Sid Smith (2)

A superb piece of research and writing. This takes every track of each album that Crimson have produced and goes into the ideas that created it, the individual band members contributions and what its components are. There are revealing insights into the difficulties of the way the band creates its music. Often, as is the norm with rock music, there is little more than a brief riff or musical idea to start with. Adrian Belew has the most difficult job, having to think how to expand the track show more (as do the others in the band) and then writing lyrics that go with the music. This influences the off-kilter music that Crimson produce. The enigmatic leader Bob Fripp remains an enigma but there are a lot of memorable quotes from him and about him. This book isn't particularly critical of the music, its job is to tell the story of each track, which it does. Its an absorbing read, hard to put down at times. Fascinating stuff and a wonderful achievement by the author. It could have been improved by better production values from the publisher, and more illustrations, reproduced to a larger size on better quality paper. If you only own one Crimson album this book will help you derive a lot more from it. show less

This is certainly the definitive biography of King Crimson. It is worth a read by any King Crimson fan. For more insight about Robert Fripp, we can only await the published collection of his blog posts (if he should ever see fit to publish them).