n 1974 I was 16 years old and I briefly worked in the record department of WH Smith’s on Watford High Street. The albums arrived in large boxes and I used to unpack them. I knew the release dates of various records and so I knew that when those boxes came in that morning, King Crimson was after opening up the new stock that day. I remember being shocked by it because it was the first time there had been an image of the band on the front cover of any of their albums. I was excited when we played it in the shop. My first impression was that there was a more stripped-back kind of sensibility, although I’m not sure that’s especially true. Some of the kind of subtler intricacies that were evident certainly in and were replaced by some pretty big riffage. Looking back on it, with Bill Bruford and the Jamie Muir-inspired trash-can cymbal, John Wetton’s bass sound and Robert really giving it the full-metal sound, it just feels a precursor to the later more metallic things that they did. Robert’s phrase about how playing with Bill and John was like having a flying brick wall coming at you really describes how they were. And also the thing that Robert used to say about David Cross, about how he didn’t stand a chance against that situation, I mean it does sound like that, it does sound like, ‘Get out of the fucking way.’ The more subtler aspects of the violin got lost at that juncture.
