outward manifestation of the way American and British governments crushed anything remotely individual fearing the take-over which very nearly happened in the late 60s. There was some time to go before the New Labour government of the late 1990s would create a culture of collective individualism, but the seeds were sown in the Thatcherite Britain of the late 70s and early 80s. Robert Fripp has recently said (e-mail to AK, 24-10-11): While talking to John Wetton recently, it was clear that something was going on then that, as far as I can see isnt today. For me, Live Aid marked the end of that. John felt the changes in the business can be dated from 1980, he feels markedly so to 1979 that the accountants moved in.

In America, a larger country less inclined to radical change probably as a result of its geographical expanse, a similar thing was happening. In New York there had always been pockets of reactionary artists reacting to the corporate liberal system in the same way as the counter-culture in the UK. Jazz musicians such as Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Sonny Sharrock, John Coltrane and others had been the vanguard of the new, post-bebop style and along with composers John Cage, Morton Feldman working in a style loosely termed aleatoricism and, later, artists Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol, constantly challenged the status-quo. From 1972 the New York Downtown scene was centred on Maxs club who hosted The New York Dolls. Other influential proto-punk bands were The Modern Lovers (featuring Jonathan Richman and including Jerry Harrison who later played with Talking Heads), a huge influence on British bands such as The Clash, and Suicide featuring Alan Vega and Martin Rev. But, it was the New York Dolls who caught peoples imagination. In turn, The Dolls became the initial inspiration for most of the later punk bands, particularly centred on CBGBs. Television were probably the first of these bands emerging in 1974, followed by The Ramones and Talking Heads. Interestingly, Brian Eno, who had worked with Robert Fripp from No Pussyfooting onwards, produced both Television and Talking Heads.

All this impacted on my own music making. In 1977 I played in Blackpool band The Sensible Club and in 1979 formed my own band called Thruaglas Darkly. The question was how to get this lot from being a prog unit to something slightly more forward looking. In those days, you couldnt play old style prog and be taken seriously. In those days difference was an unknown term. You either joined the in-crowd or ended up on the scrap-heap. There were several albums which caught my attention: Robert Fripps Exposure and The Comsat Angels Waiting for a Miracle and Sleep No More, Modern Eons Fiction Tales, King Crimsons Discipline, Ultravoxs Systems of Romance, John Foxxs Metamatic and Bruce Woolley and the Camera Clubs English Garden. These became compositional and sonic models for everything I did from that time although, working as I did as Director of Music in a Pentecostal church, it was difficult to put what I learnt into practice. It was also the moment I realised that for sure the world had become a different place. There was a zeitgeist but of a very different nature from the one Id felt in the late 60s. People did their level-best to avoid what had come directly before. Subculturally, to subscribe to the spirit of the early 1970s did one no favours. To circumvent this was important. From a musical angle, one was forced to look back to an earlier period. For example, I felt that guitarists in particular had to jettison the influences of, say, the Richie Blackmores and Steve Howes even the Hendrixs and look back to the Hank Marvins of the early 60s, albeit adding a harder-edge to the style.

When Robert Fripp brought King Crimson to an end in 1974 he, together with John Wetton, mixed and produced the final live King Crimson Mk III album, USA. He also compiled The Young Persons Guide to King Crimson, as well as recording Evening Star with Brian Eno. Subsequently winding-up his business affairs he retreated to J.G. Bennetts International Society for Continuous Education at Sherborne House in Gloucestershire which, in a sense, would provide Fripp with a model for Guitar Craft, a school for introducing students to a discipline of musicianship, both in terms of guitar playing and creativity firmly centred-on the Gudjieff/Bennett tradition. Fripps rationale technically, compositionally and philosophically might be summarised as follows: through self-observation and a personal discipline the musician creates a space for music to lean over and take him/her into its confidence. And, therefore, a student has an opportunity to experience dimensions that might otherwise remain unavailable. Essentially, its a case of awakening the student from a mechanical, automatic and habitual mode of living. In a Melody Maker article prior to the break-up of King Crimson, Fripp stated that before he became aware he was just a bloke living. In the Gurdjieff/Bennett tradition the essence of the personality is exposed and the persona is open to question. As a result, Fripp began to coin the term this Fripp to differentiate between the essence (the self) from the mechanical ego. In Jungian terms, this is similar to the individuation process where the unconscious dimension (the archetypes) is differentiated from the conscious (ego and shadow). To expose the shadow is often profoundly disturbing as well as painful. Once one has an experience of the objective psyche the objective worlds nothing can be the same again. For Fripp, Sherborne marked the beginning of what he would subsequently do, stripping him of the self-image accumulated after several years playing in a top-notch rock band.

