In 1980 Robert Fripp formed what would become a new configuration of King Crimson. Originally named Discipline, the quartet featuring Bill Bruford, Adrian Belew and Tony Levin went on to record three albums with a very different sound from that which had helped to shape prog’s golden years. In 2022, as Discipline, Beat and Three Of A Perfect Pair were reissued on super-heavyweight vinyl, Prog explored the makings of King Crimson’s 80s trilogy.
Significant moments in musical history sometimes happen in the most humble of locations. Moles club in the city of Bath was the unlikely crucible from which an entirely new King Crimson poured forth. Robert Fripp had previously performed in the tiny basement dive with his most recent outfit, The League Of Gentlemen, and decided that the postage-stamp-sized performance area would be the perfect launchpad.
Though they’d change their name to King Crimson a couple of months later, Discipline, as they were then known, were scheduled for two gigs in April and May 1981. Capacity audiences cheered Fripp, Adrian Belew, Tony Levin and Bill Bruford as they made their way to their instruments. Levin had played there before with Peter Gabriel as a low-key, pre-tour warm-up show.
“I guess we were sure to have no press present there, as they wouldn’t fit. Trouble is, the audience don’t fit too well either,” the bassist recalled. “Only those in the front row could see the band. The restrooms are located behind the band, so during the set people would constantly squeeze between me and Bill to get to the loo. But hey, no place is perfect.”
Despite having told the world in 1974 that King Crimson were over forever, the shows at Moles kicked off a new era which would see them record three albums – Discipline, Beat and Three Of A Perfect Pair – between 1981 and 1984.
Steven Wilson’s remixes provide a timely reminder of just how radical a reinvention it was. For the first time in Crimson’s chequered personnel history, the same line-up appeared on three consecutive albums. Though long considered a British band, the 50/50 Anglo-American makeup presented a cultural difference in the internal dynamics of the group in ways that were both obvious and subtle.
As Bruford told Crimson documentary filmmaker Toby Amies, “Robert and I would discuss pretty much everything... including the philosophy of life as we know it. The two Americans would go and play pool or have a burger, or whatever it is that Americans do; and they, having not said anything... played the shit out of the music anyway. It was a wonderful combination of balance of the American ability of can-do and some good strategic thinking from the more analytical Brits.”
The reformation stands as an intentional break with Crimson history. Flutes, saxes, violins and Mellotron – previously some of the band’s key signature sounds – were replaced by the exotic timbres of electronic percussion, Roland guitar synthesisers and Chapman Stick. Even the artwork, with striking use of bold, block colours, succinct typography and a zen-like simplicity in their overall design, emphasised the distance between these and the more florid designs of previous decades.
Perhaps most profoundly of all, whereas guitar duties had once exclusively been the domain of Fripp, they was now shared with the irrepressibly energetic Belew – a figure whose onstage persona was as mobile and joyous as Fripp’s was sedentary and solemn.
No wonder some long-term fans felt bewildered. Younger fans, however, had no trouble in assimilating what was unfolding before them. Those first shows were rapturously received by audiences that were largely composed of local musicians, intrigued to see the new direction Fripp and his team were taking.
Among them was bassist Curt Smith, who’d play Moles a year later at Tears For Fears’ debut gig. In Tony Levin’s photos from the gigs, Smith can clearly be seen in the front row watching the bassist at work. “Tony was playing a Chapman Stick, which is an amazing instrument,” he recalled. “The sound was like nothing I’d heard before.
“I just love Tony’s playing. He’s incredibly melodic and always spot-on rhythmically – things I aspire to be. I was familiar with the original King Crimson, especially In The Court Of The Crimson King, and Fripp’s work with David Bowie, Peter Gabriel... I remember just being overawed with the musicianship.”
At the time Bill and Adrian thought Beat was better than Discipline
Robert Fripp
What makes it all the more remarkable was the pace at which it was done. Just a few weeks had elapsed between their first proper rehearsals and their Moles debut. In that short time, they not only got to know each other musically but also devised a new repertoire. In the incongruous confines of another humble space – a church hall that was normally the home of Sunday school lessons, tea dances and tombola raffles – they’d created the seven tunes that would form their 80s debut album, Discipline.
Fusing a startling combination of interlocking guitars and off-kilter polyrhythms, it resembled something akin to Balinese gamelan shot through with a dash of the repetitive spikiness favoured by minimalist composer Steve Reich.
