The Show That Never Ends

by David Weigel

  “I did have a hit single at that time, with ‘Cell 151,’ and there are some things that I’m proud of on that album,” remembered Hackett. “But it marked a transition. This was at the time when we started to do things to a click track. At the same time, I wasn’t able to work with big budgets. There was a lot of paranoia in the music business at that time. People were so keen on getting a hit single but didn’t have a clear idea of what a hit single was. I kept telling people that it’s not actually the hit single; it’s what goes on around it—how it’s being sold by the record company. I think it’s possible for record companies, if they want to, to pull out the stops and sell refrigerators to eskimos.”63

  IN AUGUST 1979, shortly before a Frippertronics performance at a Winnipeg art gallery, Robert Fripp sat for an interview about where his music might be heading. There would be a record of his new experimental music—actually several records. “Frippertronics Volume One: Music for Sports,” Fripp told his interviewers. “Probably be a double album. There is also Music for Palaces & Kitchens, which may well be incorporated into that particular double album. But I anticipate it will be a whole series of albums.”64

  The “Drive to 1981” was on, as Fripp toured with his ever-transmogrifying music. At a July 30, 1979, concert, a fan-cum-heckler had yelled for the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Fripp responded with a variation on “God Save the Queen,” one that left almost no trace of the melody. Over the year, Fripp amassed tapes of these performances; at year’s end, he cut them into a surprise album of Frippertronics and other experiments.

  God Saves the Queen/Under Heavy Manners was bisected as the title suggested—ambient sounds on the first side, and “discotronics” on the second. The liner notes explained what Fripp was doing more succinctly, and less obliquely, than the many interviews. The tours, he wrote, were a protest against “the general acceptance of rock music as spectator sport, to humour each other’s mutual pretensions, egocentricities and conceits.”65

  The music followed from there, without explanation. Discotronics sounded unlike anything Fripp had done before, with “Under Heavy Manners” itself bringing in a new vocalist, David Byrne. The Talking Heads singer winced and emoted through a list of terms, each seemingly unconnected to any other. It was likely the first song to use the terms “cataphatacism” and “apophatacism”—and it used them as a couplet. “The Zero of the Signified” twinned the fluttering Frippertronic sound with a danceable 4/4 beat.

  What did it mean? The music press handled the question gingerly. No one was making music like Fripp—not even Eno—but the direction was hard to figure. “Discotronics is defined as that musical experience resulting at the interstice of Frippertronics and disco,” explained Fripp in the sleeve. “True, you can dance to it,” wrote Michael Davis in Creem. “Big deal, you can dance to a lot of things, from eggbeaters to washing machines.”66

  Where to run with that? Fripp had been talking about the idea of a “mobile unit” for music—what less contemplative types might call a “band”—during much of his return. In March 1980, he announced the first such unit as the League of Gentlemen. Barry Andrews, who had just left the postpunk group XTC, came on as a keyboard player who owed nothing to progressive rock. No one in the band did. “It is very difficult to play Frippertronics to drunk people at rock ’n’ roll clubs,” Fripp told one interviewer. “The League of Gentlemen works from outside the music inward, while [Frippertronics] works from the inside outwards.”67

  Fripp biographer Eric Tamm described just how much the guitarist was able to innovate when the songs were boiled down. “Cognitive Dissonance,” a song that began with a standard pop beat, was his example. “The organ presents a harmonic entity based on the augmented triad Gb-Bb-D, over drums and bass,” wrote Tamm. “Fripp’s guitar enters playing a broken Gb dominant seventh chord with added flatted third—Fripp’s beloved major/minor ambiguity. The harmony shifts systematically to Bb7 and then to D7, as it were developing the implications in the original augmented chord.”68

  Still, this was Fripp’s first touring band in six long years, longer than King Crimson itself had existed. And this, by intention, was nearly a parody of a band. When it got to New York, Fripp introduced the band with patter as far away from rock standards as possible. “Welcome to the League of Gentlemen,” he said. “This is another improbable event, full of hazard. We suggest that you listen and dance simultaneously.”69

  The crowd had been warmed up already by a largely unknown act—one with a pedigree. GaGa was led by guitarist and singer Adrian Belew, who’d just come off a tour with David Bowie, and who before that had been part of Frank Zappa’s band. The rangy Tennessean had a clear, Lennon-esque voice, and a technique that thrived on experimentation.

