The Diary of King Crimson (Part II)

by Robert Fripp

Date Submitted: 23-Nov-95
Submitted By: Jim Price (JPRICE at TrentU dot ca)

-Friday, April 10th, Edenhurst Guest House, Ross-on-Wye

Tony Levin and Adrian Belew came down from London today; Bill Bruford caught caught the train from Guilford because his car had blown a gasket. I drove from Weymouth where I'd spent the morning opening a new record shop, Handsome Dick's. This was the first time the group have met to play togeather as a committed unit.

Tony reckons that King Crimson is the best group name he's ever heard; AB is also into the name. I vacillate. My non-rational says yes to using it and, in two years' time the move will make sense. But as yet the team hasn't officially discussed the name as an item.

We warmed up with our first "Jungle Rhythm," I've found a guitar synthesizer sound that fits. And "Discipline": with some difficulty re-arranging the C sharp minor section; we easily fall into a 1975 vocabulary. This is the problem with experienced musicians: they have access to history. The sound I hear for the band doesn't involve all the instruments phrasing togeather that way. A different approach is where they have an independence but are still linked. For example, instead of four instruments phrasing togeather, two can phrase balanced against the other pair's phrasing. And with a different sense of climax: gradual, more spontaneous but controlled.

Our prime task is to bring AB's ideas into the band and encourage him to come foreward, rather than give him Robert or Bill's ideas to fork around. Tony, fresh from recording with Yoko Ono and Phil Spector, (he promises the stories are all true), is simply the best bass bass player I've ever worked with. He can handle Bruford, Fripp and Belew music; the only one of us who can take on all the others.

But after two hours I left for Wales with my mother to visit her mother, and so here I am at Cousin Jean's guest house in Ross-on-Wye. The rooms are in impeccable order, Jean's cooking is staggeringly good, and even eclipses her mother's. And Aunt Evie was head cook at Carradock Court.

-Saturday, April 11th, Edenhurst

Today Aunt Evie, my mother and myself visited Great Aunt Violet Griffiths in Newport. Violet is a piano and music teacher and now, at 70, regularly has the highest examination results for her pupils, and a long waiting list. Recently she supervised the theory exams for all of Gwent. While we were there two of her pupils came by to give her a boquet of tulips: a charming gesture of genuine affection and an excuse to examine me about Bowie. Neither of them, an oboe player and a clarinettist, know how to improvise and were surprised that I improvised all my parts on -Scarey Monsters-. I tried to discover why Vi has such a remarkable success record: she gets it by pushing. "Aim for 100%, not 50%." As a young girl she practiced nine hours a day, five on scales alone. Her husband, Mervyn Griffiths, was Great Britain's top soccer referee during the 1950s and refereed the Wembley cup finals, as well as flying all over the world. They courted from school days and never looked at anyone else. At his retirement party Mervyn had a stroke and died. Great Aunt Vi's brother-in-law Vernon had a son at university, who felt he would rather contribute to the family income than be supported by them in education. So he persuaded his father Vernon, a miner, to let him work down the pit. On the first day Vernon's son became a miner there was a huge explosion in the pit. The rescue party found them both dead, sitting togeather waiting for help. They had been gassed. This was in the 1940s.

From Newport the three of us, Auntie Evie, mum and myself, drove to nans' nursing home in Beaufort via Aberbeeg, the coal mining village where my mother and her sister grew up. This is the first time I've been home. The sisters Evelyn and Edith, Evelyn two years the elder, were always very close and still giggle uncontrollably at the slightest provocation, even appearing indiscreetly on -Exposure-. Today they still play piano duets like "Spring of Lilac" enthusiastically, although a little more rubato than fifty years ago.

-Sunday, April 12th, Chez Parents, Wimborne; 18:45

We returned from Ross this afternoon. At lunchtime Cousin Malcom told me of his visit to the slate quarries in Llachwedd in North Wales. Some fifty or sixty years ago the slate miners there worked in groups of three, in shifts of twelve hours a day, and a miner could spend his complete lifetime working in one slate vault. The Llachwedd miners developed a choir, originally meeting in their lunchtime and singing in the reverberant vaults. Today, it's not really a commercial quarry and the slate mined is mainly sold as souvenirs, but they still have their choir and use the vaults to practise in preparation for eisteddfods.

-Monday, April 13th, World HQ

This is the end of the second day's full rehearsals with the four of us. And some amazing ideas sprayed out of the two "Jungles" and "Second Line of Discipline." Bill and I had our first falling out, over some dramatic cymbal punctuation. His new drums/percussion blend gives me a lift, but the regular drumming is entirely the opposite of what I have in mind. So we laid down some ground rules:

1) The full band never phrase togeather; two players togeather is enough, and in exceptional cases three
2) It's OK to repeat yourself. This emerged before, but now it's formalized. It came up originally because Bill changed his part around on "Jungle 1" so that he wouldn't repeat himself. And our best tune died.

