Crimson Commentaries 1991-98

3. Live Performance
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The shock of this group's performances in England, from its debut on April 9th.
1969 at the Speakeasy in London, is difficult to convey 28 years afterwards to someone
who wasn't part of that generation, or to anyone familiar with the work of later players
who were themselves influenced.
A key to it was surprise: the group came from nowhere. No-one in the group had
a reputation, or was known outside Bournemouth. Yet within a short time the live
Crimson exerted a wide influence on other groups of its generation. Pete Banks, the first
Yes guitarist, was drinking at the bar of the Speakeasy in London on April 9th. 1969, our
first gig, when Crimson began playing. His drink never left the bar. Two days later the
young Bill Bruford walked home to Fulham at five in the morning from the Strand
Lyceum, raving about the group he had just seen.
The Speakeasy gig was small but made a huge impact on its music business
clientele. The Hyde Park show on July 5th., supporting the Rolling Stones on their return
to live action, propelled the group to national prominence. The audience was huge,
perhaps 750,000. And we stole the show. There were also a large number of Europeans
and Americans, who spread the word when they got home.
The West Palm Beach Festival of 28-29th. November, another huge event, broke
Crimson (and Grand Funk Railroad) in America.
The only record from this period, "In The Court Of The Crimson King", failed to
convey the power of Crimson live but does have the intensity which characterises
classic Crimson of any period.
This is the only Crimson which could have had massive commercial success. It
also drew as much hostility as acclamation, beginning a convention which is honoured
to this day.

1. The Musicians.
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At the time and for the time, the playing standard was high for young rock
musicians.
Greg Lake (21) had played with several semi-pro bands in the Bournemouth
area, and then joined The Gods. Greg studied with the same guitar teacher as myself,
Don Strike of Westbourne, and brought a guitarist's technique to the bass.
Ian McDonald (23) spent five years in an army band which, although he hated it
and drove him to despair, gave Ian a wide practical experience and a sound foundation
to express his exceptional musical talent.
The guitarist (23) was an intense and driven young player who played in two
Bournemouth area rock groups as a teenager, and spent three years in the Majestic
Dance Orchestra. After King Crimson in 1969 he practised a lot more and got better.
This album suggests in 1969 his solos were pretty feeble. Ian didn't like his guitar
playing very much and, on the evidence of this album, I have sympathy with his view.
Michael Giles (25) was outstanding. Also from Bournemouth, in 1969 Michael
was arguably the most exciting and original drummer in rock, and in a world class. I
never knew him to play badly.
The musicians came together out of Giles, Giles & Fripp during the second half
of November 1968. Only one person changed: Greg Lake replaced Peter Giles. I saw
myself heading in a different musical direction to Peter, a superb bass player, and gave
Ian and Michael a choice. Greg was a singer, and both lead and bass guitarist. I
suggested he could replace Peter or myself.
Peter Sinfield and Ian were already writing partners before Ian joined Giles, Giles
& Fripp, towards the end of a failure to alert the world to the fact of our existence. Peter
accompanied Ian into the nascent King Crimson from GG&F, and during the initial and
definitive rehearsals Peter provided criticism, advice, commentary and words. Peter
moved rapidly from the inside of the outside to the outside of the inside.
Peter's formal and practical involvement with the new group began as roadie and
lighting man, in addition to providing words. He tired of being a roadie very quickly,
mainly because of the weight of the equipment and how the life weighed on him. In
Peter's words (MM January 2nd. 1971): "I became their pet hippie, because I could tell
them where to go to buy the funny clothes that they saw everyone wearing ... in fact I
carved and hustled my way to where I am now". In 1969 Peter was not quite a full
member of the performance team, but more than a full member of the writing team.
What did each of the members bring to King Crimson?
Greg brought the physical presence of a front man and singer. His approach was
energetic, pragmatic and direct.
The guitarist: the closest I can come is this - he brought a raison d’être.
Ian brought musicality, an exceptional sense of the short and telling melodic line,
and the ability to express that on a variety of instruments.
Michael brought authority - and humour, drive, invention, and a sense of the
perverse.
Peter's primary contribution was to the group's material. But this doesn't go far
enough: he saw something, gave it words and applied them to the group. Peter
recognised the band and gave it its name. He also found the cover. In a sense, Peter
helped shape the perception of the group as King Crimson from both the inside and the
outside.
What bound us together, for a short period of time, was commitment: the group
was our prime aim and interest. With commitment all the rules change. As we became
well known, outside interests and attention increasingly impinged and the group began
to gently fall apart. But the intensity of the first six months generated enough momentum
to keep the group moving, and it did, until falling over six months later.
The energy of desperation fuelled our efforts. We all had lame professional
experiences which pointed ways not to go in music. So, we resolved to play what we
wished to play (note for the dimwit reviewer: this does not equate to self-indulgence)
and figured if we were good enough we might earn a living. A living in 1969 was £30 for
the single men, and £40 for a married, and nothing for Peter Sinfield, who began
working as an unpaid roadie.

