King Crimson are an English progressive rock band formed in London in 1968. They have exerted a strong influence both on the early 1970s progressive rock movement and on more recent rock and experimental artists. Although the band has consistently undergone changes in personnel throughout its history, guitarist and primary composer Robert Fripp, the only remaining founding member, has acted as a driving creative force.
In the Court of the Crimson King (subtitled An Observation by King Crimson) their debut studio album was, released in October 1969 by Island Records. The album is one of the first and most influential of the genre, where the band combined the blues influences that rock music was founded upon with elements of jazz, classical, and symphonic music. The album reached number five on the Uk Album Chart and number 28 on the US Billboard 200.
Initial sessions for the album were held in early 1969 with producer Tony Clakre, After these sessions failed to work out, the group were given permission to produce the album themselves. The album was recorded on a 1″ 8-channel recorder at Wessex Sound Studios in London, engineered by Robin Thompson and assisted by Tony Page. In order to achieve the characteristic lush, orchestral sounds on the album, Ian McDonald spent many hours overdubbing layers of Mellotron and various woodwind and reed instruments. In some cases, the band went through 5 tape generations to attain deeply layered, segued tracks.
Some time after the album had been completed, however, it was discovered that the stereo master recorder used during the mixdown stage of the album had incorrectly-aligned recording heads. This misalignment resulted in a loss of high frequencies and introduced some unwanted distortion. This is evident in certain parts of the album, particularly on “21st Century Schizoid Man”. Consequently, while preparing the first American release for Atlantic Records, a special copy was made from the original 2-track stereo master in an attempt to correct some of these anomalies. (The analog tape copying process usually results in generation loss.) From 1969 to 2002, this second-generation “corrected” copy was the source used in the dubbing of the various sub-masters used for vinyl, cassette and CD releases over the years. The original, “first-generation” stereo masters, however, had been filed away soon after the original 1969 mixdown sessions. These tapes were considered lost until 2002.
Barry Godber, a computer programmer, painted the design for the album cover. Godber died in February 1970 from a heart attack, shortly after the album’s release. It was his only album cover; the original painting is now owned by Robert Fripp. Fripp had said about Godber: Peter [Sinfield] brought this painting in and the band loved it. I recently recovered the original from [managing label E.G. Records’s] offices because they kept it exposed to bright light, at the risk of ruining it, so I ended up removing it. The face on the outside is the Schizoid Man, and on the inside it’s the Crimson King. If you cover the smiling face, the eyes reveal an incredible sadness. What can one add? It reflects the music.
In the Court of the Crimson King initially received mixed reactions from contemporary critics. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau called the album “ersatz sh*t”, while John Morthland of Rolling Stone said King Crimson had “combined aspects of many musical forms to create a surreal work of force and originality”. The album has since attained classic status, with AlMusic praising it “as if somehow prophetic, King Crimson projected a darker and edgier brand of post-psychedelic rock” in its original review by Lindsay Planer, and calling it “definitive” and “daring” in its current review. In Classic Rock reviews of King Crimson’s 2009 reissues, Alexander Milas described In the Court of the Crimson King as the album which “blew off the doors of musical convention and cemented these quintessentially British innovators’ place in rock history for all time”.