Tony is mostly playing the Stick instead of the bass guitar, and with it's attack it provides a tuned-percussion effect doubling BB's boo-bams. A beautiful sustained low end Tony found "killed him." Bill is working on finding alternatives to cymbals, an entirely wretched instrument which covers all the high frequencies of use to guitarists. Adrian hasn't sung yet but he's beginning to to say what he wants, the backing he needs to solo, and so on. For me, I gave up pushing and let myself listen and wait, to be pulled along by everyone else's ideas.

There's a dedication in Stafford Beer's -The Brain of the Firm-, which I've just begun reading; "Absolutum, Obsoletum": if it works, it's out of date. Told this to Adrian who misunderstood my Dorset twang. He heard: "If it works, it's out of doubt."

'Phoned Paddy to let off steam. He says BB and I should talk it out.

-April 14th, World HQ

Bill is really getting to me, so I'm trying to understand how he works.

1) He's a very busy player, and doesn't enjoy playing sparsely;
2) His parts have lots of fills and major changes of texture;
3) His fills are dramatic; i.e., they shock.

So I've drawn up some suggestions:

1) Any existing solution to a problem is the wrong one: absolutum, obsoletum;
2) If you have an idea, don't play it;
3) When a change in the music needs emphasis, don't play it; the change in the music is emphasis enough;
4) don't phrase with any other member of the band unless it's in the part;
5) Phrasing in the part should include no more than two people;
6) If the tension in the music needs emphasizing, don't. The tension is there because of what you're playing, not what you're about to play;
7) If you really have to change your part to build tension, don't add, leave out;
8) The maximum tension you can add is by stopping completely;
9) If there is space for a fill which is demanded by the music, don't play it: there are three other people who would like to use the opportunity;
10) If the part you're playing is boring, stop listening with your head;
11) If this still bores you, listen to the interaction between the parts;
12) if this still bores you, stop playing and wait until you are no longer bored;
13) Do not be dramatic;
14) Do not be afraid to repeat yourself;
15) Do not be afraid to take your time;

Boy, what a negative list. Let's be positive about this.

1) Repeat yourself;
2) Take your time;
3) Leave room;
4) Listen to everyone else;
5) Develop a new set of cliches;
6) Develop a new vocabulary of drum sounds;
7) Listen to the -sound- of what you play;
8) Accept responsibility for what you play; e.g. if you fill a space you deprive the band of space, or other musicians the opportunity for filling space;
9) Abandon fills;
10) Abandon drama;
11) Abandon dynamics;
12) Conceal yourself.

This evening Steve Smith of the Martian Schoolgirls came round and we did an interview for -Coaster-, a new local magazine.

-Wednesday, April 15th, World HQ; 9:15

Remain depressed. King Crimson gave me six years of this kind of concern. What keeps us going at a time like this is the hope that a gig will take off, remembering what it was like to fly and trusting it'll happen again. But of course if you don't believe it, there's no way anyone would put up with the nonsense. The turning point for me was in Italy, on the nights of November 12th and 13th, 1973, when King Crimson were playing sports arenas in Turin and Rome. In my memory the two gigs have fused into one. At Turin two hundred Maoists walked through a glass wall because music is free and for the people. Well, I have some sympathies for that viewpoint, and on one level it's quite right. Meanwhile King Crimson had road managers to pay, hotels, travelling, equipment and so on. Still, since the group were getting a percentage of the gate and the show was sold out, they wouldn't miss much, would they? But, strangely enough, the attendance percentages we were getting paid were rather low. And this is what took place in Rome.