  “One of the best things I took away musically was to take a piece of music and treat it so many different ways, from arranging and rearranging,” Belew said. “In the three months time that we did very intense rehearsals—five days a week, eight hours a day—of Frank’s music, he would often take something that we’d already learned and say, okay, now, we’re going to do it this way. Completely different arrangement. Different instrumentation. Different style. I watched him do that over and over again. That was very important to me.”70

  David Byrne was in the audience for one of these shows. Belew soon found himself playing the role that Fripp had played so briefly: the experimental lead guitarist for Talking Heads. A world was opening up for Belew, and Chris Blackwell of Island offered him a record deal of his own. But Fripp had been watching Belew for years. He had seen him with Bowie, playing the parts from “Heroes” that Fripp had written in Berlin. They’d talked for the first time when the three of them—Belew and Bowie together, Fripp separately—took an off day to see Steve Reich at the Bottom Line.

  The League of Gentlemen fell apart at the end of 1980—accidentally, yet almost on schedule with Fripp’s Drive to 1981. There was energy, and purpose, and he recognized it. “I decided to have a go at a first division band,” he would tell Creem, introducing another concept into the lexicon. “King Crimson had never died, in the sense that the interest in the band is still out there, probably greater than when we were first playing, and also, this is hard to get across, it looks a bit silly in print, I think. . . . I became aware of the iconic aspect of King Crimson, that there was a potential energy there, that was kind of hovering behind the band and that was available to us if we wanted to plug into it.”71

  Fripp did not set out to reunite King Crimson, but the first recruitment he made was Bill Bruford. He was lucky, taking accidental advantage of Bruford’s faltering tour with National Health. The drummer, who had parted with Fripp on such seemingly capricious terms, was on board when Talking Heads reached England and Belew was summoned for a conversation. They cut a deal—Belew could make solo records while in the band—and the new unit was a trio.

  That started the search for a bassist—one who would have to pass an unusual test. Before the band had come together, Fripp, Bruford, and Bruford’s bassist Jeff Berlin had knocked together a complicated piece of music. “Jeff and I had written this lovely ostinato in 17/16,” recalled Bruford, “and Robert was sitting on the sofa, and said: ‘I’ve got something that could go with that.’ ”72 That became “Discipline,” an intricate song that incorporated looping techniques through traditional instruments. The next bassist had to play that. “Robert and I set up in a rehearsal room and a line rapidly formed around the block,” recalled Bruford. “We auditioned them with ‘Discipline’ on the grounds that, if they could play that, they’d probably be all right. After about an hour of this, Robert announced he was leaving.”73

  Another day of rehearsals came, and ended, with no optimism. On the third day came Tony Levin. “The afternoon with Tony was one of the best musical experiences of my life,” Fripp told biographer Sid Smith. “Bill was showing TL a rather difficult 9/8, grouped 5 and 4. Tony had it before Bill completed the sentence. Adrian was trying to remember some queer accents BB had
shown as rhythm shots on top of the 9/8, which we had worked on the day before. TL played them as well as his own part, to make them clearer for Adrian! And TL, who had never heard ‘Larks Tongues in Aspic II’ in his life, played it in spirit perfectly.”74

  This was when “Discipline” fell away as the name of the new project. “In the first week of rehearsal,” Fripp told Creem, “I knew the band I was hearing. There was no doubt that the band playing was King Crimson.”75

  JON ANDERSON WAS COPING with the separation from Yes. In short order he sought out Vangelis, whom he warmly remembered trying to court for the band when Wakeman originally quit. “I saw photographs of him playing four or five keyboards at the same time, and laser beams behind him,” Anderson would recall. “It was unbelievable. I had to meet this guy.” When he did, Vangelis greeted the singer in “a kaftan way down to the floor and a big bow and arrow around his shoulders and arrows coming out of a quiver,” displaying archery before he got down to the music. But he was game for an audition—and promptly blew it. Anderson remembered Vangelis making rounds with the group and deciding this was the perfect time to razz Steve Howe. “You know, Steve, electric guitar?” Anderson recalled Vangelis saying. “Not a real instrument.”76

  So, Anderson turned to Patrick Moraz, but he never stopped working with Vangelis. In his postprog life, the Greek had become a purely instrumental composer, pulling electronic sounds out of electronic instruments, rather than approximating anything classical. The post-Yes sessions at the Greek genius’s Nome studios consisted, according to both men, of improvisation.

