Recording King Crimson's "In the Court of the Crimson King"

Recording "In the Court of the Crimson King"

king crimson's
"In the Court of the crimson king"

by Blair Jackson

The long-lived, if sporadic, British band king crimson has been many things to many people through the years. Even Robert Fripp, the group's original guitarist and the lone holdover through the band's many incarnations, has acknowledged as much: "At the beginning of 1969, crimson were 'underground' and by the end of 1969 had become 'progressive,'" he wrote in his typically literate and exhaustive liner notes for last year's Epitaph CD of live cuts by the original KC. "After 1972 and into the 1980s, crimson became part of 'art rock' and in the 1990s seems to be considered part of a 'prog rock' revival."

In the same notes, Fripp lays out some of the many negative generalizations that have been made through the years about so-called progressive rock, among them: "1) The generation of rock which became known as 'progressive' is characterized by bombast, exaggeration, excess, self-indulgence, pretension and long solos. 2) All prog is appalling--the feeble pseudo-mythical concepts, unintelligible words, fantastic album covers, dopey clothes, bitty and formless music, the rhythm suspect and peculiar which no one can dance to, or would want to unless deranged by drugs--and at its most favorable should be hated by everyone. 3) The musicians were all prats. They probably still are, but now they are fat and bald old prats."

(Fripp can make light of "prog rock" because he moved far beyond the tag so long ago. Today he is still a "progressive" force in music--in the sense that his music is forward-looking and rarely rooted in traditional rock idioms. But he's never been a nostalgia merchant, to put it mildly.)

The original king crimson was formed near the end of November 1968 and consisted of Fripp, bassist/singer Greg Lake, drummer Michael Giles, reeds/keyboardist Ian McDonald and a non-performing lyricist/light show artist, Peter Sinfield. It was Sinfield who named the band, from a song he wrote with McDonald, "In the Court of the crimson king." The band debuted in the spring of 1969 and immediately caused a sensation with its extended improvised pieces, high level of musicianship and complicated time signatures virtually unheard of in rock at the time. Musicians all around London flocked to see the new group, which fused rock, jazz and experimental sensibilities in ways that no one had before--including the great British acid band of the time, Pink Floyd. As Fripp put it, "A key to it was surprise. The group came from nowhere. No one in the group had a reputation or was known outside of Bournemouth. Yet within a short time, the live crimson exerted a wide influence on other groups of its generation. Pete Banks, the first Yes guitarist, was drinking at the bar of the Speakeasy in London on April 9, 1969, our first gig, when crimson began playing. His drink never left the bar. Two days later the young Bill Bruford [who went on to play with both KC and Yes] walked home to Fulham at 5 in the morning from the Strand Lyceum, raving about the group he'd just seen."


Barry Godber's cover art for the first king crimson album

The band was signed by Island Records in the late spring of '69, and in July of that year, after two abortive attempts to make a record with Moody Blues producer Tony Clarke, KC went into Wessex Sound Studios in North London. They cut their debut album, In the Court of the crimson king, in just ten days, producing themselves with the aid of engineer Robin Thompson and the Wessex staff. "We realized we would make mistakes, but decided it was better to make our own mistakes," Fripp said.

Wessex was one of the top London studios of that era, located in what was once a large, high-ceilinged church hall. The huge main room could easily accommodate a large orchestra, and indeed the studio attracted considerable string and brass work for that reason. "It had a wonderful, natural sound," says Geoff Workman, who began as a tape op at Wessex in late '67 but was engineering there by mid-'68. "Plus, when you'd hire out for string players, most of the time you'd get half of the London Symphony in there for your session, so the quality of the playing was extraordinary.