We were playing at the Palais de Sports, and I was driven there in the afternoon for a soundcheck by the promoter and one of his partners. Promoting rock shows in Italy is entirely unique and required poltitcal connections of a fairly substantial, and often family, nature. Our promoter's connection was with an uncle highly placed in the Milan police force. I was spending the drive to the Palais apologising to the promoter's partner for the incident the night before at the restaurant in Turin. The restaurant may have been the best in town; it may have been the most expensive. We were taken there by the promoter for dinner after the gig, but he didn't tell us that we were paying for it. He simply deducted it from our fee. But the meal was simply exquisite, especially since we thought it was free, and David Cross, our violinist, and Bill got rather drunk. David began throwing bottles of wine down the length of a long, full table - the promoter brought his entourage along- and Dik Frasier, tour manager, plucked them from the air. Dik was not enjoying this but David was testing our mettle to see if we would crack. The bottles had been opened. Meanwhile, Bill was sitting by the promoter's partner, the one who later shared the ride to the Palais. He was around fourty-five, very vain and had recently come to accept his homosexuality, and to fluorish it. His teenage son was a little further down the table, a keen Crimson fan, enjoying his meal. This man's conceit wasn't at all diminished by his large pot belly, the one Bill reached out and drew attention to by tapping it while making a remark which I can't recall but had a sense of: "hey, what's a nice narcissistic poof like you doing with a belly like this?" John Wetton, Crimson's bass player, and I were sitting next to each other opposite the protuberent one, wincing as bottles flew and anticipating concrete Wellingtons and a ride to the seaside. This was the incident being discussed, and generously forgiven, in the car on the way to the Palais.

The Palais was sold out; I think it held about 15,000. Anyway, it was a full house and Crimson's percentage of the gate was better than a poke in the eye with a pointed stick. Our manager, Sam Alder of EG, was out front with the promoter, viewing the crowd. "A good crowd tonight," said Big P. "Nine thousand people." Sam replied: "King Crimson are not playing tonight." "Errr, perhaps there there are twelve thousand?" said Big P. "King Crimson will not play tonight." "Fourteen thousand?" "Fifteen thousand," said Sam. Now, how the scam worked was like this: the staff collecting tickets from the concert-goers put a proportion of the tickets in their back pocket, which were shared out between the promoter and them. And then the promoter could quite justifiably say that ticket reciepts were low. But any promoter in Italy, even with good political connections, accepted liability for damages at venues. If King Crimson didn't play that night in Rome, it was a reasonable guess that 15,000 rock fans would rearrange the architecture. Remember that Big P had forked out for the glass wall the night before and that this was a time of changing political sensibilities in the youth culture of Europe. So he had no alternative but to tell the ticket takers that the fiddle was off, and this he did in a dressing room which inadvertently John Wetton walked into. John told us that he realised something was going on when a lot of shouting froze into embarassed silence as he walked in. So he turned around and walked straight out.

The performance itself went quite well. I can remember it: we battered the crowd with sound for fourty minutes to make enough room for ten minutes of experimenting. Then as attention wandered we built up another level of pounding for twenty or thirty minutes; so a pulped crowd would feel it had its money's value and go home happy. And then come back next time. Like football. We even got a standing ovation for a second encore. This took us by surprise, as we were changing. We only learnt about it because the small contingent of police, who we recognised because they were the only ones behind the stage with machine guns, sent a message to us pleading with us to play a second encore. They had the job of keeping the peace, and, outnumbered by maybe six hundred to one, peaceful remonstrance wouldn't have worked and machine gunning a token number of the audience might not have worked either. (A proportion of whom were pulling out the power cables as a prelude to architectural rearrangement.) The promoter seemed relaxed at the prospect of the damage bill: he had been screwing a 13-year-old teeny bimbi on our dressing room table while we were on stage. Naturally, we were very happy to do a second encore. We decided to play "Cat Food."

As we walked on stage the angry crowd became very happy and they cheered. Meanwhile, as I walked on stage a young man followed me into an area closed to the public. He was friendly, his movements slow, and a strange smile balanced on his mouth; he was seeing vistas beyond the normal. Since this was a restricted zone the promoter's muscular, sharply dressed right-hand man, the one who carried a gun, hit the happy hippy, whose blood hit the stage before he did. The happy crowd of 15,000 became very angry at the sight of one of them being roughly treated and our only hope was to play, trusting the power of music to bring order. Bill gave us a rapid count of four, but the only sound to emerge from King Crimson in the Palais at that moment was Bill hitting his kit, acoustically: the crowd had pulled out the power cables. We had no amplification and no P.A. So we stopped and stood in front of 15,000 angry people, a bleeding hippy, nervous police with machine guns, distressed ticket takers, a furious but mellow Big P and a 13-year-old teeny bimbi who I never met to ask her reaction to events. And we stood. This was the moment that I lost hope. Of course, the road team managed to run down the cables and eventually the power came on and we played "Cat Food." It even went down well, and we got paid our full percentage. Except, at the time, Italy had stringent currency restrictions and it was quite impossible, and illegal, to take lira of any amount out of the counrty. And a group of King Crimson's prestiege and standing would never fly out of Italy with the entire proceeds of an Italian tour in their shoes. In high denomination bills.

A few months later King Crimson "ceased to exist" and I began to talk a lot about small, mobile and intelligent units.

........to be continued.