Watch the final lineup of King Crimson play ’21st Century Schizoid Man’
Progressive rock fans lament: it appears as though legendary genre pioneers King Crimson are done for good. With bandleader Robert Fripp content with his weekly weirdness in the form of his Sunday Brunch covers with his wife, Toyah Wilcox, it doesn’t appear as though King Crimson appears to be an ongoing concern anymore. Statements made by bassist Tony Levin only seem to confirm that one of prog’s giants is all over.
However, that doesn’t have to be the final word. Across its long and illustrious history, King Crimson has broken up no less than five separate times. The longest pause in activity came between 1984 and 1994, a time when Fripp disbanded the group for a solid decade. Each time, it had seemed as though the final chapter of King Crimson had been written. But each time, Fripp decided to bring the group back for another go around, finding a strange and forward-thinking angle with which to attack the band’s dense and varied catalogue.
The most recent endeavour had a fascinating lineup: three drummers, all lined up at the front of the stage. 1990s drummer Pat Mastelotto rubbed elbows with newer percussionists Gavin Harrison and Jeremy Stacey, often with all three playing their full drum kits at the same time. Reed player Mel Collins returned to the lineup after a 40-year hiatus, while longtime bassist Levin held down the low end. New singer/guitarist Michael ‘Jakko’ Jalszyk provided the vocals, while Fripp positioned himself at the top right of stage left, overlooking the full ensemble.
As if to confirm that King Crimson was putting the final nail in their own coffin, the band trotted out classic songs from across their catalogue. The definitive coverage of all King Crimson eras was a not-so-subtle signal that Fripp intended the performances to be the band’s final word. In order to really drive the point home, Fripp decided to trot out the closest thing that the band has to a classic hit song: ’21st Century Schizoid Man’.
Originally performed by the first incarnation of King Crimson, ’21st Century Schizoid Man’ appeared on the band’s 1969 debut, In the Court of the Crimson King. Starting in 1974, Fripp decided to retire the song from the band’s live repertoire, only agreeing to play the song again in the 1990s. “From the very get-go, wherever we went in the world, there would be someone shouting, ‘Play ‘Schizoid Man!’ Play ‘Schizoid Man!'” former guitarist Adrien Belew told Rolling Stone in 1981. “It got to be almost frustrating to us because we didn’t want to do that, and I remember, in particular, Robert would not do that at that point.”
Starting in 1996, Fripp once again began to play ’21st Century Schizoid Man’ with King Crimson, and after Kanye West sampled the song in his 2010 single ‘Power’, it became solidified as the band’s signature song. Although Fripp would ebb and flow with regards to including the song in subsequent concerts, ’21st Century Schizoid Man’ found its way into nearly every show on King Crimson’s final tour.
Check out King Crimson playing ’21st Century Schizoid Man’ in Japan from 2015 down below.
