In The Court of the Crimson King, 55 Years Later

The greatest debut album ever released, period.

Robert Fripp: guitar

Greg Lake: bass, lead vocals

Ian McDonald: woodwinds, keys, percussion, backing vocals

Michael Giles: drums, backing vocals

Peter Sinfield: principle lyricist

Produced by King Crimson

Author’s Note: This post corresponds to the In The Court of the Crimson King episode of Vinyl Monday, originally posted 8/14/2023. Save for audio/editing jokes that cannot be included in a text format, this is a faithful adaptation of the review chapter. This episode was part 2 of a 3-part 1969 miniseries. To watch the full miniseries, scroll to the bottom of this post or visit my YouTube channel here.

Going in: as a zoomer fan, I have an interesting perspective on King Crimson. Most of us were first exposed to the band through 1. the memes, 2. Kanye West, or 3. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. For me – regrettably – it was Kanye.

Say what you will about the man - it's all valid - but in his prime he could sling a damn good sample. One might call them mythical pulls.

Around the time my college classmates unfortunately nicknamed me “White Kanye,” I came into possession of an entire record collection for free. I’ve told this story a few times before, blah blah blah it’s established Abigail Devoe Lore at this point.

I was looking through albums, deciding which to keep and which to get rid of. And I saw this art, by the brilliant Barry Godber – truly gone too soon.

I was instantly hooked. I determined that, whatever this was, it had to be amazing. I tried looking it up on streaming services, but this was 2019. Robert Fripp was still in his “copyright bully” phase; striking any music memes and barring King Crimson from all streaming services save for fucking Soundcloud. Hell, posting King Crimson content and seeing how long it lasted before Fripp took it down was a meme in and of itself! Instead of pre-screening the album on Spotify like my 20-year-old self normally would have, I resorted to putting it right on my turntable.

I received an onslaught of sound. A relatively short, but nonetheless wild body of work that I was afraid to engage with in-depth.

Of the King Crimson I’ve spent serious time with, Islands became most dear to me. Lark’s Tongues In Aspicstill scares the shit out of me, while its little sister record Red made off with my heart just last week.

Looming above it all is In The Court of the Crimson King. Fripp’s feverish pursuit of metamorphosis – these guys couldn't hold the same lineup for more than one album – alienated some of the greatest talent the band ever saw. I can’t help but wonder if some potential was lost. Would I want another Crimson King? Hell no. But would I want to see how this lineup moved forward as a unit? Yes.

Though it’s a single LP with a modest run time of () minutes, Crimson King is a haul. Especially if you’re a non-musician like myself; prog is some technical shit! I’ve always been shy about covering prog for this reason. Even figures like Zappa who cross-pollenated it with jazz fusion and funk intimidate me. But over and over again, these more-than-I-can-chew reviews (Freak Out, Apostrophe, Red) are among my best-received. There’s something about my musical naivete that seems to sway people. Besides, what self-respecting proghead would want a t-shirt that says:

“Greg Lake’s voice was sexy and I’m tired of pretending it wasn’t!”

(Though now that I’ve hard the late black midi’s cover of this song, I can’t unhear Geordie Greep’s goofy-ass German general voice.)

An unfortunate development since I made this episode - RIP black midi. You will be missed.

This album throws you into the deep end with perhaps its most iconic song, 21st Century Schizoid Man. It’s the densest, most dizzying, and heaviest the record gets – and it’s only track one! I’ve always said the central movement sounds like a prelude to heavy metal. It’s not entirely out-of-place with what groups like Deep Purple and Black Sabbath were doing. “Schizoid Man” even leans into the industrial: Darth Vader drops in for a feature, and the crash cymbal is manipulated to sound like labored breathing through a gas mask. It’s tantamount to this song’s atmosphere. No matter what iteration they were on, King Crimson always seemed to nail that much.

A phrase like “paranoia’s poison door” could be interpreted in a lot of different ways. But once you contextualize it with “blood rack, barbed wire, politician’s funeral pyre” and “innocents raped with napalm fire,” this couldn’t be a more obvious Vietnam song. Our schizoid man is a soldier suffering from PTSD. The paranoia poison door leads to his memories.

