Errors-To: admin at elephant-talk dot com Reply-To: newsletter at elephant-talk dot com Sender: moderator at elephant-talk dot com Precedence: bulk From: moderator at elephant-talk dot com To: newsletter at elephant-talk dot com Subject: Elephant Talk #878 E L E P H A N T T A L K The Internet newsletter for Robert Fripp and King Crimson enthusiasts Number 878 Wednesday, 17 October 2001 Today's Topics: "In the Court of King Crimson": extract one ------------------ A D M I N I S T R I V I A --------------------- POSTS: Please send all posts to newsletter at elephant-talk dot com To UNSUBSCRIBE, or to CHANGE ADDRESS: Send a message with a body of HELP to admin at elephant-talk dot com or use the DIY list machine at http://www.elephant-talk.com/list/ To ASK FOR HELP about your ET subscription: Send a message to: help at elephant-talk dot com ET Web: http://www.elephant-talk.com/ Read the ET FAQ before you post a question at http://www.elephant-talk.com/faq.htm Current TOUR DATES info can always be found at http://www.elephant-talk.com/gigs/tourdates.shtml You can read the most recent seven editions of ET at http://www.elephant-talk.com/newsletter.htm THE ET TEAM: Toby Howard (Moderator), Dan Kirkdorffer (Webmaster) Mike Dickson (List Admin), and a cast of thousands. The views expressed herein are those of the individual authors. ET is produced using John Relph's Digest system v3.7b (relph at sgi dot com). ------------------ A I V I R T S I N I M D A --------------------- Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2001 07:04:03 EDT From: ASidSmith at aol dot com Subject: "In the Court of King Crimson": extract one [ I'm delighted to be able to feature in ET the first of a number of extracts from Sid Smith's forthcoming book "In the Court of King Crimson". There's a supporting website, at www.inthecourtofkingcrimson.com, so please be sure to check it out. Now, over to the SidMeister. Please feel free to post your comments about Sid's book to ET. Sid would be most grateful for your feedback. -- Toby ] Chapter One From Somewhere To Nowhere. . . The success of King Crimson meant that the GG&F album was sought out and examined by enthusiasts far more closely than during the time of its initialrelease. For the most part, people seeking clues as to where Crimson came from were baffled by the overall lightness of the album. Perhaps only this and the preceding track offer any hint of what lay ahead. The modal nature of "Erudite Eyes", with its free-form section, offered new possibilities which placed GG&F in a different kind of space and excited all three players. Michael: "We'd found an area of freedom where you weren't a jazzer or a rocker, you just got into this other zone. It's an exciting place to be. There are some fabulous moments where you've got an instrument in front of you and you've got the ability to manipulate this set of tools, this instrument. You get to a higher level and something else is playing you, something else is telling you what to do." Peter Giles confirms the springboard nature of the track. "This wasn't me playing, it was another part of me playing and I was just the agent for that. So make yourself into a channel for that kind of music and that was brilliant=E2=80=A6 part of the spirit was about being able to disregard allthe rules in music, because you've followed them so carefully for so long, you're then in a position to break them." Of these last two tracks, the guitarist adds: "These two pieces are my distinctive contribution to the album. It highlights the growing conceptual distance between Peter and myself, as the young man from Dorset begins to find his feet and his own approach." But the fatal flaws in the band line-up were becoming more obvious to Fripp. "It was very clear to me that they were a trio of very good players who had almost nothing to play that would galvanise them. Songwriting was not their greatest forte. 'Erudite Eyes' was a vehicle, a platform, to get the team up and running, and prepared to take a leap. In this sense, it's a forerunner to 'Schizoid Man', which served the same function, but in a more sophisticated and satisfactory way. From Chapter Two World Domination In Easy Stages . . . After the Colour Me Pop recording, Fripp suggested that Lake should replace either him on guitar or Peter Giles on bass and vocals. Fripp's forcing of the issue coincided with the review period determining whether Angus and Phyllis Hunking would continue to provide funds, possibly an additional factor in his timing. But, looking back, both McDonald and Peter Giles feel that his actions were unnecessary and confrontational. Giles: "I don't remember any clandestine discussions. Maybe there was or maybe there wasn't. That thing of Fripp offering to leave is just a ploy basically and totally unnecessary because it would have happened quite naturally. Fripp is very cute with political moves. I don't remember any of that. As far as I'm concerned I was just getting pissed off. We'd always dreamt about making our music. We'd had everything on our side and nothing was happening so where was it going to go from there?" Fripp disagrees with this perception. "My offer to leave GG&F was genuine, as was my offer to leave Crimson in December 1969 rather than Ian and Michael. "And the discussions weren't clandestine, they were open. The matter was not 'forced': it was timely. To have continued at the review period, knowing that the band was