King Crimson - Red, 50 Years Later

The fall of the titans.

Robert Fripp: guitar, keys, Mellotron

John Wetton: bass, vocals

Bill Bruford: drums/percussion

David Cross: violin on “Providence,” Mel Collins: soprano sax, Ian McDonald: alto sax, Robin Miller: oboe, Mark Charig: cornet

Unknown session players: double bass, cello

Produced by King Crimson, engineered by George Chkiantz

Author’s Note: This post corresponds to the Red 50th anniversary episode of Vinyl Monday, originally posted 9/30/2024.Save for audio/editing jokes that cannot be included in a text format, this is a faithful adaptation of the review chapter. To watch the full episode, scroll to the bottom of this post or visit my YouTube channel here.

Going in: holy shit.

Among all the groups in my collection, my relationship with King Crimson stands out as unique. I love In The Court of the Crimson King. It wrote the rulebook for prog rock, and in doing so transcended prog. It’s practically proto-metal, no wonder I love it! I’ve made my adoration of Islands pretty public, I rank it way higher than most KC fans do. And Lark’s Tongues in Aspic...it’s beautiful, it’s terrifying, and I’m still kicking myself for missing its 50th anniversary. Lark’s Tongues would be one of the great challenges of my career.

Here we are at Red. An album that admittedly wasn’t on my radar until it turned up in my PO Box one day. Initially, the album art turned me off from it. Yes, I know it was shot by the Rolling Stones’ favorite photographer Gered Mankowitz. Yes, I know it was designed by Abbey Road designer John Kosh. No, the Red cover is not good. It’s the most washed-up 1980s middle-aged prog rockers cover the 1970s ever produced. Ergo, I was expecting washed-up middle-aged proggers.

Instead, I was met with one of the most brilliant prog albums I’ve ever heard.

Before I get into the album itself, I want to circle back to a question I asked in the Crimson King episode last year: “Is it possible that Robert Fripp’s obsession with changeability may have hindered his group?” Well folks, we have our answer. From the man himself, in interview in 1979:

“I never let King Crimson fall into the success trap. Several times, we went very close to having a gigantic commercial success. I have always instinctively tried to avoid this…”

(“A Conversation With Jean-Gilles Blum” Best Magazine, 1/1979)

The question I pose to you all this time around – which I would love to hear your answers to – is this: is Fripp a master of self-sabotage or mastermind?

Whichever it is, man was it interesting to read about Fripp at this time in King Crimson’s career. His superiority/inferiority complex thing were constantly at odds. With future Asia founder John Whetton and ex-Yes man Bill Bruford taking the wheel, Fripp was no longer the only big man in the room. This triggered his...authoritarian...leadership style like nothing else. Bill had some strong words to say about it:

“...one part Joseph Stalin, one part Mahatma Gandhi, and one part the Marquis de Sade.”

(quoted from Sam Sodomsky, “Red” Pitchfork, 9/10/2017)

Yeah. That’s...just...wow. Okay!! That lack of control, plus fear of a more commercial future, woke the sleeper cell in Fripp and killed King Crimson.

It is wild to me that Red was their last album of the 1970s; Fripp nuked the band in a joint statement to the NME and Melody Maker just 24 hours before the album’s release! And, in doing so, canned a would-be world tour. In a way, it makes sense that King Crimson would bow out now. Come 1975 and ’76, prog would be thoroughly out of fashion in favor of punk. Fripp felt King Crimson were dinosaurs. Maybe they were. There just wouldn’t have been the space for them anymore. But at the same time, this is King Crimson we’re talking about. The group that thrived through unpredictability! Who knows what could’ve come to be had founding member Ian McDonald officially rejoined the band and Fripp sucked it up and went on that tour. But you can’t stop the rock-and-roll cliché of “going on a spiritual journey to find yourself or whatever.”

How would I describe Red? It’s like if Lark’s Tongues and the first Black Sabbath record had a baby, and that baby got ahold of a copy of Houses of the Holy.

This thing sounds huge. Experiencing Red’s sonic magnitude for the very first time felt like the ending scene of the Tommy movie, where Roger Daltrey’s got his arms stretched out before the boiling orange sun.

As for how Red compares to its predecessor: Lark’s Tongues is menacing. It’s a yarn ball of sound. When you listen, you get the sense that it’s been here before you, and it’ll be here after you. You feel like you’re staring into a black hole and it’s just about to suck you in. Red’s got that yarn-ball quality, it’s got the black hole quality. But I don’t get a sense that it’ll be here after me. Sam Sodomsky for Pitchfork said Red “doesn’t feel like a eulogy.” I disagree. Red feels like I’m witnessing the end. The end of the band and the end of days.

We begin the end with the title track. This is an immediate, aggressive, urgent way to kick things off; with its constant unsettled, upward motion. There are these lofty, anthemic moments, brief chords to rest our feet on. But everything about “Red” is ascension until it can’t hold itself up anymore; Bill’s drumming in particular. Bill was really the main attraction of this era of King Crimson. We’ll see it over and over again on this record. Buried in this sheet of sound are meticulously mangled licks from Fripp.

