“Dissent in the court of King Crimson” read a headline in a January issue of Melody Maker in 1970. The article was published after the band returned from a tour of the US in November and December of 1969. It went on to explain that two members, multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald and drummer Michael Giles, were leaving the band. Giles explained: “I felt that sitting in a van, an aeroplane and hotel rooms was a waste of time even if you are getting a great deal of money for it. Ian and I feel that we’d rather have less money and do more creative, interesting and fulfilling things with all the travelling time.” Band founder Robert Fripp added one more reason in an interview he gave Zigzag magazine: “Mike and Ian weren’t happy with the way the music of Crimso was going – I think they enjoyed it, but Ian wanted to get into good-vibe music, whilst Crimso was always about heavy-vibe music.” Lyricist Pete Sinfield summed it up: “It’s like Lennon and McCartney. Ian is McCartney, and we’re Lennon, whereby Lennon always included that nasty vicious lyric, and McCartney was always sweeter.”
If the departure of their brilliant songwriter/instrumentalist and drummer was not enough, it became clear early in 1970 that another songwriting force, and one of the most distinctive vocalists in 1970s progressive rock, was to depart as well. Greg Lake connected with Keith Emerson of The Nice during their US tour at the Fillmore West and they decided to form a new band. He would formally leave in the spring and start another epic band, Emerson, Lake & Palmer. More about that here:
Fripp and Sinfield’s first task on hand was to cobble together enough material for a second album, not an easy task given the critical contributions the departing members made on the band’s debut album, In The Court of the Crimson King. From a songwriting perspective the biggest loss was Ian McDonald, who wrote two of that album’s best compositions, I Talk To The Wind and the title track, The Court of the Crimson King. Robert Fripp was not a prolific composer at the time and suddenly becoming the sole musical contributor left him with one obvious choice – steal and borrow as many pieces of music left off the first album.
Many of the songs King Crimson recorded in the early months of 1970 started life during the first incarnation of the band. Peace, the dreamy song that repeats in three variations on the second album, was written in 1968. Pictures of a City started as A Man, A City and showed up on the band’s set list in their US tour in 1969, around the same time that the band started working on Cat Food. In addition, many similarities exist between Cadence and Cascade and Flight of the Ibis that appeared on McDonald and Giles’ album the following year, both based on ideas worked by McDonald during 1969 when he was with the band.
The first song King Crimson delivered to the public in 1970 was released as a single, the result of pressure from their record company to follow up on the momentum of their debut. Co-written with Ian McDonald, Cat Food had a zero chance of entering the charts, but it did make an unlikely appearance at Top of the Pops. This was a rare opportunity to see the band on TV, and it became their only public appearance in 1970. It was also the only time in the band’s history where you can witness Robert Fripp, Michael Giles, Peter Giles, Greg Lake and Keith Tippett on the same stage.
The song features the wonderful and imaginative piano playing of Keith Tippett, perhaps King Crimson’s best recruit in 1970. His contributions to the two albums the band released that year are critical, and for me one of the main reasons that those albums are so special. His free jazz ensemble shared the bill with King Crimson and sax player John Surman at the Marquee club’s New Paths series in 1969, a program that aimed to show how rock and jazz are idioms that can meet to create new music. Coming from the jazz world, he injected that style heavily into King Crimson’s music. When interviewed in 1970 Tippett said: “Working with Crimso has been one of my best experiences. I’ve never worked with rock musicians before, and I’ve learned a hell of a lot from it that I can use in my own music.” Tippett quickly realized how different the jazz and rock worlds are when it comes to the recording studio: “The rockers are very professional compared to the jazzers, to whom it’s just a matter of going into the studio, blowing into a microphone, and spending a couple of hours a few weeks later doing the mixing.” With King Crimson he found out that the recording process, “is not a bastard art anymore. It’s a real art and if the techniques and facilities are there, I’m going to use them.”
If the clip of Cat Food sounded freaky to you, Tippett confirmed: “It was really very difficult to play. It sounds pretty straightforward, but there are the odd bars of 6/8 slipped in here and there which complicate it. And although the piano beats sound freaky, in fact there’s different chord every bar. There’s freakiness and freakiness, you know?”
Another important addition to King Crimson’s lineup early in 1970 was Mel Collins, recruited by Fripp from the band Circus. He adds wonderful sax playing on Pictures Of A City, a track that reminds one of the aggressive, manic scale runs that shocked and awed listeners the first time they dropped the needle on side one of the debut album and unleashed 21st Century Schizoid Man. For Pictures of the City he received the following instructions from Fripp before recording his solo: “Here’s a fellow walking to town from the country, then he’s walking around the city. So the first time, when the fellow’s walking to the city, he’s not aware of it, he’s a little more naïve – then when he’s in the city, he’s a little more neurotic, the notes are harder.” Clear, precise and simple instructions.