"When I first started engineering at Wessex," Workman continues, "I worked on one of the last Neve tube boards. You could fry eggs on this thing, it got so hot. It was an 18 into 4 that had been modified into an 18 into 8. In the beginning we were doing straight to stereo most of the time, then we got a 4-track and then we finally got an Ampex AG440 8-track. In the Court of the crimson king, which had like 30,000 overdubs on it, was all done on that 8-track 1-inch machine. Any one track used to have 20 different instruments on it at different parts of the song. [He's exaggerating, folks.] In those days you made the absolute best of what you possibly could. Outboard gear was almost unheard of. If it wasn't on the console, it's like it almost didn't exist. Wessex had one live [echo] chamber, and I believe at the time we had four of the big EMT plates, but not much else. For instance, on the Ampex AG440, to get anything like a varispeed effect, we used to have to put adhesive tape around the capstan to make the capstan a little larger, so that when the pinch roller clipped in, the machine would run slightly faster. You couldn't do it too much, though, because then you'd squeeze the tape so thin it would no longer fit on the machine. But we did a lot of experimenting in those days, and we always seemed to figure out some novel way to make the records sound interesting and different."

Although king crimson was known around London as a killer live band, and they had all the material for their first album worked out well before they came into the studio, very little of the tracking was done live. "In the original crimson, when we used to cut the bed tracks, sometimes it would be just drums and bass to start," Workman says. "The drums used to go straight to stereo, and most of the time the bass would be up there on one of the two tracks, recorded direct; so that was two of the eight tracks. I usually used three mics on the drums--one on the kick drum and two overheads. You could get away with that because Mick Giles tuned his kit so precisely that it had a great overall sound, so you didn't need to fiddle with the individual drum sounds.

"But the thing that really astounded me the most is they used to cut these tracks--Mick Giles and Greg Lake, and if you were lucky, maybe a little smattering of a scratch guitar from Fripp--and you'd have them playing bass and drums on these tracks that were six, seven-odd minutes long. And I'd be thinking, 'How the hell do they know where they are?' I'd have no idea," Workman says with a laugh. "The machines had no counters in those days, so I'd have to guess where we were on the tape, or maybe put a piece of editing tape on and try to see that flying by as it spooled. They'd listen to playbacks and say to me, 'Oh, let's go back to the middle of that first bridge section. I want to check something.' And I'd say, 'You can't be serious! You mean there was a bridge in there?' So eventually we started using a white Chinagraph pencil lightly on the back of the tape--one of the guys in the band would be in the control room and he'd mark each verse and chorus and bridge so I'd know where the hell we were in the song."

The songs on In the Court of the crimson king were built up in layers by bouncing tracks and combining multiple instruments on many of the eight available tracks. Workman remembers, "On the first album, on some songs we actually had to mix the song in four- or eight-bar sections because the track lineup would change so drastically--what was a piano all of a sudden became the solo guitar, what was background vocals suddenly became Ian McDonald on a bass clarinet, or something. They were using all sorts of interesting combinations of instruments on different parts of different songs. So it became a matter of being able to punch in and out in a hair's breadth, and in those days, particularly on the AG440, that was no mean feat. The track sheets looked ridiculous. But we'd do whatever we could to keep some control. We'd mix onto one track, say, bass and flute, because when it came to mix, if you wanted a little more flute you could add a little bit more high-mid, high-end [EQ] and that would affect the flute more than the bass. So you'd find yourself putting together instruments that were not necessarily at opposite ends of the spectrum like that example, but which allowed you to in effect mix the one track."

"In the Court of the crimson king" sounds like one of the simpler songs on the record--it's guitars, bass, drums, Mellotron, other keys, flute and vocals--but, like every other tune on the album, its simplicity is deceptive. For example, just the sweeping choral "aaahs" required nine or more tracks at the start. "If you listen to it, it sounds like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir," Workman marvels. "What we'd do--and this is something I did on records for years, with Queen and The Cars and other groups-- is put down three tracks of a root vocal part, then bounce that down to one track. Then we'd use those three same tracks again to do the third above, then bounce that down to one track, do three tracks of, say, the fifth above and bounce that down, so that's nine down to three. Then those three would probably be bounced down to a mono track. With a band like crimson, you almost had to write yourself a road map beforehand, between the engineer and the guys in the band."

