On the Whistle Test.

King Crimson playing Frame By Frame.

King Crimson performed Monday March 15 1982 at BBC Riverside Studios in Hammersmith on long-running BBC late-night rock programme The Old Grey Whistle Test. (The programme aired on March 18). The five preceding nights had seen them playing a short UK tour with shows in Oxford, Dunstable, West Runton, Guildford and Poole. The following day they would enter Odyssey Studios to begin work on their second album Beat. It was still less than a year since the band’s debut at Moles Club, and they had been gigging extensively since then, in the UK, Europe, North America and Japan. In October of 81 they had been filmed for The Old Grey Whistle Test on the afternoon of their second concert at The Venue in London, but this had been mimed to playback of the studio recordings from Discipline, the week of the album's release. Matte Kudasai, Thela Hun Ginjeet and Indiscipline were all run through, with Elephant Talk chosen for broadcast when the show returned with a new series on November 26. But March 15,1982 was the first, and only occasion that King Crimson performed live for the show. Their second number for the studio audience and the viewers at home that evening was Indiscipline.

Schedule for King Crimson, March 15, 1982.

Much loved by British audiences, with its animated star kicker opening credits over the harmonica playing of Charlie McCoy on theme tune Stone Fox Chase (by Nashville session-player band Area Code 615), announcing an evening lineup of music you weren’t going to find anywhere else on TV, and which your parents weren’t going to like. Probably less well known around the world, (an American comparison fitting a similar niche might be The Midnight Special, or in Germany The Beat Club). The name came from Tin Pan Alley songwriter folklore which claimed that if a new test pressing of a song was played to the street’s grey-suited doormen, and they could whistle the tune after one or two listens, it had been deemed to pass ‘the old grey whistle test’.

Tracing its origins to the daily BBC arts programme Late Night Lineup which would occasionally feature a rock act, The Old Grey Whistle Test took on that programme’s slot for one night of the week as a dedicated rock music programme. Commissioned by David Attenborough who at that time was the Controller of BBC, the producer of the show was Michael Appleton who had previously worked on the short-lived Colour Me Pop, and would go on to oversee the new rock programme throughout its entire16 year duration. The show was to differ from mainstream chart music coverage, instead focusing on album artists and often those that would otherwise have little chance of gaining tv exposure. It also relied on knowledgable presenters all of whom came from backgrounds in journalism.

Broadcasting took place from a small 20’ x 30’ studio designated as Presentation B (originally designed for continuity announcers and also home to Patrick Moore’s The Sky At Night), tucked away on the fourth floor at BBC TV Centre, Wood Lane. With a budget of £800 per show in the mid 70s (this was to include the artists' fees), it was a bare bones production, there was no scenery and the musicians played without an audience aside from the presenter and the operators of the three huge Marconi Mk VII colour cameras. With the low budget came a significant degree of artistic freedom and with the broadcast coming at the end of the day's programming on BBC2, with nothing to follow it but the playing of the National Anthem before the closedown, it could sometimes run longer than the scheduled hour. For rock fans it was the place to go if you were able to stay up late (not so easy for those who had to go to school, or even work, the following day) to hear and, even more so, see bands for the first time.

The show would run for 9 months of the year with a break over summer. Typically two songs each would be played by two studio guest artists, with interviews and filmed segments with concert footage and current album tracks filling out each episode.

The first series began in September 1971 and ran until July 1972, helmed by Melody Maker journalist and editor Richard Williams. The confines of the studio had led to early shows being pre-recorded but airing with vocal performed live in a similar fashion to its predecessor Colour Me Pop. But by season two all studio performances were filmed fully live. Schedules were loose and viewers were not given guidance as to who might be on, with guests dropping in. Robert Fripp’s first appearance on the programme was one such instance, when he was interviewed by Richard Williams in 1972.

Richard Williams and Bob Harris, presenters for the show in the 1970s.

With its focus on album acts, there were certainly some unique moments over the years. Where else would you have seen Peter Sinfield fronting a band that included then current and former Crimson members John Wetton and Mel Collins? This was broadcast on July 24,1973 with Peter delivering Song of the Sea Goat and House of Hopes and Dreams from his solo album Still.

Of other former Crims, Greg Lake had departed the band in 1970 and spent the best part of the next decade touring the world’s arenas with Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer. ELP twice featured in concert specials, from a European tour, broadcast December 26 1973, during which Greg battles laryngitis, and later live in concert in Memphis and Montreal, recorded in 1977 on the Works orchestral tour and broadcast on 23 January, 1979.

