More advanced readers will have twigged that this is a documentary about the popular Robert Fripp led band. I am not really that familiar with the music of King Crimson or indeed with their history, so I was watching this to get a sense of what they are about. Directed by Toby Amies, this follows them on tour in 2021. It kind of follows the Spinal Tap rockumentary model, interspersing live footage with interviews. While the film seems to have been made with the permission of King Crimson (i.e. with the permission of Robert Fripp), it does feature some interviews with former members of the band, some of whom are a bit barbed in their comments about the band's interpersonal dynamics and Fripp's dislike of band members who want their artistic ideas treated with respect).
The main thing I took away from this film is that Fripp is as mad as a bag of ferrets. He seems to combine being a bit interpersonally difficult with an extremely obsessive approach to musicianship. It is mentioned at one point that he insists on practising his guitar for six hours every day and feels that his performance suffers if he doesn't put the full block of time in. And then we see him giving out to the filmmaker and threatening to cancel the whole film because all the interviews he has to do are cutting into his practice time and impinging on his ability to perform. He also seems to have spent the history of King Crimson feuding with all the band's other members and is only somewhat happy now that he has recruited a line-up of (brilliant) musicians who are happy not to push back against his every demand. But it was still noticeable that Fripp was far more on edge throughout the film than any of his players (and that includes drummer Bill Rieflin (formerly of the Revolting Cocks), who spends the film being eaten up by colonic cancer, remarking at one point that he is in constant pain from his terminal condition). I was kind of thinking of Fripp as the prog Mark E. Smith, but my sense is that in The Fall MES was pretty chill but everyone else was on edge all the time.
Oddly, you get that sense of "Everyone's replaceable in King Crimson" more with the film's director than with the musicians. The current line-up of musicians know their place and are happy to go along with it, but the director seems to be always a Fripp meltdown away from the project being cancelled. There is one bit where one of the musicians is being interviewed and he says something like "I was years into the band before I stopped feeling like I was still auditioning for my part". Amies comments that he still feels like he is auditioning himself, to which the musician replies "Well you are".
The film is also surprisingly funny for a documentary about a prog rock band led by a deranged obsessive who takes himself very seriously. At one point Amies is talking to Jakko Jakszyk, vocalist and guitarist in the touring band. He was saying how before he had joined King Crimson he had been playing in 21st Century Schizoid Man, a group formed by former members of the band. He recounts how one day he took a call from Robert Fripp. "He asked me how things were going, and I had to say that they weren't great. And he said to me, 'the thing you have to remember is those guys from the early years of King Crimson are all cunts, and the biggest cunt of all is -' ", and then the film cuts to a separate interview with a former member of the band.
There was also a funny (to me) bit where someone is saying to Jakszyk that, as the only single man in the touring band, he'll be able to go out there and get a load of action for himself from the King Crimson fans, and I thought, "only if you have a fetish for chubby middle-aged men".
The music is pretty good too and did leave me wishing I had seen this tour. The big selling point for me was the band having three drummers. More drummers the better. Now I just need to actually listen to some recorded King Crimson. The tour in the film is reportedly their last ever, so I'll probably never see them live, although one of the musicians commented that Fripp is always saying that he will never tour again and then finding that he has to tour to fund an extension to his house, so one never knows.
One final thing: one thing that really endeared me to this film was that the director comes across very well in it. He never appears on screen (apart from at the very end and then only briefly) but we hear his voice as he talks to the subjects, and he has an appealingly hesitant attitude, the opposite of the in your face arrogance of the guy who made the Ginger Baker film. I may investigate further works by him.
image source:
At home with Robert Fripp (Guardian: "In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50 review – a rollicking workplace comedy")
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