Not to mention there’s hardly any space on the disc before it kicks in. I’ve got one whole second to brace myself before the riff!

When I first heard these chords in this sequence, I had to double-check if this was really made in 1974. These are some of the most ’90s chords I’ve ever heard on a mid-70s album – and this was before I found out Kurt Cobain name-dropped Red as an influence on In Utero!

I may have bought my stereo system for $20 from a yard sale. It may have been packed in shoeboxes. But this little surround sound has always treated bass guitar like a fucking king...no pun intended. When you take a track like “Red” and put it on this system, it sounds like I’m sat right in front of John’s amp. And exactly that’s where I want to be! This thing flies off my turntable.

John steps up to the mic for Fallen Angel. I know everyone hails George Chkiantz as the father of phasing and all; this is a massive-sounding record overall. But I have to point out a really sloppy edit that the mix on streaming services seems to have fixed. Right before John comes in, it’s like the volume on everything very suddenly drops. When I talk about really intentional, smooth sound design, like how the vocals and guitar swap spots on Disraeli Gears? The lead-in to “Fallen Angel” is the exact opposite. It’s sloppy, I’m glad it was fixed later.

Anyway, John’s got this plaintive, David Gilmour-esque quality to his voice. It’s the ground wire a composition like this desperately needs. The bass is killer on this one as well; making its way into gritty territory. The days of black queens, fire witches, and crimson kings are long gone on “Fallen Angel.” Aside from the callback to days of yore with the oboe, there’s not a lick of whimsy to be had on this album. The opening lines prove it: “Tears of joy at the birth of a brother, never alone from that time. Sixteen years of knife fights and danger, strangely why is life not mine.” These are real characters in a very real story of stinging switchblades and exploring a post-apocalyptic wasteland New York.

And yet it’s got this music behind it. It’s cosmically large, with three buzzing guitar solos cramped into one space. Then the frantic wailing through the final chorus. It’s math-rock in meter, forming a doomed hexagon, lines only broken by frankly ridiculous drum fills. It’s also math-rock in its use of trumpet...but that could just be me talking, I had American Football on heavy rotation in college.

Any other band would be lucky to have a monster like “Fallen Angel” as their album’s closing track, but for these guys it’s just your run-of-the-mill track 2. It’s handled casually, which is jarring considering how grand it is; note the fade-out.

Any other band would be lucky to have One More Red Nightmare as their closing track too; with its theatrical drama. John illustrates travel anxiety with this nightmare of a plane crash: “Sweat began to pour down my neck as I turned round, I heard fortune shouting ‘get off this outing!’” I can’t help but draw similarities to Rick Wright’s travel anxiety tribute on Dark Side.

Very different, but both beautiful. This is EXACTLY what I felt high-tailing it through Penn Station this morning!

Here’s what Fripp had to say to Melody Maker about King Crimson’s schedule come 1974:

“From January to February we made an album, then went to Europe for a tour, then immediately off to America, back to Britain for rehearsals and straight back to America for another tour. After that, I had one full day off in the country...With that kind of life, there's a lot of things I’d like to do, but can't.”

(quoted from Nick DeRiso, “Why King Crimson Imploded on Red” Ultimate Classic Rock, 10/6/2015)

Reading the lyrics, “Red Nightmare” was likely written about the band’s grueling tour grind: “Really safe and sound, asleep on the Greyhound. One more red nightmare” and the tension it was causing: “A farewell swan song, see, you know how turbulence can be.” Now compare this to “Ladies Of The Road” off Islands; heralding all the groupies this gaggle of nerds was somehow inundated with. Here’s a fun fact: remember the “what kind of beer” scene in Almost Famous? According to Bebe Buell in an interview with Cameron Crowe, as seen in her book Rebel Soul, “what kind of beer” was based off some shit King Crimson pulled! Their attitude towards road life has completely changed since “Ladies.”

The...percussion? Hand claps? They’re squishy? It’s like I stepped in water while wearing socks, or had to fish a slice of Wonderbread out of the sink. I don’t like it, I don’t want it. Take it away from me please. It’s a lot easier to stomach on my vinyl version for some reason. I want to feel like I’m trudging through muddy trenches, but not quite so literally! There’s expert use of dynamics to give Bill the space to move, and move he does. Not to reference a recently-disbanded neo-prog group, but he moves with a purpose! Playing every gap in the composition to his strength. There’s fantastic use of positive and negative space on “Red Nightmare.” I notice the wonderful contrast between John’s looser approach to the bass in the refrains. I don’t know what the hell time sig this song is in but it feels like a multiple of 5, before switching back to the frenetic verses.

And my god, the ending.

I wasn’t expecting that at all. The last two minutes of “Red Nightmare” is like we were toiling away, sweating at this typewriter, chained to a rhythm hammering repeating numbers and lines into infinity. Bill riding the cymbal plays the role of clacking typewriter keys (I’ve heard he found this ride in the trash? It sure sounds like he’s playing the trash can lid.) We’re falling deep into this trance state, spiraling further and further. And then, the paper is torn. That ending cracks through the air. The binary we’ve been typing fails. The universe itself splits. Occam’s razor slicing. I was left sitting there with my mouth agape. This is one of the greatest side 1 endings I’ve experienced on any album, ever.