not going to continue, was not quite straightforward and not quite honest. I had come to a personal decision and, rather than let matters drift, better to act clearly and openly. If the instrumental breaks of 'Schizoid Man' are beginning to whisper in one ear, while the other is hearing 'Digging My Lawn', what do you do? This illustrates the purely musical gulf." With a conviction that remains undiminished more than 30 years after the event, Peter Giles reflects: "A year of wholehearted devotion to this thing was a lot of effort, I tell you. I did everything in that band to make it work. I did all the press releases, every bloody thing. I was the prime mover. It was me that had the contacts and did all the chatting up. I was quite good at it and it was probably right that I did do it. I'd given it my very best shot and nothing had come of it - same old thing; every single goes down the tubes, the album didn't budge. What could you do? I put my hand on my heart and just gave up." The Colour Me Pop transmission should have been a career highpoint but, by the time of its broadcast, Peter Giles had left and Greg Lake was installed in Brondesbury Road. From Chapter Three The End OF A Triumphant Beginning. . . Fripp in particular has often talked about the esoteric factors he believed accounted for Crimson's achievements. More than that, Fripp has argued that the music created the band rather than the other way around. "I think one would have to say that a musician acknowledges that music is a power. You don't have to believe in God but a musician believes in music as if it werea God and one would have to say with that band that something took place outside of the band and the words I'd use would be that music leant over and took us into its confidence. "Music played that band for a short period of time. In King Crimson, we called this our Good Fairy. We knew it had nothing to do with us. And yet, despite the foibles, weaknesses, animosities and limitations of the members of that remarkable group, something exceptional occurred. Despite the people. I attribute this to the promptings of our Good Fairy, however (as adults) we might interpret the utter benevolence of that impulse which came into the lives of particular young men in a specific time and place." This is not a view widely shared in the team. Taking the release of GG&F's only album and its rapid dissolution as his starting point, Sinfield writes: "Within a year of its release and demission, somebody had stirred a cauldron, pointed a bone, painted a throne and crowned a king. You'll work it out." More explicitly, in response to an account of the period in posted on Fripp's online diary in August 1999, Sinfield retorted "Elf/Good fairy? What difference? If you ever dare to really look=E2=80=A6OPEN EYES - Boo!!" Greg Lake sees it as a combination of the right people in the right place at the right time. "King Crimson had this strange blend of personalities and the net result of it was music that was dangerous and passionate. These elements in combination I think are probably the most fascinating in music. Where there's a passion the music is always living on the edge, where there aren't any rules and certainly not rules which are obeyed. It was a very special band." A self-confessed cynic, Dik Fraser is equally doubtful about the "Good Fairy", whether as fact or allegory. "What good fairy? I certainly say they were lucky. Do I think there was a guardian angel? Naw, c'mon, give me a fuckin' break, Robert. It makes good copy. I certainly don't believe it and I don't believe Robert really believes it." Whether one attributes Crimson's staggering success to some external benevolence, Peter Sinfield, hard graft or plain luck, the extraordinary popular appeal enjoyed by this line-up has never been equalled in Crimson's 30-year career. From Chapter Four Slowly Up And Slowly Down. . . Recording and releasing "Cat Food" was not without its share of controversy, not least because of a dispute over who wrote what part of the song. McDonald recalls being outraged upon hearing that the track was initially credited to Fripp and Sinfield alone. He contacted David Enthoven and a meeting was arranged in the manager's mews house in central London. It was here that the question of attribution was hammered out. McDonald had worked with Sinfield on "Cat Food" over two days in Detroit the previous November. Though unfinished, it was played to the group. After McDonald and Giles' departure, Fripp returned to what he regarded was a brilliant lyric and he and Sinfield now set about finalising the tune. Fripp says: "I remember hearing Ian's demo once, I believe in the US, and acknowledge the importance of Ian's 6/8 turnaround, and that both versions are rock songs. But Ian's original demo is very different to the 'rewritten' 'Cat Food'. I asked Peter Sinfield for his opinion. Peter's view, expressed to me, was that, given a writer writing to the words, the writer would have to write a 6/8 turnaround. (Actually, I don't agree with this). I believe the key bass riff is also mine, and the shouted melody (on a minor third) is a standard rock 'melody'." "They weren't going to credit me at all," recalls an indignant McDonald. "Fripp claimed to have written the whole thing and I called a meeting with the management and I said 'Look, I wrote this song' and it was finally agreed that I did. I wrote the riff and the verses, including the 6/8 