Fripps path back into music was a tentative one, playing on Peter Gabriels first solo album. Gabriel had left Genesis following their successful album, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, feeling that something else was in the air. In 1978, Fripp was asked to produce Gabriels second album, a much different affair from the first in terms of its sparing textures and directness. One track, On the Air, has a minimalist approach and another, A Wonderful Day with its shifting-metres, seems to fuse old with new. The album as a whole now seems slightly dated, due mainly to the technology and its straddling of musical opposites. Exposure, later to appear on Fripps album of the same name, is easily the best track with its loops and layering of lines, although lacking the intensity of Fripps version of the piece.

In 1977 Fripp moved to New York as a way to escape the rather parochial London scene, living in an apartment in the Hells Kitchen district. He was able to hear music by composers Steve Reich, Meredith Monk, Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson as well as frequenting CBGBs, close to his apartment, where he saw Patti Smith, Talking Heads and Television amongst others. He was also aware of developments in the new wave through his friend and collaborator Brian Eno and sensed the radical reduction of means in the new music which synchronistically meshed with his experience of Gurdjieff and Bennett at Sherborne. The dinosaur-like pretensions of progressive rock were dead, at least at this point in time, and if one was to work professionally a new stance had to be carved-out. It also represented his intention of working within the parameters of this new adopted outlook as a small, mobile, independent, intelligent unit, particularly as he began to develop the tape-looping system first used on No Pussyfooting and, subsequently, on Evening Star.

In 1977 Robert Fripp was invited by Brian Eno and David Bowie to play on the latters Heroes. This is one of Bowies most sonically engaging and experimental albums. Working in this context wasnt new ground for the guitarist. Hed played on Enos first solo album, Here Come the Warm Jets, providing a devastating and highly influential solo on Babys On Fire over its alternating Bb minor and Ab major chords, as well as on St. Elmos Fire on Another Green World. Eno was to have a wide influence on the experimental scene prior to, during and since leaving Roxy Music. He worked with Bowie and, subsequently, with Talking Heads and is an important part of Fripps musical development.

His next move was to play with Daryl Hall. Hall was one half of r'n'b duo, Hall and Oates who typified the Philadelphia sound of the mid-70s. Sacred Songs, the album Fripp produced and on which he played, was completely different territory for Hall, so much so that RCA records decided, at that moment in time, against its release. Fripp regarded Peter Gabriel 2, Sacred Songs and his own Exposure as a trilogy, and both he and Hall felt Sacred Songs was a perfect working experience. With Hall on vocals and piano, Fripp on guitar and Frippertronics supported by members of British band Hookfoot, it might be said that working

with Hall provided Fripp with the prototype vocal and personnel model for what would eventually become Exposure, certainly The League of Gentleman and, ultimately, Discipline, King Crimsons eighth studio album. On Sacred Songs allusions to Fripps musical past are replaced by a new-found minimalism in the context of soul/new-wave. Babs and Babs, Urban Landscape and NYCNY are the most consistent tracks. In the case of Babs and Babs the effect can be slightly disconcerting with the juxtaposition, during the central section, of Frippertronics within the E minor funk-like structure of the song bridging with the G major b10 actually part of an E minor7th/b5 aggregate of Urban Landscape also reappearing on Exposure. NYCNY is an early chromatic prototype in reality, a sketch for Fripps I May Not Have Enough of Me But Ive Had Enough of You. Its as though these sonic sketches are developed from research periods allowing the definitive versions to appear. The definitive versions transcend the time in which they originally appeared. Hall was featured heavily on Exposure but, for contractual reasons, was only allowed to perform on selected tracks. This substantially delayed the release of the album. In 1978 Fripp performed his first official Frippertronics concert at the Kitchen in Soho, eventually appearing as a bootleg called Pleasure in Pieces. The second piece is particularly striking with its gradual accumulation of staccato pitches forming an F major chord, and its insistence on sustained pitches C Db Eb; Eb C; Gb Eb. The Db C, in the context of F major, provides the music with the King Crimson bVI V Phrygian fingerprint which clarifies a continuity extending through Fripps and King Crimsons musical output. It's as though the classical Romantic model of In the Court of the Crimson King, which had migrated to the European avant-garde models of King Crimson Mk III became the art school tradition/new-wave/minimalist via Bowie, Eno, Talking Heads and others in Exposure and beyond.