Asked if recording an instrument as notoriously quirky as a Mellotron posed any special problems, Workman replies, "Not really. We used to take them DI because the early models like they used in king crimson or in the Moody Blues were so noisy. The later ones were smaller and quieter and had interchangeable racks of tapes and various other features. But these first ones were so noisy that if you put them through any kind of amp pre getting to the console, you didn't have a signal-to-noise ratio, you had a noise-to-signal ratio! You'd hear this great 'Shhhhhhh' all through it. 'Wait, I think there's a little string part in the background of all that noise!'

"One of the things that was interesting about crimson is that they often used two Mellotrons at the same time; both McDonald and Fripp would play them. The thing about the Mellotron is the tape loop lasts just shy of eight seconds, so if a chord needs to be held down for more than eight seconds, you have to lift your hands off and let the springs pull the tape back so the loop can start again. So on songs that needed more sustained chords we'd use two, with one player holding the chord for seven seconds or so and then the other one coming in to keep it going-- we used to call it 'dueling Mellotrons.'"

Workman remembers the album sessions as "a time of great experimentation, of looking for new sounds and new ways to combine sounds. One hates to use this overused term, but they really were sort of avant-garde-ish. They were trying to be different, and they were. Fripp, in particular, always wanted to try out new sounds. I remember him saying things like, 'I want to do a guitar overdub on this and I want it sound like a worm crawling out of a hill on a rainy day,' and I'd have to sort of say, 'Oh, you must mean +2 or 3k and a 50 cycle highpass filter or something.' Or he'd say, 'What would happen if I put my amp on the stairs that lead up to the offices, and we put the microphone under these steps?' We were up for anything."

The first crimson album ended up being a resounding success both in Britain and in America, where both "In the Court of the crimson king" and the art-metal track "Twentieth Century Schizoid Man" garnered heavy FM radio play. Yes, all those traits of "prog rock" Fripp mentioned above were present, from the long solos and weird key changes to the mystical lyrics that sounded like they were equal parts Dylan, Tolkein and some Eastern mystic. But those were different times, and young people weren't as cynical and jaded as they are today. crimson showed us worlds we'd never seen before--worlds that were more beautiful and magical than the real one, which was scarred by war and hatred and seemed like it might explode at any moment. king crimson--and rock music in general--provided joyous escape, as well as food for thought.

The original lineup of king crimson lasted only till the fall of 1969 and cut just that first LP together. Workman went on to record two more albums with the group--In the Wake of Poseideon and Lizard--but neither of those records had quite the same combination of freshness and spirit as the first album. Still, each incarnation of king crimson had something new to offer listeners, and that's why the band is held in such high esteem by so many today. There are still thousands of fans out there salivating over the prospect of the next KC tour, whenever it materializes. The dreamy court of the crimson king of the song now seems like a world and many lifetimes away, but it's still a fascinating and dramatic place to visit.

 

Fellow Courtiers,
I posted a link to this article some months back but I've found it more accessible to cut and paste.
This article has everything from bounces to Mellotrons to worms coming out of hills.
John

 

Great album; hell of a way to end the '60s, along with LET IT BLEED. I dug it all(and wouldn't it make a great 5.1 SACD or DVD-A?). Just great talent, songwriting and arrangements all around. I know many listeners can't stand that extended percussive portion of "Moonchild"(that would have made a great 45, faded before the improv stuff comes in)but I caught its wavelength and always liked how it unfolded. "I Talk To The Wind" is a beautiful piece of pastoralism sandwiched as it is between two bombastic pieces, "21st Century Schizoid" and "Epitaph." Probably the best album of its type ever made, simple yet complex, as the article makes clear. You know how to pick 'em, John!

ED

 

Thanks Ed,
It was easy to pick because we played it during our holidays at a ski resort with the fire crackling inside and snow falling outside. Just the right setting.
Nice review you gave - it is a great album and I'll take the long version too.

