King Crimson’s ’21st Century Schizoid Man’: Inside Prog’s Big Bang

  • 📰 RollingStone
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 67 sec. here
  • 3 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 30%
  • Publisher: 51%

United States Headlines News

United States Latest News,United States Headlines

Inside prog rock’s big bang: The birth of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man”

in 2013 of the band’s 1969 writing process. “It wasn’t basic blues-riff music. This was using very different harmonic components, different structures, so it wouldn’t be verse, chorus, verse, verse, chorus, verse, verse, chorus. …

He began working up a terse, disjointed set of lyrics that condemned these atrocities by effectively throwing them in the listener’s face. “If it was a movie, it would just be a series of frames,” he says of the words he settled on for “Schizoid Man.” “I wanted it to frighten people and upset them and scare them and [make them] run out the door — or I wanted them to relate it to other pieces of violence in their life.

Some of the lines, he explains — like the brilliantly bizarre “neurosurgeons scream for more” — were “pure phonetics,” phrases that sounded good when sung. The alliteration in lines such as “paranoia’s poison door” and “politician’s funeral pyre,” Sinfield says, was “just me putting lots of p’s in a row, and then when they came out the other end, they were like a machine gun.”

In Michael Giles’ view, the song’s words “were a stark, black, bleak warning for people to wake up to the sheer ignorance, arrogance, greed, and stupidity of human behavior.”as soon as King Crimson started playing their first proper gigs in April 1969. The band had already attracted label interest and enthusiastic press.

“They were very keen not to play when they first came out,” he continues. “They withheld it, and the dynamics were all the more extreme because of that. It hits you, bam!”

 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.

Great article—thank you !!! / Always liked the album’s cover artwork, which, in 1969, was a roaring cry of anti–war consciousness

We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 483. in US

United States Latest News, United States Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

Moroccan king ill, forced to miss Chirac funeral serviceDoctors have advised Morocco's King Mohammed VI to rest for several days to... He does look horrible..
Source: Reuters - 🏆 2. / 97 Read more »

Kanye West’s ‘Jesus Is King’ Album Tracklist Has Been Updated: An AnalysisKanye updated the tracklist for 'Jesus Is King.' So let's speculate about what the songs could be about and what the overall story of the album might be. Ice Cube is better.
Source: Forbes - 🏆 394. / 53 Read more »

‘Jesus Is King’ Is Kanye West’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’Kanye West's 'Jesus is King' film reveals the next stage of his artistic development and personal evolution.
Source: Forbes - 🏆 394. / 53 Read more »

Virgil Abloh and His Army of Disruptors: How He Became the King of Social Media SuperinfluencersIn a new interview for W’s May issue, fashion’s canniest translator of youth culture talks Raf Simons, Kanye West’s legacy, and DJ’ing as a metaphor for his hyperlinked career.
Source: wmag - 🏆 723. / 51 Read more »

Burger King employee allegedly caught photographing customer's debit card at drive-thruManager of fast-food restaurant also allegedly found other pictures of cards on the worker's phone in Ohio. It’s time to start paying in cash 💵 scary. Can't trust nobody - pay cash. He deserves $15 an hour
Source: Newsweek - 🏆 468. / 52 Read more »