Exposure

Robert Fripp guitar and Frippertronics.

Contributors: Barry Andrews, Phil Collins, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Tony Gabriel, Jerry Marotta, Sid McGuiness, Terre Roche, Narada Michael Walden and the voices of Shivapuri Baba, J.G. Bennett, Mrs. Edith Fripp and Mrs. Evelyn Harris. Cover art by Chris Stein.

September 1978 marked the moment when Robert Fripp officially began the Drive to 1981. This was a threefold strategy: to work both within and without the market place; to do what he felt; to work under the auspices of a personal discipline. It would encompass the albums Exposure, Let the Power Fall, God Save

the Queen/Under Heavy Manners (which combined Frippertronics and discotronics), The League of Gentlemen and, ultimately, King Crimsons album, Discipline although, initially, King Crimson Mk IV were called Discipline. He would also guest on a number of albums, including those by Blondie, The Roches, Talking Heads and Janis Ian.

Coming ten years after In the Court of the Crimson King, Exposure is also an observation, both related and different from the former. It is part three of the triptych which includes Daryl Halls Sacred Songs and Peter Gabriel II, and stands as the fulcrum in the second interregnum. Three is symbolic of the Law of Three, in Gurdjieffs terms, Triamazikamno: a) affirming; b) denying; c) reconciling. The Law of Three says that everything in the world, all manifestations of energy, all kinds of action whether in the world of human activity, internal or external, are always manifestations of three forces which exist in nature: active, passive and neutralising. I have previously noted that Daryl Hall was to feature as vocalist on much of Exposure, but was prevented from doing so for contractual reasons. Fortunately, there is now a double-CD which includes the original release as well as the Hall version along with unreleased material. Fripps website, DGM Live!, has also made downloads available of the sketch material for the album, with bass parts by King Crimson Mk IIIs John Wetton. Instead of Daryl Hall, Peter Hammill was recruited as vocalist for some of the songs.

My first reaction to the album was in a record shop in north Blackpool. I took one look at it, bought it, walked back to my wife's and my flat and played it from beginning to end. It was surprising. The first track proper, You Burn Me Up Im a Cigarette, is the main memory I have of that moment. Id been listening to new-wave music as a means to get my own band from a to b, so had become used to the musical reductionism of the period. Nevertheless, to see Fripp on the cover as a post-punk, as well as to hear the music, made me realise the world had changed in a very short period of time.

Exposure is Robert Fripp exposed, outside the context of King Crimson. It was also his way of refining everything learnt at Sherborne. At the time he spoke about it on an interview on the US Boffomundo Show, now made available as a You Tube video: While I was at Sherborne House I saw I didnt exist. I would say this is a kind of exposure. You know youre going to get kicked up the backside for doing something right. This is conscious suffering. It was terrifying, so it was impossible to achieve the aim unless you see where you are. Fortunately, because I see it I remember the situation. I have a different relationship with whatever I might be and the terror of seeing that in a flash does live with me. Its grace that we have fictions that we can live by. Some suffering is necessaryif one is committed to decent behaviour its noted one will get kicked up the backside for it. This is the notion of conscious labour and intentional suffering. Exposure, therefore, combines two connected strands: a new worldview following the Sherborne experience; a stripping of the persona accumulated through years of playing with a top-notch rock band and a complete musical revisioning along new-wave lines. Bands such as Yes and Genesis were about to make the same leap ( i.e. Yess 90125 and Genesiss Duke), although Fripps approach was more forward-looking. I believe its from this moment that the public became aware of an individuated Fripp, at least a musician in the process of individuation rather than someone reliant on self-aggrandisement. The period also presented him with musical research material for, as yet, an unknown but emerging future.

Living in New York gave the album an urban American edge as well as an entirely authentic approach. Harmonically, the poetic side of King Crimson had, more or less, been reduced to nothing with the exception of some