There’s one thing about Crimson King that throws me off, one of those things I can’t ever un-hear. The drums are compressed to hell. There’s no high or low frequencies! It’s just this flat hit on Giles’s snare. Unorthodox as it is (I struggle to imagine what that miking situation would’ve looked like,) it was smart. There’s already so much going on: noodling bass, wailing saxophone, positively inhuman drum fills, Fripp’s signature banshee screech guitar. To have really robust drums on “Schizoid Man” would totally wash out Greg’s bass. Without that compression, and with literally everyone soloing at once through the middle movement, it would’ve been a claustrophobic mess. Simul-soloing can quite often read as messy; see Cream on their off nights. But you could listen to “Schizoid Man” 4 or 5 times, focusing on one part each time, and it would still lock together.

Though, if you listened to “Schizoid Man” 4 or 5 times focusing on a different part each go-around, half your time was spent listening to Ian McDonald. In learning the sheer amount of instruments that man played, I came to the natural conclusion that man was a god.

I Talk To The Wind is the jazziest we get, with some of the best flute I’ve heard on any rock record. (Sorry, Jethro Tull.)

Am I wrong to think this song is almost choral in structure? You could transpose this arrangement very easily into one for a capella vocals and not lose much; note the transition from Ian McDonald’s triplet flutes to Fripp’s gentle solo. It’s not unlike Leslie West’s approach to soloing; he always wanted to come up with “singable” stuff. “I Talk To The Wind” weaves in and out of itself beautifully.

The drums on Epitaph are huge; a far cry from the restricted, militaristic taps of “Schizoid Man.” This song and the previous are exceptions to that flatness. The instrumentation is lofty and huge like a cathedral. The oboe all but requires one swinging the incense down the aisle! “Epitaph” was what finally made me notice the lyrics; I had to go back for them in every song afterward. That’s what you get when you have a Literal Actual Poet writing for you, I guess. That being said, it’s easy for lyrics to fall to the wayside considering the sheer musicianship of the first two tracks. Of note:

“The fate of all mankind, I see, is in the hands of fools…” and “If we make it, we can all sit back and laugh, but I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying”

This is the sense of dread that underscored the late 1960s. The week before this, I covered The Beatles’ swan song, Abbey Road. It’s the optimism of the decade, all polythene Pams, the end of long cold lonely winters, and having bellies full of wine. Crimson King is the opposite; all the more remarkable when you consider the two albums were released just weeks apart. Part of why so much crazy shit went down in the ’60s – part of why people got so radical (had the guts to, really) – was because everyone thought they’d be nuked into oblivion. It was the attitude of, “we’ll all be reduced to a cinderblock flying through space soon anyway. Why not go out with a bang?” “Epitaph” is all the melodrama of the end of a decade and the new Aquarian age; beautifully broken utopia. Or maybe it’s cracking open a beer at the end of the world.

In the original episode, I simply called this section “The Genius of Moonchild” It’s the track most maligned among Crimson King fanatics; unduly so. The first movement, made famous by world-class creep Vincent Gallo and his Buffalo 66, is a medieval dance with its drum taps. Midcentury medieval was all the rage in the late ’60s, seeping its way into music from fashion and interior design. It’s all the whimsy of a feral moonchild, the innocent playing in the trees at night.

A very common criticism of “Moonchild”’s second movement is as follows: did it really have to be ten minutes long?

Your answer: literally yes. There’s eight minutes of instrumental ambient noodling, yes. It may read as self-indulgent time-killing to fill a side of a record. It might even feel as though it goes nowhere. But I’m here to tell you yes, “Moonchild” did have to be 10 minutes. That’s not just because it’s an exercise in King Crimson’s more freeform jazz side (is Crimson King a precursor to jazz fusion of the ’70s? Much to think about.)

You have to understand, no one just hears the quiet part of “Moonchild.”

For instance, while originally evaluating this album, I was walking my dog one day when I got to the quiet part of “Moonchild.” I didn’t just hear “Moonchild.” I heard the breeze. I heard someone mowing their lawn. I heard my dog’s tags, and our steps on the ground. “Moonchild” will be different every time you hear it, because there will always be different ambient noises filling that silence...unless you’re a fucking freak with a soundproof room. But even then, you freak, you’ll be sniffling or shuffling in your seat. It’s like going to the orchestra for a performance of John Cage’s “4’33” It’s billed as 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence, but it never is and never will be. Like you’ll never hear the same “4’33” twice, you’ll never hear the same “Moonchild” twice.

