King Crimson’s tortuous journey through fourth album Islands – and its 30-year fallout

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The year was 1970 and Robert Fripp was on the verge of quitting King Crimson. Just 12 months after their original line-up had imploded, they were facing internal rifts again on third album Lizard. But along came Islands – the only studio recording to feature the touring line-up of Fripp, Mel Collins, Boz Burrell and Ian Wallace – and the band’s trajectory was changed for good, as Prog discussed in 2021.

It’s early on the morning of January 6, 2010, and somewhere between Berkhamsted and Hemel Hempstead, Robert Fripp is looking out of his hotel window at the heavy overnight snowfall and his snowed-in car. He’s in this neck of the woods to work with Steven Wilson, who is remixing King Crimson’s Islands for the 40th anniversary series.

Fortunately, help is at hand in the shape of Jakko Jakszyk, who lives nearby. In addition to working on remixes of his old album, Fripp is also engaged on a new project with Jakszyk that will eventually be released as A Scarcity Of Miracles. Given the scarcity of snow ploughs and shovels, Jakszyk’s offer to drive Fripp to Wilson’s place is gratefully accepted.

Dropping Fripp off, he goes home to work on tracks the pair recorded with Mel Collins the previous day before the snow. Aside from a guest spot on King Crimson’s Red, it’s the first time Collins has done a full album session with Fripp since Islands in 1971.

At the appointed hour Jakszyk returns to Wilson’s house. Upon entering the car, Fripp doesn’t even say hello – but with his normally demure Dorset accent now exasperated and laden with expletives,  he recites some of  Peter Sinfield’s lyrics to Formentera Lady, the opening track from Islands.

‘Here O-fucking-dysseus charm-ed for dark fucking Circe fucking fell/Still her fucking perfume lingers, still her fucking spell.’ Sighing heavily, he says, “If I’ve learned one thing, it’s never let people write songs about going on their fucking holidays.” Convulsed with laughter, Jakszyk says, “Oh Robert, don’t spoil the magic.” To which, Fripp, digging deeper into his native West Country accent, smilingly replies, “Plenty magic still left there, boy!”

Alongside the humour, the moment also highlights is the fact that, decades later, the events and surrounding the making of Islands was still capable of eliciting
a deep, emotional response in Fripp – who once said that period from 1970 to the summer of 1972 was something he’d rather not go through ever again.

For a long time, the Islands-era band were very much the forgotten King Crimson: a group overshadowed by 1969’s groundbreaking debut and eclipsed by the brilliance of the magical Larks’ Tongues era that followed. This part of Crimson history was represented by an album hurriedly recorded on the hoof in between gigs and – until the 2000s – a live legacy that could only be found on the infamous Earthbound, whose dubious bootleg sonics meant that Atlantic Records declined to even release it in the country where it had been recorded.

In just two years they released three albums that were by turns accomplished, challenging, bold, innovative, quixotic, and unmistakably Crimson – despite the turbulence that was evident had you been following the pages of the music press at the time. Unable to find suitable new members, a power struggle between the two remaining founder members was playing out to poisonous effect. Musical frustration, personal animosity and professional resentment bubbled under the surface, eventually boiling over into passive-aggressive brinkmanship and mass resignation.

In theory, 1970 and 1971 should have been the years that King Crimson capitalised on the giddy rush of In The Court Of The Crimson King’s transatlantic success. With sales of the hastily constructed follow-up In The Wake Of Poseidon actually out-performing its illustrious debut, there was no shortage of promoters offering slots at festivals and tours in the provinces at home and abroad. What the band lacked was the right personnel to take out on the road.

With Collins on sax, Fripp’s old school pal Gordon Haskell on bass and vocals, and another friend, Andy McCulloch, on drums, it seemed like the summer 1970 iteration of Crimson might yet rise from ashes. Such hopes were short-lived. The making of third album Lizard had proved to be a testing experience for nearly everyone concerned.

