Artist Spotlight: King Crimson

Prog-rock has been the butt of many a rock critic joke, and for good reason: much prog-rock is guilty of that most embarrassing of rock-and-roll insecurities—trying to make rock music more like Mozart and Bach in the quest to make rock more respectable. As a result, numerous prog-rock bands have subjected their listeners to untold excesses of classical keyboard noodlings, interminable rock epics in sonata form, and lyrics about pastoral beauty, or maybe a dark, dystopian future, or maybe both at once, with gnomes.

But some prog-rock is better than others. Of all the prog-rock bands in rock history, the one with the most cachet with the critics is quite possibly King Crimson, guided for all these years by guitarist Robert Fripp.

Here are the first three decades, summarized.

Playlist 1: The Early Years

Right out of the gate, King Crimson proved itself a keeper with the scorching “21^st Century Schizoid Man” from In the Court of the Crimson King (1969), with it’s strident, free-jazz-inspired saxophone wails, distorted vocals, unusual guitar solo, and intricate, driving percussion. Defying characterization, the song feels like heavy metal and industrial music at times, jazz-rock fusion at others, and classical-music-style prog-rock at others. Elsewhere, the use of Mellotron keyboards and flute lend the band a softer sound. The membership was in constant flux during this period, with the only constant members being Fripp and lyricist Peter Sinfield.

Playlist 2: The Classic Group

The critical appreciation of King Crimson is probably based most on their classic mid-‘70s lineup that included Fripp, plus vocalist and guitarist John Wetton and drummer Bill Bruford, along with others, for their albums Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black, and Red. This incarnation of the band featured hard rock improvisation, with influences as far-reaching as heavy metal, jazz, world music, and avant-garde classical.

Playlist 3: The ‘80s Version

Fripp and Bruford stuck around for the next incarnation of King Crimson, which also featured vocalist and guitarist Adrian Belew and bassist Tony Levin. The band had a more produced, new-wave-influenced sound, and the interlocking, contrapuntal, mathematical guitar lines played by Fripp and Belew are like nothing else I’ve heard (other than perhaps some of Steve Reich’s phasing experiments). Adrien Belew’s vocals are an acquired taste: sometimes I like them, other times they seem cheesy to me, and I wonder if my appreciation of them is a leftover from a previous aesthetic. His was certainly King Crimson’s most distinctive voice thus far, their other vocalists being rather nondescript. Regardless, for a while in high school I was a big listener of this version of the band, and although I’ve in general moved on from prog-rock and its like, I still really dig a lot of this, especially the instrumentals.