‘Epitaph’: How King Crimson captured “a world gone mad” in 1969
Even though progressive rock by its very nature is meant to grow and evolve over time, it’s somewhat remarkable that King Crimson managed to form in 1968 and by the end of the following year had released their debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King, which proved them to be a band with a fully-formed identity.
While strictly speaking it isn’t meant to be a concept album, there’s a thread that runs through all five songs that make up King Crimson’s debut album, with the title and band name both referencing a euphemistic term for the devil, and the themes of the song all pointing towards a world that is slowly reaching a self-inflicted armageddon.
‘21st Century Schizoid Man’, the album’s incendiary opener, is frequently interpreted as a protest song of sorts, calling leaders of the world to stop behaving in ways that are destructive and threatening to human existence. The titular character is someone completely desensitised to the horrors of global conflict, and will happily wage war if it means that they can continue to be fuelled by greed, which vocalist Greg Lake very clearly rages against in his impassioned vocals on the track.
However, while the chaos and destruction of the opening track are perhaps a bold way of introducing ideas, further on in the album are more introspective moments that look on in disbelief at what the world is slowly becoming as a result of the ‘schizoid man’ they warned listeners about.
Perhaps the most stark of these is the album’s centrepiece, ‘Epitaph’, which takes its name from the words delivered in memory of someone who has recently passed. The words, which were written by the band’s designated lyricist, Peter Sinfield, touch upon the confusion felt by the song’s narrator as they wander through their last moments on earth, knowing that civilisation itself will not be far behind.
In an interview with Songfacts, Lake elaborated on the themes that were explored in the song, explaining how they wanted to evoke a number of the biggest concerns that society faced, but not to address them in such a surface-level and obvious fashion.
“‘Epitaph’ is basically a song about looking with confusion upon a world gone mad,” he proclaimed. “King Crimson had a strange ability to write about the future in an extremely prophetic way, and the messages this song contains are even more relative today than they were when the song was originally written.”
With a war in Vietnam raging on without showing any signs of relenting, it appeared to many onlookers that the world was edging closer to the end, and there was a distinct fear emerging that World War III was on the horizon, with mass conscription and signing away one’s life a distinct reality for many, including those who had only just experienced a war of their own. Sinfield may have made his messaging somewhat obtuse and cryptic, but the ‘Epitaph’ that Lake is delivering is not just for himself, but for the world he was born into.
A truly remarkable song from a record that arguably still stands as the most important album of its genre, for something that was written so long ago to still have such prescient themes is a rather damning indictment of how society has failed to recognise its ills in the last half-century. Greed and warmongering are just as common now as they were at the time, and the ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’ reigns supreme in many countries around the world, meaning we’re all edging closer to writing our own epitaphs.