  “With Jon, we never talk,” Vangelis would say. “We work in a very spontaneous way. This is something I like. Also, we don’t plan anything, so it makes it better.”77

  Anderson and Vangelis recorded at a steady clip; the emergent music was shimmering and harmless. The new-age ethos of Anderson seemingly found its match, and the singles did what Yes had stopped doing: they cracked the top 10. That success helped Vangelis reconnect with David Puttnam, a film producer who wanted the artist to record a soundtrack for his film. Chariots of Fire, a somber drama about two British athletes who make it to the 1924 Olympics, had been scored to more generic electronic music. Vangelis replaced that with colors from his synthesizer, trying to evoke athleticism through sweeping chords. “What I see creates an emotion which comes out immediately,” he told a biographer. “It may be the right one—the first one. The second and third are much more intellectual in approach, which is second best.”78 The 1981 Chariots of Fire score won Vangelis an Oscar, which he did not fly to Hollywood to accept.

  Daevid Allen, as usual, took the opposite path. Like Fripp, he had decamped to New York and relocated there to find whatever Gong had been lacking. “My old ally Giorgio Gomelsky had set up a Mani-festival whereby he sought to combine European progressive rockers with the No Wave movement and take Manhattan by storm,” said Allen. “In the UK and Europe I had been vaguely aware that New York was experiencing its own punk and then postpunk movement, but my first visit to the Mud Club in 1979 gave the impression that the real gutsy dangerous UK punk movement was being emulated as a pale fashion statement more than a genuine dance with destruction.”79

  One result of Allen’s latest meandering was “New York Gong,” a collaboration with the bassist Bill Laswell. For the first time, the forty-two-year-old singer was spitting lyrics about aging and feeling out of touch. The psychedelia had been tacked back completely; the new music sped along the rails of 4/4 time and looping bass lines. It departed from the rest of the “No Wave” movement only because Allen said it did. “Yes Wave was a pataphysical reaction to the No Wave club,” said Allen. “I never liked joining men’s clubs.”80

  GENESIS WAS NOT WINNING awards. It was not repeating any themes from the progressive years. It was still being savaged by critics. “We were supposed to have been killed off by punk,” recalled Tony Banks, “and yet we were bigger than ever. And at that point our press just became terrible.”81

  Gabriel had avoided that trap. “Peter was on a journey,” recalled Larry Fast, who had played and programmed synthesizers since the start of Gabriel’s solo career. “One of the things that became apparent was that his solo career would not be a new version of Genesis. We studiously avoided doing things like bring mellotrons on the road with Peter, because he wanted to establish that break.” Fast saw the distinction when Gabriel covered “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” Procol Harum’s song from the start of the progressive era. In Gabriel’s hands, the gossamer fell away, revealing a pure rock song, something modeled after the music he’d heard in New York. “Peter was really just ripping his vocals to shreds,” Fast said. “My wrists got really tired playing all those sixteenth notes. Part of what he was doing was mocking the song; part of it was trying to understand it.”82

  In the studio, alongside Fripp and then alongside producer Hugh Padgham, Gabriel was producing more experimental music that was less complicated than anything produced by Genesis. His third album, self-titled like the first two, began with the song “Intruder.” A drum loop announced the beginning of the song—drums, and no cymbals. There was no showing off, no use of explosives. Gabriel’s former bandmates heard it, and were compelled. “We had already been talking about how much we liked the John Bonham drum sound on Led Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir,’ and this was even more John Bonham than John Bonham,” said Tony Banks.83 “I wasn’t surprised when he started getting into African rhythms,” said Mike Rutherford. “Peter has always been a frustrated drummer and he was very rhythmically aware.”84

