When most people think of “prog rock” British bands such as Yes, Genesis, and arguably, Pink Floyd all come to mind. These were ‘70s-and-‘80s-era warhorses who could fill hockey arenas and stadiums while performing songs in 7/8 time signatures with lyrics about supper being ready and lambs lying down on Broadway. But King Crimson, one of the first and most adventurous bands of this genre, while having a devoted following as a cult act, don’t fill up football stadiums, and with the exception of their first album in 1969, never graced the top ten of any album charts.
As Kyle Smith wrote last year in his review of the new documentary In the Court of the Crimson King, titled, “Excellence, Existence, Tyranny, Death, and Rock:”
It’s tough to be on top. It’s tough to be in the middle, too. Here’s how it goes for a touring prog-rock band whose biggest and only hit sputtered out at No. 80 on the singles chart:
It’s all the same. Different dark, dingy halls. Dark, dingy, smelly halls sometimes. Really dark, horrible halls. Cold, wintry, horrible places we go to. Never lovely. Just horrible, horrible, cold, dark halls.
The speaker is a roadie for King Crimson, which made it to the small-time and has stayed there for more than 50 years. Everyone involved speaks of the endeavor as a tale of endless toil and suffering, and they bring to mind the old joke about the guy who works at a circus and complains endlessly about having to clean up elephant poop all day, every day: “Say, fella, did you ever think about quitting?” “What? And leave show business?”
In the Court of the Crimson King is a documentary about a band that has existed since 1968, undergoing numerous personnel lineups involving approximately 27 different musicians. Its only consistent member is co-founder Robert Fripp, born in 1946. Fripp, 76, is a 5’7” British martinet with short gray hair, who dresses in white shirts with French cuffs, neckties, and waistcoats, who claims to believe that despite all of its personnel changes, and numerous former musicians who have railed against Fripp’s dictatorial nature, “I don’t have the problem. The problems lie elsewhere… this is the first King Crimson where there is not one member in the band who actively resents me; who actively resents my presence.”
In the rough cut of the documentary, “Cosmic F*KC” (included as a bonus feature on the disc) Fripp tells director Toby Amies that “The United Kingdom is one of the few places we perform nowadays where we are not seen as a current band. In the United Kingdom, I believe we are seen through the prism of history.” Amies asks a question in response and Fripp angrily replies, “Before I go onstage, I do not entertain questions, Toby,” fearing that responding to them might interfere with his performance. Near the end of the documentary, Fripp attempts to wind up Amies by yelling at him, “You missed everything! There was a determining critical and pivotal scene in which the history, the origins, and the future of King Crimson were presented, and you were not there. Thus, rendering this DVD ineffectual and of little use or interest to all.”
Err, thanks for that one, Bob! Much has been written about how manipulative Chuck Berry was to director Taylor Hackford and Keith Richards during the filming of the 1987 documentary, Hail, Hail, Rock & Roll. While being a vastly different musician, Fripp’s techniques to anger and trip up his director depicted on film aren’t too far removed. Similarly, both men achieved stardom and commercial success, but their paranoia sabotaged the full commercial potential of each of their careers.
Fripp’s bullying even extends to the audience, with large signs placed on the left and right corners of the stage that read, “Good Evening Ladies And Gentlemen Welcome To The Show[.] Now That You Are In The Venue Please Refrain From Taking Any Pictures Using A Camera Or Your Phone Until The Very End Of The Show Or You May Be Asked To Leave[.] Thank You…” And he means it — Amies interviews a man who had a photography pass but only for the show’s second encore, and after taking photos during the main set, tells of Fripp ordering security to remove him from the hall.
“Why is it meaningful for you to spend your time performing?”
Recorded on camera is lead singer and second guitarist Jakko Jakszyk, then 60, telling Fripp that he was recently divorced. A nun who is obsessed with King Crimson and attends many of their concerts is interviewed. But in contrast to the recent documentary Moonage Daydream, which never openly mentioned David Bowie’s ultimately fatal cancer, the most moving segment of In the Court of the Crimson King features an interview with Bill Rieflin, King Crimson’s American-born percussionist and keyboard player from 2013 to 2019. Rieflin tells Amies that he has “stage IV colon cancer. I was diagnosed six years ago.”
I’ve had 20 percent of my colon removed. I had my prostate removed. I had a third of my liver removed. I’ve had my gall bladder removed. I’ve had half of my left lung removed. I’ve had bits and pieces of both lungs removed. I’ve been radiated, and I’ve been ablated. And I have been unhappy since; in constant pain, and this makes life on the road difficult.