The cordial-enough arrangement between Sinfield and Fripp during Poseidon had become strained and terse. Haskell and McCulloch disliked the way they were required to lay down their parts in isolation, with only the sketchiest guide guitar as accompaniment. In particular, Haskell detested Sinfield’s words – a dislike also shared by Fripp. Even the amiable Collins was unhappy at the way his and the brass players’ parts were laid down on a bar-by-bar basis, making solos feel stilted and uneven.

Little wonder then that, after Lizard was done, the atmosphere in rehearsals was so toxic that within hours Haskell had walked out, quickly followed by McCulloch.

To have one band fall apart could be viewed as an accident or just ‘one of those things.’ To have another collapse in such a short space of time looked like the group was cursed. In the press there was talk of Crimson being deserted by their ‘good fairy’ – the run of fortune and the sense of being looked after by some benign higher force that had taken the original band under its wing.

Lizard, released at the end of 1970, was arguably their most eclectic studio album yet, but Crimson looked to being finished for good. Certainly, that’s how Collins remembered it. He’d been a member of Circus, one of the groups that had appeared on the Marquee’s New Paths series along with pianist Keith Tippett’s band. Fripp’s exposure to both these acts in 1969 had led to Collins and Tippett guesting on Poseidon. Fripp loved Collins’ playing and invited him to sign on full-time, which he had no hesitation in doing. But what had once seemed like a no-brainer career move had  become a major headache for the 23-year-old.

“It was awful, really,” he says. “I’d had to go back to Circus with my tail between my legs after Poseidon, and then quitting them again to join Crimson for Lizard didn’t go down well with the guys in Circus, or the management at Transatlantic. It was on, then it was off, then it was on again; and it was doing my head in. My chance of being successful, being in a top-rated band and going to America – which was the big one – seemed to be disappearing.”

Things went from bad to worse. Collins recalls that Fripp seemed unable to face another round of searching for yet another line-up. “It was so traumatic that at one point Robert couldn’t handle it any more. He told me that if I wanted to carry on with Crimson and I wanted to get the band together that I should do the auditioning. All I can remember is Robert giving up completely, saying, ‘There’s no hope.’”

With auditions held in the basement of the cafe on the Fulham Palace Road where Crimson had started life in January 1969, Collins got on with the slightly surreal task of finding members for a band that technically didn’t exist. He recognised the absurdity of the situation: “I can understand why Robert felt the way he did – I was also on the point of giving up on many occasions. Crimson was his whole life. All his energy had gone into the band and Peter Sinfield, not being a musician, couldn’t do so much.

“So there I am in this little rehearsal room auditioning bass players and drummers on my own. As a green saxophone player who didn’t really know the tunes that well, it was unbelievable to be thrown into this situation – but I was hungry to do it. When I think about it now, I can’t imagine how I did it.”

He recalls meeting several hopefuls with varying abilities, and some with no abilities at all. “You get all sorts of complete no-hopers who’d blag their way in, and Robert was using me to filter all these people out. We’d talk and have a jam. There wasn’t much I could do as a sax player, so we’d do a little blues or something. It was crazy, really. If I then found anybody I’d have to re-audition them with Peter and Robert, which was bizarre.”

Drummer Ian Wallace had a nicely developed sense of the bizarre. He’d been working with members of the Bonzo Dog Band and had once played on TV, backing comedian Marty Feldman while dressed as a rubber duck. Wallace rented a room in Keith Emerson’s house (as indeed had McCulloch) and jumped at the chance to try out for Crimson.

Understanding that Wallace was a serious contender, Fripp was re-energised. But the drummer recalled that, after the elation of getting the job, it was grim working in that cramped basement space. “It was me, Fripp and Mel auditioning bass players and singers,” he said. “It came very close to not existing. We auditioned so many people, dozens and dozens, and we despaired of finding the right combination.”

Aspirant rock star Bryan Ferry was one of those to make his way into the basement. He was still a teacher by day while writing quirky songs with a band called Roxy. It’s hard to imagine Ferry getting his tonsils around the lyrics of 21st Century Schizoid Man or Pictures Of A City – and even harder to imagine an alternative rock history had he been successful in the task.