  Hugh Padgham was tapped for Genesis’s next album, Abacab, which would veer between pure pop and jokes at the expense of other musical trends. “Who Dunnit?” was an unsubtle joke at the punk trend. When the band debuted it at a Dutch concert, it was blown back by hecklers. “They genuinely disliked the new approach,” said Collins.85 “The band wore silly hats,” recalled Banks. “I’d put on a little snorkel and play a Prophet Five keyboard specially tuned just for that one song.”86

  Gabriel, who had dialed down the stage act, was being given more credit for the music. In 1980 he founded the World of Music, Arts and Dance (WOMAD) festival, booking the Royal Bath & West Showground in Shepton Mallet, England, for the debut. It had been the site of the 1970 Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music; in 1982, the venue would showcase international acts, curated by Gabriel.

  That was not yet enough to foot the bills. With obvious reluctance, Gabriel agreed to an autumn reunion gig with Genesis in the town of Milton Keynes. “The motivation is to pay off the WOMAD debts,” he explained. “For me, um . . . I think I will enjoy it but having tried for seven years to get away from the image of being ex-Genesis there’s obviously a certain amount of stepping back.” Sixty-five thousand people showed up to hear the band. “It was odd,” said Tony Banks, “and not as good musically as we had been used to.”87

  In the next years, Gabriel did not cast a glance back at the old group. He went to work on a fourth solo album, working again with Larry Fast, and using the only Fairlight synthesizer in the country. “His music sounds like he’s serving penance for the impurity and decay of the entire western world,” grumbled Gavin Martin in NME. “What are we going to do with these arthouse bores?”88

  Martin’s commentary was cruel but not wrong. Gabriel was winning new respect in the art house. The release of that album was celebrated by the South Bank Show, a TV program that filmed months of recording sessions and gave Gabriel time to explain what he was inventing. The artist, according to a narrator, was out to “revitalize what he and many others see as the limited range of rock, by looking outside Europe and America.”89

  The show began as the album began, with the shuffling beat of “The Rhythm of the Heat.” Gabriel stared into the camera, face framed by headphones, dressed in a gray blazer, eyes hard and fixated on the interloper. He spat out the first wordless scream of the song, face contorting and then collapsing back into a smile. This song had originally been titled “Ju
ng in Africa,” after Gabriel read Carl Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections. “I love the idea of this guy who shaped a lot of the way we think in the West, who lives in his head and in his dreams, suddenly getting sucked into this thing that he can’t avoid,” said Gabriel, “where he has to let go of control completely and feels that he has become possessed in a way, not by a devil but by this thing which is bigger than him.”90

  10

  NEO-PROG

  The progressive rock revival had come to Glasgow, and didn’t it seem like it was time? Phil Bell, a reporter for Sounds, found himself at the Dial Inn to review a band whose name was two-thirds of a J. R. R. Tolkien reference: Marillion. “This neo-progressive upsurgence thingy ain’t hype, y’know, but something that’s being generated by public interest,” wrote Bell. “The age of exaggerated musical agility is back.”1

  Marillion, a five-man combo playing small venues, had resurrected the spectacle of progressive rock, at scale and with no visible signs of irony. It was 1982, yet here was Fish—just Fish. He was a towering Scotsman—six foot five—with echoes of Peter Gabriel when he rose from a shout to a yelp. He was acting out songs that stretched to about ten minutes. “Forgotten Sons” was a standout, starting fast and then slowing as it gained mass, a guitar and a keyboard trading melodies.

  Bell captured some of this, then apologized to readers, for words could not quite capture the feeling of “Forgotten Sons” being acted out. He could only try.

  I’ll only say that it thickens and heightens in vigour until everything blacks out and enigmatic frontman Fish, all alone, says in a deathly macabre atmosphere: “Halt! Who goes there? Death (echoed whisper). Approach . . . friend.” Then everything explodes brite-white-lites-on-crowd etc., into giant ending, blah-blah—got it? Classic stuff. It’s in “Forgotten” too that the highly visual aspect of the gig climaxes. Startlingly face-painted Fish dons fatigue jacket and helmet and, transforming his mike-stand into a machine-gun, proceeds to “mow down” his audience (firing tuned in to Mick Pointer’s rat-a-tatting drumming). Ending the performance, he mimes the soldier blowing his own brains out.2