In 1973, King Crimson released what would become their classic fifth album. Larks’ Tongues In Aspic marked the beginning of a new era for the band, who welcomed not only a revised line-up but also a more dynamic sound compared to their earlier releases. Prog looks back on the making of a record that would steer the group into uncharted musical waters.

Words: Mike Barnes

A new Crimson dawn. L-R: Robert Fripp, David Cross, John Wetton, Jamie Muir, Bill Bruford.

Image: DGM Archive/Willie Christie

“If your version of rock music is sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, or three chords and the truth, there isn’t an awful lot of that on Larks’ Tongues In Aspic.”

Bill Bruford

By April 1972 King Crimson were in serious disarray. The group who had caused such a stir in 1969 with their live shows and their debut album – the epochal progressive rock statement In The Court Of The Crimson King – had gone through three line-up changes for each of their three subsequent and sporadically brilliant studio albums: In The Wake Of Poseidon, Lizard and Islands. But what had once looked like the most promising band of the early 70s now appeared to be the most unstable. King Crimson had, it seemed, essentially ceased to exist.

Guitarist Robert Fripp’s uneasy artistic relationship with lyricist and co-founder Peter Sinfield had ended. Fripp explained to Richard Williams of Melody Maker that he “didn’t feel that by continuing to work together we could improve on what we had already done”. And the line-up that had recorded Islands and toured the US in 1971 was falling apart. Another US tour had been booked and they flew out in January to fulfil their contractual obligations, but on their return in April the break-up was made official.

No one but the most gifted seer could have predicted then that within a year a new version of the group would release an album, Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, which would not only be the equal of their debut, but one of the most audacious, inventive and imaginative albums in the whole of 70s progressive rock.

Even before the break-up, disgruntled Melody Maker reader Fred Foster had written in to the paper complaining that the most recent King Crimson line-up, “had no more right to the name KC than Emerson, Lake & Palmer and McDonald and Giles”. He added, “To simply give the new group a new name would clear the confusion by showing that Crimson is dead.”

Mr Foster was closer to the truth than he’d realised. Unbeknown to the public, Fripp had started playing in a trio with violinist and keyboardist David Cross, who he’d seen play with Waves – and who had been trying to get a deal with EG, the company that managed Crimson – and percussionist Jamie Muir. Fripp’s initial idea was to record a raga-style improvised album and the trio had played together at Muir’s house in Highbury, London.

“That was all fantastic,” Cross tells Prog, “but I didn’t join a pre-existing band called King Crimson. It never had a name beyond ‘Indian-style improvisation album’. Robert probably wouldn’t have had the support of his manager if he had done something like that. Then something shifted, whereby he put the two things together.”

The original line-up of King Crimson had split up in December 1969, less than three months after the release of their debut album. In 2012, Fripp told this writer, “It was heartbreaking but there was still something there to be pursued and I knew that whatever we did in the next two years – this was Peter and myself – would be wrong. But we had to do it to get to the other side.”

The “other side” that Fripp spoke of was the fifth incarnation of King Crimson. It was heralded in July 1972 by the surprise announcement that drummer Bill Bruford had quit Yes to join the group. But it was of no surprise to Bruford, who had been a fan since their earliest days.

“The reason why we were different was that we were prepared to jump off the cliff.”

John Wetton

“I played fairly easy to get,” Bruford now admits to Prog, “I kind of stuck myself in front of Robert and said, ‘I’m here.’ Yes and King Crimson had played together on the same bill [in the US in 1972], but for several months it was, ‘Not yet, Bill’, and then eventually it was, ‘Okay, Bill, let’s do this’, as if I had been a tomato ripening upon the vine ready to burst forth with goodness.

“I was thrilled to be part of it, although I’m not sure I really knew what I was getting myself into. I didn’t know Robert very well. I just jumped in and hoped for the best. I don’t mind doing that, but of course it can go wildly wrong.”

The Melody Maker gossip column ‘The Raver’ from August 5, 1972 included this entry: “Bill Bruford quitting Yes was strange timing… Gigs with KC don’t exactly last, at least on present form.”

Did Bruford share those sentiments in any way? “I didn’t,” he says. “I was a romantic, and saw the positive gloss over potential pitfalls. I was aware that I had done my best in Yes; it was time for a change. I thought Robert could provide a space where I could grow and learn, and I was right.”

Fripp called on another well-known player and an old friend from Bournemouth: bass guitarist and vocalist John Wetton. Bruford had seen him on TV with Family and recognised him as one of the “bass players of the moment”. Wetton had previously enquired about joining King Crimson in 1971, but bass guitarist and vocalist Boz Burrell had just been drafted in, so he joined Family instead.

“I saw the first King Crimson at The Marquee and the London College Of Printing in 1969,” Wetton told this writer in 1997. “I thought they were outstanding in that they were so different from anything else, but you knew it was quality.”