Line-up One (1969)
__________________
Robert Fripp guitar
Ian McDonaldwoodwind, keyboards, mellotron, vocal
Greg Lake bass guitar, lead vocal
Michael Giles drums, percussion, vocal
Peter Sinfield words & illumination

Introit
_______
The shock of this group's performances in England, from its debut on April 9th.
1969 at the Speakeasy in London, is difficult to convey 29 years afterwards to someone
who wasn't part of it: something like the explosive impact of punk seven years later. A
considerable influence on the musicians and groups of its generation, it is also the only
Crimson which could have had massive commercial success. Inevitably, it drew as
much hostility as support.
The only studio record from this period - In The Court Of The Crimson King -
failed to convey the power of its live performance but does have the intensity which
characterises classic Crimson of any period. Contemporary ears might find the music
part of another era until they listen THROUGH the music rather than AT it. The sonic
landscape remains as bleak an authentic Crimscape as it gets. Neither heavy metal nor
hard rock have been able to blow me away since I spent nearly all of 1969 playing
"Schizoid Man" and a mellotronic, stroboscopic "Mars".
In 1997 Discipline Global Mobile released Epitaph, a 4 CD set drawn from
bootlegs and archive recordings of (mainly) live performances during 1969. This was the
first opportunity for a new generation of the listening community to access primary
sound sources of Crimson live in 1969; and make their own assessments of the group
and the music.
My own perspective on Crimson is obviously rather different from the other
founder members of the 1969 band. My impression is that they consider their Crimson to
be the only real Crimson, a view with which I have sympathy but disagree. We would
probably agree that this founding Crimson was charmed. There was something
completely other which touched this group and which we called our "good fairy". After
reflecting for several years on how we went from abject failure to global commercial and
musical success in nine months, I eventually concluded that sometimes music leans
over and takes us into its confidence. This was one of those times, these were some of
those people.
But we were also young men, too immature to handle the strains involved in
rapidly moving from local and national failure to international acclaim. The group's
birthday was on January 13th. 1969 at the Fulham Palace Cafe in London. It broke up in
California, December 1969.
This generation of rock (1969) became known as "progressive". Bombast,
exaggeration, excess, self-indulgence, pretension and long solos (by any instrument in
the group) came to characterise the archetypal "prog" outfit. In January 1994 Vox
magazine printed a "Prog Rock special".
This is the letter, dated December 30th. 1993, which I wrote to the Letters
column:
< In the Vox January Prog Rock special your Vox writer suggests that "King
Crimson personified the direction that British rock was taking towards the end of the `60s".
In my view Crimson is a bad example of mainstream Prog Rock (your label) for several
reasons - one being that whenever one particular approach ran its course the group
changed direction and/or personnel. Not the high road to commercial success.
And your writer has drawn a wrong conclusion from a specific Crimson example -
extending a song title into sections. The reason songs and pieces (not "works"!) acquired
separately titled sections (like "In The Court Of The Crimson King" including "The Return
Of The Fire Witch" and "The Dance Of The Fire Witch") was so the group would get paid
full publishing royalties on our American record sales.
David Enthoven and John Gaydon, the E and G of EG Management, told King
Crimson we had to have more than our 5 titles on "In The Court Of The Crimson King" to
get the maximum publishing royalties in the US. So, we added titles to sections until we
had the number necessary to be paid the full rates (by titles, not by running time).
This mundane explanation is much less fun than the one your writer assumes -
artistic pretension - of which there was, in any case, enough to go around.
"The Devil's Triangle" had no singing on it and was not, therefore, a song. Neither
was it "a work", nor "a composition" - it was an instrumental piece. And not a very good
one.
Overall, the article gives a fair impression of the impressive prattiness
surrounding a lot of the scene, but misses some OTT examples of which VOX would
probably have to field libel actions were it to discover and print.
Your general picture - of dopey musicians discovering they are being taken
seriously (fair enough as far as it goes) - is naive, and overlooks the sordid side of what
happens when young men suddenly acquire and are attributed personal, professional and
financial power. Neither does the article adequately explain how the "progressive"
movement became such a flaccid phenomenon. For that, you would also have to
consider the unstoppable growth of the record industry between 1968/78 (particularly in
the US), drug use in general and specifically the widespread adoption of cocaine and
heroin (replacing grass and LSD) by both musicians and executives within the music
industry after 1971 (the consequences were horrific), and the degree to which drugs were
used by certain characters on the business side of the industry to manipulate musicians
(which I saw for myself).
You would also have to take into account the world outside the self-sustaining
Prog world-view of hand-polished landscapes - Vietnam and Watergate, for example.
The original impulse of the "Prog-Rock" genre was the hope that "we (and the
word was a statement of bonding) can change the world". "Sergeant Pepper" and the
outdoor music festivals celebrating community and affirmation, notably Woodstock,
proved it. As a young musician and "hairy" travelling across America in 1969 the
connection was unmistakably clear between the peace movement, rock music as an
instrument of political expression and the voice of a generation. The demarcation between
"straights" and "hairies" equally so.
My personal view is that this impulse failed to carry over into the 1970s and by
1974 the "movement" as a whole had been corrupted, diverted and gone irretrievably offcourse.
Your banner headline - "Jurassic Prog: when dinosaurs ruled the earth" - I believe
I was the first person to use the term "dinosaur" to describe Prog groups: in interviews
during Autumn 1974 explaining why I was then quitting the music industry. Difficult
perhaps to grasp now, but at the beginning the music could be as powerful and overtly
critical as The Clash, Sex Pistols and The Jam a few years later.
I'm not sure Elvis survived the Army but I hope I've forgiven him, so please
forgive me if I seem to fall into the crime of taking your article seriously. But the music
industry was (and is) a microcosm of a particular generation and its concerns. The mess
our elders made of their chances is enough reason to attract the hostility of a succeeding
generation, and not enough reason to forget their real aims.
Musicians, as well as writers, grow up in public. We learn how to do what we do
with all our weaknesses, pretensions, aspirations and ambitions in full view of each other
and the public. By the time punk appeared (a necessary and welcome blast) I had moved
to New York and watched self-importance in personal expression move (mainly) from
young musicians to young music writers.