My normal oncologist gave me “the talk,” which was that he suggested I might start to think about doing the things in my life I might want to do, while I still can. He said, well, “you know, maybe one to three years.”
Amies: Why is it meaningful for you to spend your time performing?
Rieflin: Why do this? Why do this? Well, there are number of reasons; the most glib, but also the most straightforward reason, is this is what I do. This is sort of what I’m made for. So if you want to ask me what music is, or what it does, or what it can bring into the world, I think it can restore grace, if only for a moment in a person’s life and that makes all the difference in the world. And I think that’s one of the things that makes a difference in people’s lives. That’s what’s important. You’re reminded of something; you might not even know what you’re being reminded of. All of a sudden, you’re in touch with something.
When you’re confronted with the death everything changes. It’s no longer a weird idea, it’s a reality; you’re confronted with it. Somebody just walks up and said you are going to die really much sooner than you want. And, so for me that meant looking at my life, and actually coming up quite short and being very unhappy with how I’ve conducted it and when I’ve done. So, I’ve made efforts to be a better person and to do better things.
Take that!
I woke up one day and the words resonated in my head: I accept the inevitability of my own death.
Amies ultimately interviews Rieflin in his Seattle home, where Rieflin tells him how tired he feels and how much pain he is in. He would die on March 24, 2020, at age 59. Rock and roll has always fixated on the vitality of youth; seeing a man in his late ‘50s who performs it at the highest level slowly dying is a moving experience — never ask for whom the bell tolls; the bell tolls for thee (in a 14/8 time signature).
Besides obscure time signatures, under Fripp’s leadership, King Crimson’s music has incorporated elements of hard rock, folk, 20th-century classical music, gamelan music, and much more. As drummer Bill Bruford, who played in King Crimson from 1972 to 1974, 1981 to 1984, and 1994 to 1997 tells Amies, “Change is part of what the whole band is about. Change is essential. Otherwise, you turn into the Moody Blues, for heaven’s sake.”
The ultimate birth control method
In 2021, an article headlined “An FAQ About Your New Birth Control: The Music Of Rush” went viral. Sample lines include:
The music of Rush is marked by erratic signature changes, unconventional chord structures, heavy use of synthesizers and electronic effects, and, most importantly, lead vocals that sound like an ancient witch is being exorcised out of your body with live wires. In less clinical terms, imagine taking the most annoying parts of science fiction and Libertarianism, isolating them, and then somehow blending them up into a cursed musical slurry. Then, infuse that slurry with a distinctive incel vibe, and presto! You’ve got one of the most powerful contraception options on the market.
How effective is it?
No one has ever gotten pregnant while listening to the music of Rush. Clinical studies show that when combined with watching a male sexual partner play air bass along to the extended solo in “Freewill,” the contraceptive efficacy of Rush approaches 100%.
Will I experience any discomfort?
Yes.
King Crimson’s music makes Rush sound like the second coming of ZZ Top, a happy-go-lucky bar band power trio made good. But they do have one thing in common — their audience is largely male. So much so that one of the outtakes from the finished documentary included on the Blu-ray is Amies’ interview with what he calls a pair of King Crimson “widows” — two middle-aged British women who wonder what they’ll be doing to kill time while their husbands go off to see King Crimson at the Royal Albert Hall.
Sadly, the ultimate King Crimson widow, Robert Fripp’s wife, singer/actress Toyah Willcox is only onscreen for a few seconds in the documentary. She and Fripp began releasing quirky music videos each Sunday during England’s coronavirus lockdown:
Those videos did much to humanize Fripp’s haughty image by demonstrating that he actually has a sense of humor! He can poke fun at himself! But unfortunately, there are none of those clips present in the documentary.
Instead, about three-quarters of the way through the documentary, Fripp explains a mid-‘70s meeting with philosopher J.G. Bennett, a man whose phrase, “If you know you have an unpleasant nature and dislike people, this is no obstacle to work,” appears several times in Fripp’s first solo album, 1979’s Exposure. (A line that sums up Fripp’s personality and output quite nicely in a single sentence.)
Fripp describes meeting Bennett a year before he died, who asked Fripp what his name is, telling him, and then what is, at one minute and forty seconds, likely the longest on-camera pause ever rendered on film. I’m not kidding — several times during this scene I had to watch Fripp carefully to see that his eyes were still moving slightly, when I wasn’t panicking that the Blu-Ray disc had malfunctioned and locked up. Finally, Fripp recounts Bennett telling him, “Yes. I will remember you.”
It goes without saying that King Crimson obsessives will want to buy In the Court of the Crimson King. As for others, it may be a bit of a hard slog. If you’re not a King Crimson superfan, will you experience any discomfort? Yes.
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