Why did King Crimson refuse to play ’21st Century Schizoid Man’ live?
Even if you’re not a fan of progressive rock, there’s still a chance you will recognise King Crimson‘s iconic track ’21st Century Schizoid Man’. The song appears on the band’s debut album, In the Court of King Crimson, released in 1969 and was later sampled by Kanye West in his popular 2010 song ‘Power’.
The track, which comes in at seven-and-a-half minutes long, moves through classic prog rock and noisy jazz-inspired sections influenced by the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Furthermore, it contains proto-metal riffs played by Robert Fripp, who explained the guitar solos to Guitar Player in 1974: “It’s all picked down-up,” he said. “The basis of the picking technique is to strike down on the on-beat and up on the off-beat. Then one must learn to reverse that. I’ll generally use a downstroke on the down-beat except where I wish to accent a phrase in a particular way or create a certain kind of tension by confusing accents, in which case I might begin a run on the upstroke.”
Lyrically, the song offers commentary on the Vietnam war, particularly criticising the politicians in charge. The line “21st-century schizoid man” refers to President Richard Nixon’s Vice President Spiro Agnew. During a live show in 1969, Fripp ironically dedicated the song to “an American political personality whom we all know and love dearly. His name is Spiro Agnew”. Due to the relevancy of the lyrics, the track has been widely covered by different artists, including Ozzy Osbourne, Ty Segall’s band Fuzz, and Black Midi.
However, it might surprise some fans to learn that King Crimson went 22 years without playing their most recognisable hit. Just five years after its release, the band decided to retire the track from setlists, giving it a temporary final send-off in New York’s Central Park in 1974. As the band’s lineup changed over the years, they felt that the track wasn’t representative of them anymore.
Guitarist Adrian Belew, who joined the band in 1981, told Rolling Stone, “From the very get-go, wherever we went in the world, there would be someone shouting, ‘Play ‘Schizoid Man!’ Play ‘Schizoid Man!’ 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. So it got be a joke in the band: ‘If you don’t play ’21st Century Schizoid Man’, how can you call yourself King Crimson?'”
After two decades of absence, the song returned to the band’s setlists in 1996, remaining a permanent fixture.