This type of article is informative in itself and tends to generate some wonderful insights from other members.
John

 

John,

Somehow, in the setting that you describe, I cannot picture myself thinking of King Crimson. I would think more like - "I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm" by Dean Martin!

In the Court...is a great classic album, BTW!

Thanks for posting the article.

Bob

 

In case it comes up in this thread, and I just brought it up, what are the recommendations for the best sounding LP. I have US ATCO, Editions EG (half-speed), MoFI, and they are all lacking. Are there any good sounding LPs out there?

John

 

Thanks! One of my favs. I'm still waiting for the definitive Cee Dee version to appear. I have the Mini LP CD and I thinks it's harsh, etc.

 

Re: Recording "In the Court of the Crimson King"

Well, that's the image Fripp keeps saying fits him -- but when he keeps putting out archival releases, and writing songs that distinctively and explicitly harken back to the 70 's -- lately, variants on the songs 'Red' or 'Fracture' or, repeatedly, 'Larks Tongues in Aspic' -- it's hard to take him seriously.

 

1) The gatefold 30th anniversary edition (the one not in HDCD , though all the other 30th Ann albums are) isn't Japanese. It's a Virgin release made in the EU.

2) Japanese editions using 'K2' bitmapping also exist, and , confusingly enough, appeared around the same time as the Fripp-approved 30th Anniversary editions. Which themselves replaced the also Fripp-approved 'Definitive Edition' remasters of the early 90's.

3) No version of In the Court except perhaps for the first LP editions, were struck from the original masters. These were lost for years. Fripp reported several months back that the two-track original master tape for *side one* of the album had at last been located, and that the hunt was on for the rest.

4) More recently, In the Court appeared on a record label's (Sony's? I don't recall right now) list of upcoming SACDs for 2003, which indicates the hunt may have been successful -- and/or that the 8 track multitracks have been located?

 

I went to one of those gambling boats in Metropolis Illinois. Surrounded by blue hairs, I was the youngest person on the boat by at least 40 years. Anyway, over the very loud in house music system I hear 21st Century Man. I laughed so hard I pee'd a little. If most of those gamblers had their hearing aids turned up their pace makers would've stopped.

 

Larks' Tongues In Aspic, Starless and Bible Black, and Red are all fine albums. They had to be a mastering engineer's nightmare! Musical dynamics from whisper quiet one minute to earthshaking the next.

Search them out!

Paul

 

I always wondered if strong drum and guitar (very present) compared to very low distant voice in Epitaph was really intended so. I remember that many people report it as a mixing error. Now I don't think so but its sound is very strange.

Ezio

 

WOW! John - that's some great reading! I always wondered about that "dry" drum sound (you wouldn't think so in a church) - very unusual for the time and it seems out of place in the mix, but still very effective.

 

I always liked this album, but about 6 months ago I revisited my only copy (my guesstimate is a mid-70's US Atlantic pressing, green and red label) and the lp is MUCH thinner than I remembered. I was expecting the distorted vocals of "21st Century", but the almost total lack of a bottom end really surprised me. Is this just a bum pressing, or do all copies sound like this. I am aware that the mid 70's were not banner years for US vinyl....

 

Re: Re: Recording "In the Court of the Crimson King"

That is a little harsh becuase given his track record I think he is entitled to re-kindle a few oldies. Lets briefly go over his resume:
Crimson stuff
The 'Exposure' album which is a masterpiece in and of itself
The collaborations with Eno and Frippertronics - completely different
The League of Gentlemen - completely different from anthing previous
The League of Crafty Guitarists - once again completely different


He has earned the right to recycle a few.

John

 

I agree. To me these three albums represent King Crimson at their peak. I like them far more than Court. Discipline is also a great album (and completely different).

