King Crimson Fan Central

-In May '69, King Crimson played their 'Marquee debut' and apparently their show provoked a big impact on Yes. Can you remember that particular show?

It wasn't at The Marquee, it was at the Speakeasy (April, 9th, 1969). I think their first ever gig was at the Speakeasy.

-Yes, thats right.

And I know I was there and Bill (Bruford) was there. I don't think Chris (Squire) was there. And I remember standing at the bar of the Speakeasy, which was a tiny little club, I mean, it was basically a restaurant with a bar and a tiny, tiny stage. Which actually Yes, when the Speakeasy re-opened after they had a fire, I think we went to play at The Speakeasy on the opening night and we actually helped to paint the stage 'cause Roy Flynn was saying: 'Come on, come on' you know, running late and I remember us picking up the paint brush and Jon (Anderson) was going 'We are painting stages' and we had to play later that night.

With Crimson, I met Fripp a few times, he used to come to see Yes at The Marquee. And I didn't know Fripp was a guitar player, I didn't know much about him. He used to come and he was always wearing a cape, like a cloak with a hood, like a monk. And he had little glasses on, like John Lennon, and he was very tense and he always talked to me after the show and we would talk about guitar strings and guitars, all that kind of stuff. And he was quite nice but seemed a little eccentric and I didn't know much about Crimson, but I do knew that we was putting some sort of band together, I didn't know much more about it than that. And they had very secretive rehearsals. I've known Greg (Lake), 'cause he was with a band from Bournemouth called The Gods. Chris (Squire) and I knew Greg. I think that was the very first gig King Crimson ever did, certainly the first night I saw them, and it was absolutely amazing! And I was standing at the bar with a drink and I never touch my drink throughout the whole set, I just stood there in total amazement. Bill (Bruford) was standing next to me, I think, and we just stood there kind of open mouthed and... I think all of us were there. And we just watched them and immediately we were just amazed about how tight they were, and how good they were, and how good the composition was, and how original they sounded, and we just realized immediately... We thought that we were the best band around, and we probably were. We were pretty confident, as far as London bands went, that Yes were the one. We thought that nobody else was better than us. Crimson tore all that apart. I think we actually said that night we needed to rehearse a lot more.

-It was a reality check.

Yes, exactly, and I think we may have cancelled some gigs, I'm not sure about it, but we went into pretty intensive London rehearsals. At that time we were rehearsing at Roy Flynn's basement, at the place he used to live in Putney and we kind of turn it into, not exactly a studio, but we could keep the equipment set up. And we became very critical, we became our worst critics because it really shocked us. You know: 'Why are we not this good?'. And it would cause arguments and we started re-arranging things, writing more stuff and all that kind of thing.

Sounds to me like King Crimson had a pretty big impact on Yes.