Although Fripp liked what he heard, it wasn’t judged right for Crimson. He did, however, give Ferry the telephone number of manager David Enthoven; and in urging the singer to make the call, set in motion a course that would lead to Roxy Music’s remarkable 1972 self-titled debut, which was produced by Sinfield.

Raymond ‘Boz’ Burrell was the hopeful who got the gig Ferry had wanted. Burrell had been searching for a musical home since the early 60s, first in local bands in Lincolnshire and then in London. Something of a mover and shaker blessed with good looks and quick wit, he was mentioned on the front page of Melody Maker in 1965 when it was rumoured he’d replace Roger Daltrey after the singer briefly stormed out of The Who. Later, Burrell would try his hand as a jobbing solo vocalist, covering the title song to  comedy film Carry On Screaming and a more creditable rendition of Bob Dylan’s I Shall Be Released.

Any doubts he might have had about whether Crimson was a good move were  dispelled by the unanimously enthusiastic reception given to him by Wallace, Fripp, Collins and Sinfield. In Burrell they had found not only someone whose gutsy but soulful vocals also conveyed a raw power, but he was also someone they got on with instantly, with a sense of humour that lifted the gloomy spirit in the rehearsal space.

The addition of bassist Rick Kemp, who’d later enjoy a career with Steeleye Span, turned the mood into one of celebration. For three days the band jammed – but were dealt a blow when Kemp decided it wasn’t for him and pulled out. “That was the lowest point,” Wallace later recalled. “When we got that message, we were all sitting in the basement and it was pretty much that Crimson wasn’t going to happen. That was it really; the band was all but finished.”

After a few more applicants had tried and failed, Burrell – who’d played rhythm guitar earlier in his career – picked up the bass guitar left behind by one hopeful, plucking a few notes on it. Collins remembered it belonged to ex-Brian Auger bassist Dave Ambrose. “It didn’t work out with Dave but, for some reason, he’d left his bass behind, and that’s the one  Robert picked up when he decided to teach Boz to play the songs.”

Burrell was given a week to see how things worked out. Fripp told NME at the time: “We had had plenty of competent professional musicians audition but they didn’t have the feel. Boz felt the bass parts while he was singing, whereas the musicians could play it but couldn’t feel it. And if he could feel it, it could only be a matter of time before it crept down from his head through his hand and into his fingers.”

Having spent four days in April 1971 in a residency at Frankfurt’s Zoom Club – where the set was significantly more open-ended and experimental than it would later become – King Crimson next embarked on a run of UK dates in May, the first time a band bearing the name had performed in British venues since October 1969. It had been touch and go; but somehow, against the odds, they had made it back to the stage.

The sense of relief was palpable. Sometimes they felt like robbers who’d pulled off a heist; a feeling that, despite all the uncertainty and despair, they’d gotten away with it. There were some wrinkles, of course – not everything was as they would have it. In Frankfurt they’d been given to expansive improvisations. On their UK tour, however, that openness had been penned into a more conventional set that revisited older pieces The Court Of The Crimson King, Get Thy Bearings, Pictures Of A City, Cirkus and, of course, 21st Century Schizoid Man.

As glad as they were to be working at last, some felt uncomfortable about playing material they’d had no hand in recording – a bit like having to wear an ill-fitting suit or a uniform that belonged to somebody else, as Wallace once put it. Accepting that a setlist would have to represent the broader repertoire, the hope was that all band members would be encouraged to write and contribute music over time. Yet time was the one thing they lacked.

Making up for lost months meant there was no question of taking a break from the road to compose material for their first album together. Expediency demanded that they went with what Fripp had available in the way of compositions; and their schedule was such that recording sessions would have to be fitted in between gigs. In practical terms, it meant that, after playing a show in the provinces, they’d drive back to London overnight to clock in at Command Studios for 10am.

Given that Collins, Burrell and Wallace were fond of a post-gig drink, mornings weren’t always the time when they were at their best. The strange halo around Burrell’s voice on Ladies Of The Road was achieved not through some elaborate effect but by having the microphone positioned next to his head as he leaned over a metal fire bucket held in place in the event of him having to vomit.

