I can remember maybe twenty occasions in my life when a piece of music has stopped me in my tracks. This was the most significant, catapulting me from a diet of mainstream pop and into something incomparable. King Crimson’s debut album, ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’.
I was in the 6th-form Common Room at school and a boy called Pete Keel rightly had control of the record player – the boy with by far the best record collection.
Amid all the chatter and general noise of teenage boys, I made my way to the record player and listened to the whole 9 minutes 26 of the title track, arriving late for my next lesson. It was sublime, mellotron to the fore – who had even heard of a mellotron? – astonishing drums, mad words. Then the lull for a lethargic flute and bass duet followed by a gentle verse, the return of the drums and crescendo to end. Except the end isn’t. A playful, child-like pipe melody gives way to what remains one of my favourite moments, leading to more outrageous drumming and the big finish.
I don’t like it being called ‘Prog.’ For me the term conjures art-school ersatz, not the front-end ingenuity of this album. And it has stayed with me. Of all the many albums that I’ve over-played and moved beyond in my life, CCK remains special.
It was followed by a string of great albums, each more challenging than its predecessor. I read in Melody Maker or NME at the time that the band came back to their van after a live performance and found scrawled over the windscreen in lipstick – ‘Stick to the old tunes.’ I don’t think they can.
The founder of the band is Robert Fripp, the impeccably dressed guitarist, who declared that ‘Lark’s Tongues’ was the first of their albums that he had really liked. I was shocked at this dismissal of material I loved, but I guess that’s the force that has driven Fripp and the band of musicians he has assembled not to settle for more of the same. It’s what in my view makes them great.
I know. I’m gushing. I could go on. I’ll settle for a short list of stand-out tracks that tell the story of how a band can be extra-ordinary, unpredictable, but with enough identifiable genes to keep it family.
And why the dude with the lipstick was so wrong.