This commentary is on the "Dèjà Vroom" DVD, It is by R.Fripp, I don't know If this is the right forum section but it is the one that seemed more sensible to me.

I have put only the parts which I think are important because the whole commentary is a 100 Pages long. I put different chapters of the commentary in different windows so people can read the things that they find interesting and so that people don't get lost in to dense and compact writting.

Preface
_________
The aim of these commentaries is present a personal overview of almost thirty
years of King Crimson history. I have drawn on my writing since 1991, originally
conceived as sleeve notes or press releases. This involves repetition and redundancies,
which I hope the generous reader forgives, but which obviates large amounts of crossreferencing
for an innocent approaching the throne; and I have felt free to make
alterations and some updates where this seems appropriate.
Robert Fripp;
August 22nd. 1998,
DGM World Central,
PO Box 1533,
SALISBURY,
Wiltshire, SP5 5ER,
UK.
Introduction
____________
I
King Crimson was described in a Boston Phoenix review of "VROOOM" as an
indie rock group. It probably always has been.
As a primary source I have yet to find any secondary sources which are accurate
factually and, more important to me, convey the spirit of the group and its music. It is
probably fairly obvious that I see Crimson as something very much apart from, while
within, the rock industry and its contemporaries.
One constant throughout Crim history is the intensity of polar response: respect
facing off loathing, with little indifference. But the most significant single factor,
constantly repeated, is that Crimson decisions fly in the face of industry conventional
wisdom and commercial advice generally. I have noticed that when Crimson is about to
get successful in a big way it breaks up, regularly.
Where a group favours business logic over musical decisions, the music has just
died. Where a group attaches greater significance to its appearance than to its music,
the group has just died. Where a group listens to the musical advice of its record
company it has a one-in-seven chance of being hugely successful, and a six-in-seven
chance of failing miserably. Either way, it loses its core audience. Hence the aphorism
that the only thing worse than a record company which takes no interest in a group is a
record company that takes an interest in a group.
Business logic and musical logic are utterly incompatible. A business demands
consistency, guarantees, security, and reliability. The creative act is reliably insecure
and the outcome inevitably hazardous: significant yet risky. One effective way of
shaking off the pressure of managers and record companies is to disband whenever the
group has completed its musical commitments and / or is beginning to generate a large
income.
There have been five different personnel configurations of the live King Crimson.