The centerpiece track that the band recorded for their second album also gave it its title, In the Wake of Poseidon. It is one of the best showcases of a Mellotron captured on vinyl and a great achievement for Fripp who had to fill in for Ian McDonald’s skills on the instrument, so prominent on the first album. The track also features great acoustic guitar playing by Fripp and excellent drumming by Michael Giles, who together with his brother Peter on bass was recruited as studio musician to help realize the album.
Another critical part to the sound of the second album is Greg Lake, who agreed to contribute vocals during the album’s recording, while he was waiting for the formal beginning of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. His vocal delivery on the title song is no less powerful than the one he sang on Epitaph from the first album, considered by many his best performance with King Crimson.
The last musician to appear on In The Wake Of Poseidon, and in hindsight maybe the first recruiting mistake Fripp made, was his high school friend Gordon Haskell, with whom he played in the band League of Gentlemen back in 1965. Haskell has just released his album Sail In My Boat when Fripp called. Haskell: “I straight away, without any hesitation, said ‘absolutely not’. I was totally R&B oriented and it wasn’t my sort of music. I didn’t like King Crimson. Anyway, after a while I said I’d think about it, and my wife got to work on me because she wanted a regular income so in the end I joined.” Haskell sings the lead vocals on a single track from the album, the melodic Cadence and Cascade. The track demonstrates the group’s ability to play a delicate ballad, similar to the role of I Talk To The Wind on the first album, only this time purely acoustic. Mel Collins plays a beautiful flute solo and Keith Tippett adds interesting piano flourishes. Michael Giles adds graceful phrases on the cymbals, a signature of his that he used so well on Moonchild from the band’s debut.
The New Musical Express summarized the song well on their May 9th 1970 issue: “Cadence and Cascade is a tale of two groupies. A delicate, wispy song with a pretty melody that features Gordon Haskell’s vocal and the restrained and tasteful piano and flute work by Keith Tippett and Mel Collins.” Robert Fripp added: “Gordon Haskell has been a friend of mine since the age of 11. We were in our first group together at school. We thought he had the right kind of phrasing for this song. I play celeste on it.” You can hear that celeste in the ‘Caravan Hotel’ part of the song. “
The lyrics Peter Sinfield wrote for this song employ his typical style of fantastic imagery, and indeed deal with two groupies who are enamored with a touring musician (Sinfield?) but later find him, well, just a man. Meeting girls on the road was a favorite activity for Sinfield, not surprising due to their abundance on the trail of a rock band on the road. A year later he would repeat the subject matter with the song Ladies Of The Road, albeit with a raunchier take this time.
In The Wake Of Poseidon was released in May 1970, and riding the critical acclaim of the debut album, surpassed it by reaching the fourth position in the UK album charts. Journalists were mostly complimentary: “Crimson – A force to be reckoned with”, “King Crimson’s peak of evil excellence!”, “King Crimson’s basic still there”, and the ridiculous “If Wagner were alive he’d work with Crimson”. Others found the album too samey to In The Court Of The Crimson King. I can hear the similarities, and side 1 of the LP places stylistically similar tunes in the same order as its predecessor. But Poseidon is still a great album that is significant in the band’s discography for featuring the last pieces of material associated with the original band.
King Crimson did not tour in 1970 given the fragile state of affairs with their fluctuating lineup. However Fripp and Sinfield wasted no time after the release of the album and continued quickly into the writing and recording of another one. The same month Poseidon was released, Fripp told Melody Maker: “I am going down to our rehearsal basement this week to start writing and arranging the next album.” When asked which musicians will play on that album, he added, “the pool will probably be enlarged to take a few more people.”
The next album is one of my favorites in King Crimson’s vast catalog. Lizard was the first album where Fripp acted as the sole composer and arranger, and Keith Tippett’s influence pulls him farther into free jazz and classical territories. Two members of Tippett’s sextet make fine contributions, Mark Charig on cornet and Nick Evans on trombone. Fripp also recruited Robin Miller from the BBC Symphony Orchestra to play oboe and cor anglais. Gordon Haskell’s role expanded to main vocalist as well as bass player, replacing Greg Lake who who was now part for Emerson, Lake and Palmer. The band was completed with drummer Andy McCulloch, who was able to overcome the difficult task of following the fantastic skills of Michael Giles on the previous albums.
The album was pieced together painstakingly in the studio, with Fripp acting as musical director and producer. Nick Evans remembers the recording sessions: “Our parts were added in small sections, maybe four or eight bars at a time and after each snippet was recorded it was checked carefully in the producer’s box to make sure it was exactly what Bob Fripp wanted. It took quite a time to get all my sections down on tape.” Like Keith Tippett, Evans had experienced recording studios with jazz combos, and he talked about the challenge of adapting to different recording methods: “During that period in my life I was working with jazz musicians who were very keen on accepting the first take of any recording. You know, ‘capture the moment and maintain its spontaneity as much as possible’. I found the stop-start method of working a little unnerving.”