And then side 2 opens with fucking Providence.

This song is the final transmissions of traveler David Cross before he’s swallowed by the red star that is King Crimson. He’s much benefited by the absence of big bombastic riffs on this improvisational live cut.

Here, the guys use ample negative space and ambient noise to build suspense. Fear, even. If King Crimsondid the Suspiria soundtrack, it might’ve sounded like Providence. David squealing and shrieking away is well-suited to foreboding terror. It sends shivers up my spine. The first half of “Providence” reminds me of the work of Japanese composer Teiji Ito. He wrote for his equally-brilliant wife; the mother of experimental film, Maya Deren. Listen to his score for Meshes of the Afternoon along with “Providence” and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

Above: Meshes of the Afternoon (dir. Maya Deren, 1943)

Hearing the studio material on Red, I just can’t find this space in this noise for David. But I wish there were still space for him in the band. And he absolutely didn't deserve to not know he was fired until the day before sessions began. “Providence” proves he was worthy of a seat at the table. Hear how his violin mingles with bending feedback, mischievous percussion, washes of cymbals. Keeping on with the “dead star” theme, “Providence” sounds like looking at the void where a star once was and feeling dread, knowing that’s where your galaxy is headed.

I have to say, you can tell John wasn’t too comfortable with jazz on compositions like these. He feels completely lost. It takes a while to grow its limbs, but this god’s-abomination eventually gestates into a staggering titan; driven by the best bassline on the record, pushed and pulled around by Bill on the kit. It’s exciting, it’s got a groove, but as soon as they find their footing they drop the idea again. “Providence” is the evil twin of “Moonchild.” It’s the sonic representation of brilliant minds turned into a ticking time bomb.

We finish things off with the longest track on Red, Starless. The intended “Starless and Bible Black.” Yes John got that from Dylan Thomas.

“Starless’”s intro is the sweetest moment on the whole record. Fripp’s Mellotron and airy guitar line, plus the saxophone, feel like a sweet sendoff. Almost romantic. This is John’s best vocal performance on the whole album. He wistfully croons: “Sundown, dazzling day, gold through my eyes” letting those last words fall gently into the dust. And that’s about as sweet as things are going to be. We’re right back to the tragedy of it all: “But my eyes, turned within, only see starless and bible black.” God that’s a beautiful line. “Starless” is introspective, observing the tragedy within as opposed to one taking place in a fantasy land. Which is so anti-prog!

Considering how lofty prog can be – overly so at times – John’s grounded lyricism might be exactly what Redneeds. Otherwise, I’d get to feeling this was too big to chew.

One of the most striking moments on all of Red is this tonal shift. The Pitchfork review described it as “the scene in a horror movie when the protagonist finds a place to hide that turns out to be a trap.” That couldn’t be a more perfect descriptor. The violin sneers, John whacks out his bass tone, percussion drips water on the cement.

The monster staggers around the corner in the form of Bill’s stiff drums. The bells crash and clang. It gets bigger and bigger, casting shadows on the ground. Fripp eeks out this tense, belabored, noisy, screeching solo, harkening back to the day the monster was born. It breaks into scratching friction. We can’t escape this one now! We can’t turn the ship around, the gravitational pull is too strong.

And then it bursts into an amped-up, ridiculous flurry. The last dying gasp. At times, this movement feels superfluous to me. But when I can get into it, I gladly allow it to sink its claws into me. It’s indisputably the climax of Red. By the time the woodwinds harken back to the central motif, the band adding a new sense of urgency, I stare at the needle in anxious anticipation. Watching it get closer and closer to the runout, wondering, “how the hell are they going to wrap this up?” It just keeps expanding, going on and on. Until it collapses into itself.

And you’re left in the darkness of what once was Red.

It’s crazy enough to think this band went from Crimson King to this in a mere years. It’s like Miles Davis going from Sketches of Spain to Bitches Brew in a decade. Imagine that level of artistic evolution, but in just half the time. Not to mention all the shit in between!!

I’ve seen comments under my videos and notes in my inbox saying Vinyl Monday has shaped your music taste. I always say the viewers move Vinyl Monday. This week, a viewer shaped my music taste by placing this album in my hands. Red was a very special experience, one I haven’t had in years. Not since I inherited the skeleton of this record collection and listened to an album every year have I felt this expansion of my music taste. And I haven’t been this moved by an album in...a long time. I started into the void of a dying star and I lived to tell the tale. I want a t-shirt that says: “I SURVIVED RED.” Lord knows Fripp deserved theshirt too!

This album is the collapse of a band, the end of an era, and the end of days, all wrapped into one. It’s one of the most acute expressions of anxiety ever put to music. An expression of the dying gasp. It’s existential dread incarnate. Staring into the night sky and knowing that at least one of those stars has already collapsed, it’s just taking millions of years for the light to get to us. And knowing one day, someone in another galaxy will look at our dead sun like that too. Red is the fall of the titans.

Personal favorites: the whole thing.

– AD ☆

Watch the full episode above!