Bill Bruford appeared on February 28 1978 performing Feels Good To Me and Back to the Beginning, from his first solo album, with a band consisting of Dave Stewart, Allan Holdsworth, Neil Murray and Annette Peacock.  To give an idea of the breadth of musical coverage, also featured in the studio that week were Eddie and the Hot Rods; on film, Neil Young and the Ian Gillan Band; and album tracks by the Pleasers and Nick Lowe.

Bob Harris, who had previously worked at Time Out magazine, became synonymous with the show as its longest running presenter, and his low-key presenting style was often the subject of parody. It was Melody Maker that coined the phrase ‘Whispering Bob’. A dismissive remark after the New York Dolls had played earned him a reputation, incorrectly, as being against punk and the New Wave - initially the scene wasn’t featured because the show focused on album bands and at the time punk bands were only releasing singles. But the damage was done, and things turned ugly one night at the Speakeasy in a confrontation with Sid Vicious, brandishing a broken bottle and demanding to know when the Sex Pistols were going to be on the show. The presenter had to be saved by Procol Harum's road crew who happened also to be at the club that night. After this the vitriol only increased and Bob decided to bow out at the end of 1978 and was replaced by Anne Nightingale.

Robert Fripp speaks to Anne Nightingale in 1979.

Robert Fripp was interviewed by Annie Nightingale on January 2 1979. She begins by lamenting his absence from the UK during this time after which much is made of Wimborne’s place as ‘the centre of the universe’ in Fripp cosmology. Indeed a year later, in a Melody Maker interview with Michael Watts, he reveals that during the drive to The Old Grey Whistle Test studio that night, with his then manager Sam Alder, his inner voice had told him ‘Go to Wimborne!’, prompting him to move back to England from New York at the end of 1979. The tv interview concludes with Robert promoting the planned Alphaville movie remake where he has  been asked to co-star with Debbie Harry. Of his new role as an actor he describes it as “possibly the most absurd thing that I have ever been asked to do”.

John Wetton with UK, December 1979.

UK, whose original lineup had also featured Bill Bruford and Allan Holdsworth, was in 1979 a trio of John Wetton, Eddie Jobson and Terry Bozzio. By now the show had outgrown the confines of its tiny studio and would often be broadcast from other locations, in this case a soundstage at Shepperton. With a live album just released, the band perform its title track Night After Night, followed by Caesar’s Palace Blues. The episode aired on December 4, 1979. John Wetton can be seen wearing one of the ‘star kicker’ badges that all the show's performers were presented with and encouraged to display. 

Further change came when Riverside Studios in Hammersmith became the new home in 1981 and introduced a studio audience for the first time. Then from 1984, in an attempt to keep pace with newer Channel 4 competitor The Tube, the theme tune was given an update and the show’s name was truncated to Whistle Test. The main presenters were then David Hepworth and Mark Ellen, both of whom had previously been journalists working at Smash Hits magazine.

Robert Fripp & the League of Crafty Guitarists were filmed in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on January 8 1987, and broadcast on Whistle Test on January 13, in what would be the final year of the programme. They were performing in South Bank Editions, a week of concerts by artists on the Editions EG label, alongside Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Bill Bruford’s Earthworks, and Michael Nyman.  After entering from the back of the hall the ensemble filed past the seated audience through each of the aisles of the auditorium before taking the stage. The houselights were kept on in a move to bring audient and performer together in a shared experience. Robert called for “a round of applause for the Beeb” as the tv crew awkwardly began packing up after filming 15 or 20 minutes worth of the concert, which featured material from the recently released Robert Fripp & The League of Crafty Guitarists: Live, including Invocation, All or Nothing and Eye of the Needle.

Robert Fripp & the League of Crafty Guitarists at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, 1987.

The show was axed at the end of 1987, concluding with a final special programme seeing in the New Year.

It had been a pioneering show, and unlike many of the BBC programmes of the 70s where tapes were routinely wiped for reuse, it faired better because the live bands were filmed as inserts and saved separately, leaving behind a wealth of archive material. It had also been responsible for the first live stereo simulcast with FM radio which led to spin off show Sight and Sound In Concert and, among its many highlights the Whistle Test team had been the presenters of the historic Live Aid concert from London's Wembley Stadium in 1985. An echo of the programme’s format lives on in current programming with the weekly live-in-studio performances on Later With Jools Holland.

The collected footage of King Crimson on The Old Grey Whistle Test can be seen on the Discipline 40th Anniversary Edition DVD 

Former Whistle Test presenters Mark Ellen and David Hepworth reviewing Sid Smith’s book in 2020.