The royal court bursts open; its fanfare drowning out the quiet contemplation outside. There’s always a white queen, “sailing on the wind in a milk white gown,” to the black queen. Peter Sinfield and King Crimson have built an entire universe within this album; of schizoid men, moonchildren, undertakers, black queens and fire witches. Finally: “the crimson KIIIIIIING! Aaaaaaaah…” Oh, the melodrama! The annunciation of progchrist!

It’s a medieval hippie settlement on Neptune with swords and lazers and shit. THAT’S In The Court of the Crimson King.

When this episode rolled around, it had been a long time since I’d heard this song – and since the making of this episode it’s been a long time since I’ve heard the whole album. In the original episode, I admitted to doing quite possibly the whitest thing I’ve ever done. The prog rock equivalent of clapping when the plane lands: I clapped when I thought this song was over. King Crimson liked to do this thing where they’d have this grand ending chord, a pause, and then a little epilogue; like the curtain call of the record. They did this with the central motif of “In The Court of the Crimson King,” played on Mellotron. It almost reads as being played on recorder; the meek page boy and his flute. This album also has a hidden track tacked onto the end of this song called “Dance of McDonald, Sinfield, and The Puppets” It’s less than a minute long. Unfortunately, it’s not on my copy, so I’d never heard it before researching this episode.

You’ll have to suspend your disbelief for this one: this 20 seconds changes the context of the entire album. Instead of ending with a great big crashing cresendo that chews us up and spits us back out into reality...holy shit this album ends how it starts. When I first heard this, I just about lost my mind! It’s very rare I have cyclical moments like this on Vinyl Monday. There’s nothing more human than the cyclical; life and death, the rise and fall of empires. War and death and armageddon and rebirth that King Crimson guides us through on Crimson King; and how they themselves moved through every album.

It goes on and on and on until the end of humanity, or otherwise rock-and-roll.

Robert Fripp once said something like if prog wants to survive, it has to stop pretending it’s 1971. From the outside, prog is hard to break into because simply, it’s a lot. It’s very complex, technical to the nth degree. And some acts fall victim to technical for technical’s sake. It’s pretty obvious when a group does verse/chorus/10 minute keyboard solo and sticks a movement in 16/8 time just for the hell of it. (I love you dearly ELP, but…) Once you know King Crimson started with all of their stuff in 4/4 time, then built on top of that, you can’t unhear it. It’s grounded in reality – however fast we’re flying through hippie galactica. That’s why it’s endured and remained a paradigm of prog. Though my brain wasn’t tied in knots and kicked down the stairs, I still felt challenged. A lot of prog groups lost this grounding force along the way. Hell, even King Crimson might’ve. If we get back to this principle – building the launchpad before sending the rocket – that’s how prog survives.

Songs about wizards venturing into the green lagoon for the scared amulet? It’s not for everyone!

But here, my perspective on the genre changed. Stories of exiled soldiers and cruel kings run deeper than green lagoons. Crimson King uses fantastical elements to tell a very human story, one that’s come up over and over again in my writing: creation, stasis, destruction, repeat. Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. I saw Oppenheimer in the middle of writing the original episode. That film, Prometheus giving humans fire – or maybe Pandora opening her box – was the accidental perfect companion piece. In The Court of the Crimson King is a direct consequence of this action. Man played god, and now we’re here.

King Crimson and Crimson King were wildly ahead of their time. Metal before metal, prog’s Ten Commandments. There are of course some things that date the album (Mellotron, anyone?) But there are so many more elements that sound fresh today. Somewhere along the way, this album slipped out of my everyday listening rotation. But I feel this has more than earned a slot in future revolutions.

Even today, this album is a whopper; so monolithic that even King Crimson themselves couldn’t quite escape its long, dark shadow. They came damn close with evil twin Red. But no ticket. It was the most forward-thinking album to hit the mainstream all year. It dictated how an entire subgenre of music would go for like, ten years after. It was one hell of a statement of intent from a very green band. In The Court of the Crimson Kingwas a quantum leap forward, and it still serves as a compass today.

Sorry, Zeppelin. This is the greatest debut album ever released.

Personal favorites: the whole thing!

– AD ☆

Watch the full episode above!