II
(Notes to "The Essential King Crimson: Frame By Frame")
(1991)
It is too easy to attribute the successes, faults, achievements, continuity,
discontinuity in the life of King Crimson to one person. Because it is too easy, this is
what has happened. Given the talent, musicianship and individualities that have
contributed to this "way of doing things", to present the experiment of King Crimson as
the work of one person is an achievement in itself.
There IS a place for criticism, commentary, chit-chat, exacerbating expostulations
and other elephantosities, but the evidence of the scrapbook suggests this place has yet
to be found within the pages of the music press. I have some sympathy for the music
writers whose work is presented to view, once again, in this scrapbook. They are
exposed in public to a more mature gaze, for who and what they were.
Over a period of 22 years of dialogue, participation, friendship, hectoring,
contribution, and interviewing on three continents, I have seen and experienced the
incalculable damage done by the music press to the act of music. The sheer unkindness
of the English comics in particular is breathtaking, the ignorance astounding, the selpabsorption
frightening. This, with the ingrained hostility and nastiness, has contributed
to the relegation of English music commentary from a position of international respect in
1969 to open dismissal years before 1991. We deserve better than this.
My sympathy remains, and there are exceptions. Richard Williams, Robert
Palmer and Jon Pareles all have more knowledge than most professional musicians of
my acquaintance. Vic Garabarini can better articulate the dynamics of the creative
process than any musician I know. If we include the late Lester Bangs, all these writers
share the passion of those engaged in the impossibility of the musical act in our culture.
If the musician faces the question: "How may I be a professional musician and human
being simultaneously?" then how to write and convey this in an ephemeral and
transitory medium? The question we ask of our writers and commentators is the same
we ask of our musicians: "Does their note ring true?".
Performers grow up in public, but the relationship is direct. Each generation has
its emotional initiation into the act of music by those groups and musicians who are in
the field of endeavour at the time. Some speak for us more directly than others, and it is
those we move towards. I don't know if anyone who was not emotionally engaged by
King Crimson in its earlier forms, or who was too young to be a part of that particular
generation's musical communion, can re-enter that bubble of experience. This is not a
purely musical phenomenon: the events took place in time, in place and with particular
people.
Sometimes music leans over and takes the musician into it's confidence. If the
audience is present while it's happening, the event can move into a very special time
frame that deserves the word "eternity". Any "eternal" moment is the same as any other
"eternal" moment: it's always there, if we are. If any of you reading these easy words
doubt them, I can only reply that this is the blood-flow which keeps the musician alive in
the face of overwhelming odds and difficulties.
Some of the music on these albums comes from a special place, and some
doesn't. But it's all worth a listen.
If any group, or endeavour, has value it is because the group reflects a particular
quality. Where this is so, the quality is recognisable and can be named. The ceremony
of naming has been held in respect in many cultures. (At the time of writing, the Church
of England is debating baptism). The name "King Crimson" is a synonym for
"Beelzebub", which is an Anglicised form of the Arabic phrase "B'il Sabab". This means
"the man with an aim" and is the recognisable quality of King Crimson.
The words "The Essential King Crimson" claim to present the essence of King
Crimson. What is this? For me:
energy, intensity, eclecticism.

Edited by Lonely Progger - November 06 2007 at 07:58