Hangovers aside, the guerrilla raids on Command Studios yielded some impressive results. Although Islands continued Crimson’s penchant for mixing contrasting styles and dynamics that veered between The Letters’ gothic melodrama, Formentera Lady’s laid-back reveries, Ladies Of The Road’s raucously skewed blues, or the genteel chamber orchestra heard on Prelude: Song Of The Gulls and the poignant title track, it was Sailor’s Tale that stood out as a break with the past.

Propelled by Wallace’s insistent cymbals and Collins’ acerbic sax break, the spiky, fiery onslaught of a guitar solo tore up the rule book and presaged what was to come. Although not released until 41 years later, during the Islands session they attempted early versions of music that would later surface on Larks’ Tongues In Aspic and Starless And Bible Black. Sounding awkward and unable to find the right feel within this line-up, the tracks were shelved.

This new direction beckoning Fripp partly explains why, by their autumn tour of the UK, he had lost confidence in the band, and distance grew between them. Collins remembers: “There was a period where Robert couldn’t talk to us. We were travelling in a little Transit van so we were in a confined space every day, and it got to be emotional. He was obviously going through some terrible trauma within himself. We were discussing it every day: ‘What’s wrong with Robert? Maybe something terrible has happened? Had his father has died or something and he can’t bring himself to tell us?’ That caused a lot of problems within the band.

“We ended up towards the end of the tour at a gig where Boz smashed his guitar up against his amp and Ian kicked his drum kit all over the stage. It was like King Crimson visits The Who! This was how intense it was. Musically and personality-wise, it wasn’t an easy band. We were above the fisticuffs – unlike some bands – but it was very tense and emotional.”

The tension between Fripp and Sinfield had also reached a point of no return. At the end of what had been a generally positive tour in the USA, Wallace remembered Fripp asking them to make a choice: to go with him or Peter. “We saw that Crimson wouldn’t have continued without Fripp and, although he gave us a choice, there really was no choice.”

Back in the UK, Fripp made the call telling Sinfield their partnership was over. This was, as Fripp saw it, the inevitable climax to what he described as “18 months of managing increasing personal criticism and hostility, quite apart from the specific professional context, which was disintegrating.”

For his part, Sinfield saw the tensions in their relationship as essentially a way of keeping creative sparks flying; but he views the root of the problem as being caused by Fripp resenting his suggestions for Crimson’s future. “I think the famous ‘big’ problems really occurred leading up to Islands, where I musically wanted to find a softer, Miles Davis-with-vocals sexy package,” he says.

Over the years, he’s been quoted as saying that he regarded his final album with King Crimson as being “my Islands.” It’s an assertion that Fripp dismisses. During the remixing process in 2010, as he listened closely to the music, he offered this perspective: “I’m not sure why Peter Sinfield would consider Islands to be his album, although it became clear at the time that Peter was increasingly using KC as a vehicle for his personal ambitions, rather than a joint/group undertaking.

“On Islands Peter expanded his brief to include cover design, rather than using an outside artist [in the US Atlantic declined to use Peter’s cover, preferring the inner sleeve of the nebula cluster]. At live shows, VCS3 explosions and effects from Peter’s FOH desk suggested a metaphorical climbing-onstage. EG Management, experiencing the difficulties of managing an offstage member of KC who wanted the visibility of an onstage presence, put the sound mixer of their next band onstage right from the beginning, in order to head off the problem: Eno with Roxy Music.

“The creative power that brought KC to life in 1969, which we called the ‘good fairy,’ did not originate in the young men that formed the band: it acted through and upon them. I don’t doubt that Peter’s feelings are genuine, that he honestly believes himself to be KC’s Good Fairy. This would explain the bitterness, ongoing to this day. But realistically, how was Islands Peter’s album? Peter didn’t compose or play music…

"Which musical route did Peter want for KC? That of Formentera Lady? Ladies Of The Road? Scored music for chamber orchestra? And how could any route have been continued, even were Peter to have remained within the band? Peter’s considerable talents were not musical. Peter had no musical and performing experience, compositional or executant skills. And personally, I prefer Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Fracture and Red to Formentera Lady; with due respect to all the talented characters involved.”

