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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.
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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
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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
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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