 

I more, or less, share your view and I'm glad that Discipline got mentioned because its a wonderful record. The thing is Court is as different from Aspic/Starless/Red as those are from Discipline, which makes it about as unique a record as rock has ever seen.

Yea recording was a nightmare but what about the vocals? The songs are damn near impossible to sing. Wetton was a great vocalist just to be able to lay down the tracks for Aspic/Starless/Red.

John

 

I've not had the Island copy, but the Cotillion, the Atlantic pressings and my remastered EG Collectors Gold vinyl copy (best so far) all kinda sound that way. ITCOTCK is more sonically mysterious than sonically perfect. It's made with a lot of covering compression. Not like Red or 3 Of A Perfect Pair where the dynamics are a step away from pure evil, and royally jar you. Court has a special place in my heart.

I believe the current working INCOTCK master needs a lot of EQ help to float. No, I don't think it's your pressing really. If the album was recorded at Island or Trident, (I don't have a copy with me) both UK studios have a certain blandness that even Jethro Tull's Aqualung suffered from, IMHO. Nothing you can do about that. It's done, history, and I concider it a charm inherent in the sound.

 

It was recorded at Wessex, which sounded pretty good.

 

Didn't someone say that INKOTCK was going to be on import SACD sometime soon?

 

It's on the Sony SACD site.

Andrew gave us this link to Australia: http://www.chaosmusic.com/shop/search.asp?searchParameter=All&phrase=sacd&x=17&y=2&store=0&dep=0

 

Sckott,

I found this on the Phillips site, Virgin will be releasing an SACD of ITCOTCK in the near future. We can only hope........

http://www.sacd.philips.com/b2b/news/virgin_ifa.html

 

I know what you mean...a buddy of mine picked up a capitol record club pressing at a tag sale recently...same sound as my copy, no different!

 

I've noticed I've had to push the woofer up a bit to enjoy the album, regardless of source. Listening again, I think I know why: beyond the compression scheme--the loudest material is very midrangy and there's plenty of highs--the bottom tends not to come from Lake's bass but McDonald's Mellotron and Giles' drums. Also, except for the most bombastic aspects of "Epitaph" and the title track, the music has a spareness where anything excessive isn't needed. "21st Century" seems intentionally mixed to sound screechy(thank you, Mr. Fripp), while the other two rise and fall from bombastic passages to that aforementioned pastoral, even neo-folkie feel that is betrayed by McDonald's foreboding
Mellotron flourishes. This leaves the lovely "I Talk To The Wind" and "Moonchild"--both well balanced across the sound spectrum and uncompressed compared to the others, obviously on purpose.

One thing that's always struck me about this album, more than most others, is that is has that exaggerated top end that brings out every little thing Giles is up to--almost mixed as a jazz album with a great drummer might be, if the idea was to make damned sure you could hear him above the noise. But since much of the album isn't as noisy as you'd expect, it's the top and upper-mids, being so up front that everything else seems diminished a little(except for bass drum and some bass work--during "21st" that bass work is buried by everything else). Overall, though, I've always loved this mix, and it justified the day I bought a woofer. I always addabout 5db(more than normal)for this album--I want it to really have a real kick, and that's the only way I can get it.

Of the versions I have, the Atlantic vinyl I just don't like; I grew up with it, but when I found a UK Polydor reissue pressing in the late '70s, what a difference! The highs and bottom very distinct, not mushy; and the mids that are pushed a bit in the mix at least no longer burned my ears.

Three are three CD versions: the first on Polydor(out of Hamburg); the US Caroline and the UK 30th anniversary edition with the cardboard cover.
I haven't listened to the old one--maybe the second or third CD I ever bought--in years and years; must dig it out,as it has to be a flat transfer. I remember more hiss than I've heard on any other edition, but must check to be sure. The latter two are almost indistinguishable, as both were remastered under Fripp's supervision. Can't say, despite his tweaking, I disliked what I heard, but as I'm playing the Polydor vinyl as we speak, will have to try the CD's later to do a bit more serious comparing.

ED