The partnership that had begun in January 1969 was dissolved in December 1971 when Fripp asked Sinfield to leave – meaning the guitarist was now the sole survivor from the original band. When the quartet reconvened in January 1972 to rehearse for a US tour, Fripp’s refusal to play a piece composed by Collins resulted in the rest of the band quitting in solidarity with the sax player. The new King Crimson had broken up on the morning of their very first rehearsal.

Persuaded by EG Management that they were contractually obliged to complete the tour, they played more than 30 gigs between February and April 1972. At the end of it, Collins, Wallace and Burrell stayed Stateside to join forces with Alexis Korner, while Fripp headed back alone to the UK to compile a live album of the tour, which – with his customary deadpan wit – he titled Earthbound.

For decades the Islands band were regarded as not quite being up to the level of other Crimsons. The truth is they were simply different. Over the years their reputation has been rehabilitated through the release of numerous live albums, which reveal a band that did like to boogie in a most un-Crimson like manner if they got the chance, but were also capable of some absolutely hair-raising, impassioned performances.

Although paths did not cross for many years, there was a rapprochement with Collins and Wallace. In one of those truly cosmic coincidences, Collins remembers that, in August 2002, he was at home in Germany transcribing music for the 21st Century Schizoid Band when the phone rang. Out of the blue, it was Fripp calling from Nashville, where he was recording material for King Crimson’s 13th studio album, The Power To Believe.

“We were offering each other congratulations on the various things we’d done since playing together,” Collins recalls. “I told him how good I thought what we were doing back then was, and in the course of this, he apologised for the hurtful things he’d said to me 30 years ago. He felt he could have put it all in a different way and that he wished he had. I’m glad we made our peace.”

Jakszyk – the unwitting recipient of Fripp’s ire that wintry afternoon in 2010 – never forgot how his life was utterly transformed when he saw the Islands line-up perform at Watford Town Hall in 1971. It’s one of his favourite King Crimson albums, he says. “Obviously it has a place in my heart that’s to do with a time and a place, I guess. I love Boz’s voice. I know it’s maligned by some of the Crimson aficionados, but I don’t really get that.

"Both Mel and Ian were incredibly defensive about that. They really loved Boz. They loved his bass playing too, even though it wasn’t overly technical. They said he had an amazing groove and an amazing vibe – that he really made those things sing.”

When Crimson reformed in 2014 and Jakszyk stood onstage between Collins and Fripp, that was exciting enough. To then discover that Fripp intended to include tracks from the Poseidon, Lizard and Islands eras was especially pleasing. Sailor’s Tale and The Letters hadn’t been performed live in more than 40 years; and Jakszyk says their inclusion represented the fact that Fripp had come to terms with the music he’d for so long wished to disassociate himself from.

“I think finally he could hear the music in those pieces. He’d avoided them not so much because he dismissed the value of the material or the content, but because of the hellish memories he has of trying to bring that particular music to life.

"I think he hated that period for so long because, in his head, it represented this torturous process that he didn’t want to revisit. Obviously remixing it has helped him come to terms with it all; and certainly playing this stuff again has made him re-evaluate it – which is why it was such a joy to do it.”

Standing next to Fripp during the chordal solo of Sailor’s Tale was another spine-tingling moment. “Listening and watching him do that live for the first time was unbelievable. Robert’s soloing with those kinds of chords and intervals, with that sound, it’s such an extraordinary example of tension and release, and the places it goes is truly unique. Who plays like that? Nobody.”

He recalls that, during one of the first band rehearsals, he was using a Kemper audio modelling processor that was able to precisely emulate vintage amp and guitar configurations. “The first time we ran through Sailor’s Tale, after we finished Robert said to me, ‘The sound you’re using there, what is it?’ And I said, ‘It’s a preset on the Kemper called “Early Fripp.“‘ He absolutely cracked up. He thought that was hilarious.”