Curt Smith wasn’t the only one blown away by what he’d heard at Moles. When Fripp returned to his hotel after that first show, sitting down at one in the morning, he noted in his diary: “Well, we did it. This band will be colossal – it’s that good... this is the band I’ve spent four years getting ready for.”
Following the release of Discipline in the autumn of 1981, King Crimson toured in the UK, Europe, North America and – in a first for the group – Japan. While they were out on the road new material was aired. Neal And Jack And Me, Sartori In Tangier and Neurotica would all find their way onto the next studio record, Beat. Though not a concept album as such, much of the inspiration for lyrical themes came through Fripp’s on-tour reading of the works of Beat Generation author and figurehead Jack Kerouac.
However, when the quartet returned to the UK to record they discovered there wasn’t a full album’s worth of material. With much of their time devoured by the demands and distractions of being on the road, Crimson had become victims of their own success. The inclusion of two Belew songs, including Heartbeat, helped fill in contrasting material; but they still came up short. The quartet improvised their way out of trouble with Requiem, a barbed hybrid of Frippertronics and stunningly combative interplay.
During the sessions, Belew and Fripp’s profound disagreements about the soloing on the track resulted in Fripp leaving the sessions. Persuaded to return by emollient management and colleagues, Crimson carried on – though their confidence was shaken.
“At the time Bill and Adrian thought Beat was better than Discipline,” says Fripp now. “For me, this is an indication of how far the band had already drifted from its original vision. The group broke up at the end of Beat. I had nothing to do with the mixing, nor did I feel able to promote it. Somehow we absorbed the fact and then kept going.”
Belew succinctly describes the period as “the most awful record-making experience of my life, and one I would never choose to repeat.”
It’s an old industry truth that making a debut is usually easier than making its successor; while that was certainly true with Discipline and Beat, things didn’t noticeably improve when it came to their third recording. Although there was no acrimony as before, during much of 1983 they struggled to fashion the material they’d accrued. As Bruford observed, “We’d all like to think that our better rock groups ‘compose,’ but Crimson sort of scuffles for its music. It’s down there somewhere on the rehearsal room floor, and it scrabbles and gets its fingernails dirty.”
After sessions in North America and London, in early 1984 they finally knitted together Three Of A Perfect Pair. In a press release at the time Fripp said, “The album presents two distinct sides of the band’s personality, which has caused at least as much confusion for the group as it has the public and the industry. The left side is accessible, the right side excessive.”
The Crimson of ’81 was just the perfect line-up, the perfect combination of things: heavy, light, fun and dark
Adrian Belew
Barnstormers such as Sleepless, devised from a relentless Levin riff, and the delicate but durable Belew-composed title track dominate the accessible side. The opposing aspect found voice in clattering instrumentals Industry and No Warning. If some of it sounded awkward and not quite baked enough, in concert the songs rapidly acquired a definitive authority, as can be heard on the 1998-issued live double album Absent Lovers, which captured the last two dates of their final tour in Montreal.
The end of this incarnation of King Crimson came in the breakfast bar of their Montreal hotel, the morning after the last show at Le Spectrum. Bruford recalls Fripp announcing to his colleagues that the band were no more. Nobody was really surprised. It would be a full 10 years before the next bout of Crimsonising, this time with the double trio formation and Thrak.
Not content with just breaking new ground, the 80s trilogy planted seeds among a whole generation of new fans and musician admirers including Tool, Primus, Flaming Lips and Dream Theater. Listening today, as time signatures shift and the players move in and out of phase with each other, the pointillistic style forms a strange yet persuasive blend, as exciting as it is ingenious.
While fundamentally dissimilar to Crimson’s past, the underlying impulse to take risks and embrace change remains undiminished. It’s unsurprising that, not only did the repertoire from the era continue to weave through Crimson setlists in the years to come, but such is the power of this material that it even found its way into the post-Belew 2014 era via Discipline, Indiscipline, Neurotica and Frame By Frame.
Transcending their internal difficulties of the time, the one thing all members of that line-up agree on is that, at its best, there was something very special at work. For Belew, that magic is distilled into the Discipline album.
“The Crimson of ’81 was just the perfect line-up, the perfect combination of things: heavy, light, fun and dark,” he said. “I think there was something absolutely marvellous about that band. That first record we did is the proof. It’s still groundbreaking. It still doesn’t sound like anything else you’ve heard before. A twentysomething can put that record on and think that it must have been made yesterday.”
