Whichever way you look at it this was a band in a hurry.
Officially starting on January 13th 1969, ten days later after pondering on a variety of names the bulk of the band settled on King Crimson. In February Island label A&R boss, Muff Winwood visited the Fulham Palace Road rehearsal rooms. Initially unimpressed the industry bigwig told Crimson manager, David Enthoven the band reminded him of The Tremeloes.
Despite such comparisons the band carried on their daily rehearsal regime for three months (including a week-long run in a Newcastle nightclub where they’d been booked as Giles, Giles & Fripp), eventually making their formal live debut at The Speakeasy on April
9th 1969.
In a matter of weeks, the buzz created by those early shows carried them into the BBC’s Maida Vale studios to record a session for John Peel’s radio show. A few days later, Jimi Hendrix saw the group’s set at the Revolution club and declared “This is the best band in the world!”
Just over a month after that Crimson were in Morgan Studios starting to record their debut album.
From April to June they’d gone from the obscurity of a basement in the Fulham Palace Road to working on an album with renowned Moody Blues producer, Tony Clarke.
In between recording dates the band continued to work live. The galloping pace of their development hadn’t let up for an instant when they set off on the morning of July 5th to meet up at Hyde Park to play on the bill supporting the Rolling Stones.
If anyone thought things were moving fast before this concert, after it everything suddenly went into hyper-speed. Immediately after Hyde Park, Crimson and Clarke relocated to Wessex Studios to have another attempt at recording the album. However, things didn’t work out. In the middle of July these five young men with only a few gigs and a single BBC radio session under their belt, told one of the most successful record producers of the day that they’d rather go it alone.
On Monday 21st July King Crimson walked into Wessex Studios and took control of their own fate and began work on their elusive debut album for the third time.
Three consecutive days were spent on the title track. I Talk To The Wind, a song which Giles, Fripp and McDonald have been playing since 1968, was tried and tested in all kinds of moods and voicings. The chilling prophecy and promise of Epitaph was only finally nailed after an epic ten hours recording session. Tired from the rigours of the schedule, the very next day they embarked upon the bittersweet beauty of Moonchild.
Deciding that neither Drop In or their cover of Donovan’s Get Thy Bearings (both part of their live set at the time) fitted the mood they’d created so far, not for the last time in Crimson’s career, they improvised their way out of a corner.
With Greg Lake looking on in the control booth, Giles, Fripp and McDonald (the latter trying out a set of vibes found in a corner of the studio) sat down and in one take literally pulled the music out of thin air.
The day after the gentle chimes of Moonchild’s dreamy suite, the backing track for 21st Century Schizoid Man was laid down in one devastating live take.
With the bones of the album complete the band took to the road once again, returning when contractual obligations allowed to bounce tapes down in order to apply overdubs and for Greg Lake to begin laying down some of the most distinctive vocals of his career.
In mid-August they returned to the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios for another John Peel session and on August 20th, began final work on Schizoid Man. Working through the night it wasn’t until around 8.30 the following morning on the 21st August after Fripp delivered a live solo in one take, that work on their first album was completed.
Pete Sinfield’s connection to the wider arts scene yielded one of the most impressive album covers in rock music history. Painted by his friend Barry Godber, the art student was a fan of the band since the beginning, attending rehearsals, designing a poster for the group as well as the “flaming eyes” attachments to Michael Giles’ double bass drum shells.
Rarely had an album sleeve so accurately echoed the shock-and-awe reaction which this extraordinary music produced in its listeners. Even the advent of the CD and the jewel-case format has done little to dilute its iconic power.
At Fripp’s suggestion the album was subtitled “An Observation by King Crimson” and in early September the record was mastered at CBS’s facilities before being released in October. Pete Townshend waxed lyrical in a half page advert, the key message leaping out that the album is “An uncanny masterpiece.” From nowhere it went straight into the Top 5 of the UK album charts.
When the record was released they’d been together less than nine months.
In The Court of the Crimson King was a decisive break with the blues-rock motifs that still dominated the underground scene’s output. There were no lengthy solos anywhere on the album. Instead, Crimson’s collective attention was directed at beautifully crafted and detailed arrangements, symphonic allusions and a daring ambition in a group so young.
There was interest in signing the band from several major American labels but none were as keen as Atlantic. David Enthoven & John Gaydon went over to the states and played the album to Atlantic boss Ahmet Ertegun who listened to the record from start to finish without interruption, and then promptly signed the group to his label.
In late October the band flew to America, where Ian McDonald spent his first day mastering the LP at Atlantic Records’ facilities in New York, and from there on to a series of concerts that propelled their debut record into the Top Thirty album charts.
In the midst of a kaleidoscopic American travelogue that saw the group cross the vast coast to coast distance, Michael Giles and Ian McDonald, homesick and beginning to find the hurly-burly pace more than they could handle, decided to quit at the end of the tour.
When they left the stage of San Francisco’s Fillmore West on Sunday 14th December it was over. The whirlwind adventure that was King Crimson in 1969, with one LP and over 70 gigs under their belt had lasted a mere 335 days from start to finish.
A meteoric career in every sense of the word.
40 years later and Steven Wilson found himself working on new stereo and 5.1 mixes of an album he revered as a teenager.
“The whole remixing process has a been a window into something slightly surreal for me that’s for sure. One of the funniest things was when I got the master tapes for Court and listening through to Schizoid Man... And you realise that this was basically cut live, this historic burning piece is basically the birth of progressive rock right there in front of you and you get to the end of the take and you hear Michael Giles say “how did you feel about that?”
The irony of hearing that at the end of what you know to be a piece of history just made me laugh! Of course at the time they were just guys in the studio cutting a take but now it’s part of history and the idea that it could’ve possibly been bettered seems ridiculous in a way.”
As with other albums in the Crimson catalogue, Wilson worked closely with Robert Fripp.
“We spent about three days just doing a new stereo mix and were able to go back in some cases, two generations of tape because of course what they were doing in those days was always doing sub-mixes and bouncing down.
By going back to the slave reels and synching them with the original tracking reels so we were going back to the very first generation.
So number one: that gave Robert more flexibility with what he wanted to hear in the final mix, and number two: we actually got better quality because we weren’t using any second or third generation bounce downs.
That makes it closer than even the original band were at the time of the recording. When they were mixing it they weren’t able to go into the mix in that kind of detail; they weren’t able to say “I’d like to pull out that one guitar phrase” and pull it out of the mix. They were very much committed to that what they’d already bounced down. We were able to go into the music in a way that no-one’s been into it before.”
Sid Smith, July 2009
Taken for the 40th anniversary edition