riff. Fripp just wrote the little bridge part - 'no use to complain', etc. And that's all." Lake's yelp of laughter - "At the critical juncture I dropped my pants in the control room and mooned Greg through the window to the vocal booth," recalls Fripp - gives some evidence of the relaxed atmosphere in the studio at that point. It certainly adds to the sense of uninhibited exuberance evinced by Tippett's flaying of the piano in a dazzlingly anarchic fashion. Regarded by Sinfield as the best song on the album, this scathingly satirical lyric on the fast-food culture and rampant commercialism is given a boisterous and effective reading by Lake. The line in the song about poisoned Hurri Curri may well have stemmed from observing Fripp's eating habits at the time. "I recall in the studio that he ordered beef curry (before becoming a veggie) 13 nights in a row," remembers Sinfield. "The night I persuaded him to order a variation. He did and 15 minutes after eating said variation, having carefully laid aside his guitar- he threw up." From Chapter Five Inside The Circus After weeks of being schooled, coached and tweaked, the rhythm team was finally joined by Mel Collins. With Fripp and Sinfield at the helm, they entered Wessex to spend the next month recording the third King Crimson album. The first day did not get off to a particularly auspicious start. Michael Giles had never been particularly enamoured of the Wessex drum sound and neither were Fripp and Sinfield. So they worked with Wessex engineer Robin Thompson to try and find a better one. Costly studio time ticked by as a steadily exasperated McCulloch was required to repeatedly hit various drums and microphones and positions were moved and altered to enhance or change the sound. Haskell puts this entire process down to the pair's relative inexperience in the studio. A seasoned session veteran used to churning out songs with the minimum of fuss, he was dumbfounded. "It was ludicrous, I've never seen anything so stupid - they took 12 hours to get a drum sound=E2=80=A6and it was still shite." Scathing about Fripp and Sinfield's search for newness, he contrasts their lengthy quest with the alacrity of his musical heroes in obtaining classic sounds. "You know, Otis Redding's band took two minutes to get a drum sound and that was perfect. Fripp and Sinfield didn't know what they were looking for. That's the funny thing because when they came back the following day it was completely different. Their drum can't sound like 'Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay' because that's too much like a drum=E2=80=A6it's got to sound 'innovative'. They shouldn't have used drums - they should have used my dick. That would have pleased Richard Williams!" From Chapter Six Driving Through The Great Silence Before returning to the UK, Fripp, Wallace, Collins and Burrell discussed the future. Once Sinfield was no longer part of the operation the money, Fripp assured them, would be split equally. Furthermore, writing and composition would no longer be Fripp's exclusive domain. Collins put the recent past out of his head and began to work on ideas for consideration by the new democratic band. Collins and Wallace both recall that optimism was high when the band reconvened in January 1972 in Ferndown, five miles outside Bournemouth in a motel owned by Greg Lake's old friend, John Dickinson, organist and songwriter in The Shame. On the first day, Collins duly presented a piece to the seated Fripp. "I wasn't brimming with confidence anyway, but I put them down in front of Robert. It certainly wasn't finished and it was just a couple of ideas but Robert would not play the music I'd put down in front of him. Wouldn't even attempt it. Obviously he didn't think it was good enough and he wasn't going to give it a go and so I fled from those rehearsals in tears. I was absolutely destroyed and that was how I knew I couldn't really work with Robert because he was too controlling and wasn't willing to give me a chance." "It's true: I hoped for writing input from other members. I remember Mel's contribution, and it wasn't Crimson," Fripp explained. "I'm not suggesting it was 'bad', only that it wasn't Crimson. However much time we would have put into it, it would never have been Crimson." Fripp accepts that he was indeed exerting control but more in the sense of what Adrian Belew would later describe as "quality control" within Crimson. "Crim has a particular flavour, scent, way of walking and doing things," Fripp continues. "If a great taste, aroma, walk and notion isn't Crim, it isn't Crim. This then moves into how to operate that quality control, and how far to go with particular individuals. With Mel, who is a sensitive character and a lovely, talented guy, a much better player than I have ever been, my 'no' was clearly a brutal experience." As Collins fled, Wallace and Burrell were outraged at what they saw as Fripp's high-handed attitude and accused the guitarist of being hypocritical. A furious Wallace put down his sticks, told Fripp he'd had enough and quit on the spot, followed by Burrell. Fripp packed up his guitar and left without a word. It had been quite a day; a new incarnation of King Crimson had come together and folded before even completing its first rehearsal. Visit Sid Smith's on-line diary at Discipline Global Mobile ------------------------------ End of Elephant Talk Digest #878 ********************************