The crown achievement of King Crimson’s follow-up album is the whole of side 2, a continuous, multi-part 23-minutes piece of music titled Lizard, giving the album its name. The term progressive rock received a lot of criticism over the years, but if this is not truly progressive music set in a rock context I don’t know what progressive music is. Lizard includes some of the best instrumental passages captured on vinyl, and a large credit goes to pianist Keith Tippett who added modern-classical, jazz and avant-garde influences. Robert Fripp admired Tippett’s work so much that he offered the pianist an equal partnership in musically directing the band. Tippett remembers: “The terms would have been that I would have had musical input. He knew that I was a strong musical personality and I would have gone in and possibly taken it all in another way with his blessing because we would have been joint bandleaders.” While working on Lizard, Tippett and Fripp also collaborated on another ambitious album, this time led by Tippett. He invited Fripp to serve as producer for his large ensemble Centipede, recording a double album titled Septober Energy. Tippett turned down Fripp’s offer to join King Crimson, but he would go on to play on the band’s fourth album, Islands. More about Keith Tippett here:
Jon Anderson of Yes guests as vocalist in the opening track of Lizard, Prince Rupert Awakes.
The music is housed within a fantastically ornate album art spread over a gatefold cover. Virginia ‘Gini’ Barris, 24 at the time, captured the essence of Peter Sinfield’s enigmatic lyrics without listening to a single note from the album. A fresh graduate from art school, this was one of her first paid jobs and she spent three months meticulously creating the lettering and miniature scenes in the spirit of the album lyrics. Her inspirations included the Lindisfarne gospels and the medieval French Gothic Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. Barris used gouache, a form of watercolor, on two separate drawings, the size of one and a half the actual album cover. The imagery around most of the letters depicts one of the songs on the album: ‘C’ is Cirkus, ‘R’ is Lady of the Dancing Water. ‘I’ was reserved for the Beatles, the subject of Happy Family. ‘S’ is Indoor Games, ‘K’ for The Battle of Glass Tears, ‘N’ for Prince Rupert Awakes. Also included are a fantasy super group with Jimi Hendrix, Ginger Baker and her boyfriend at the time. There are all kinds of grotesque tidbits here, a perfect visual accompaniment to this classic album.
1970 was not an easy year for King Crimson, with musicians continually leaving and joining the lineup. The musical chairs continued to the end of year, and more changes came after Lizard was recorded in August and September of 1970. Gordon Haskell, unhappy with the musical direction in which Fripp was heading and tired of working with the band leader, remembers: “The drummer, Andy McCulloch, was in tears – Fripp used to bully him unmercifully. He bullied us all. I don’t go for that though, so where Andy would cry I would just laugh. At the end of one song, ‘Indoor Games’, I just burst out laughing. You can hear it on the album. They thought it was really freaky, that I’d understood the lyrics and my part – but the truth of the matter is, it was a lousy song, the lyrics were ludicrous and my singing was atrocious so I just burst out laughing. And they thought it was wonderful!” Unsurprisingly Haskell and McCulloch did not last long and left King Crimson after the recording of Lizard completed.
Lizard was released in December of 1970, receiving mixed reviews in the music media. Some of the gems written by critics after the album’s release:
“The perfect record for the person you like least of all but are forced for one reason or another to buy them a present. I can discern neither melody nor sense in any of it so it’s not for anyone with my plebeian and simple tastes.”
“It’s a pity that this fine band couldn’t divert more of its talent to instrumentals instead of cutting these odd, sometimes pretentious songs.”
“If one of the most highly-rated bands of last year have sunken into virtual anonymity and oblivion, it can’t really be said to be the fault of King Crimson’s sounds that so many musicians just don’t seem to be able to relate to Bob Fripp’s surrealistic phantasies. I find it increasingly difficult to relate to it myself.”
One critic writing for Sussex Express, however, definitely “got it”: “Crimson have at last began to fulfill the promise of those days of ‘In the Court of the Crimson King” and ‘In the Wake of Poseidon’. Robert Fripp, Crimson’s eternal light and guardian of all that is good and healthy in contemporary music, reckon 75% of Poseidon was a success. Lizard must be more like 95 % successful – and I’ve yet to find the five percent failure.”
In such a challenging year, it is to Robert Fripp’s credit that he was able to persevere, take on additional responsibilities as composer, arranger and producer, and lead King Crimson to release two of the best progressive rock albums of 1970.
Sources:
Fifty Shades of Crimson: Robert Fripp and King Crimson, by Pete Tomsett
Various British music magazines, 1970
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