{"id":480869,"date":"2019-01-14T11:28:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-14T18:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=778727"},"modified":"2019-01-14T11:28:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-14T18:28:00","slug":"flashback-king-crimson-open-for-the-rolling-stones-in-hyde-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/flashback-king-crimson-open-for-the-rolling-stones-in-hyde-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: King Crimson Open for the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/king-crimson-1969.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"\/><\/div>\n<p>Happy 50th birthday, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/king-crimson\/\" id=\"auto-tag_king-crimson\" data-tag=\"king-crimson\">King Crimson<\/a>. As noted on their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dgmlive.com\/news\/King%20Crimson%20-%20Celebrating%2050%20years\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">official website<\/a>, this past Sunday marked exactly five decades since the legendary avant-rock outfit first rehearsed. The year that followed was a whirlwind: By the end of 1969, the core lineup that had convened on January 13th at London\u2019s Fulham Palace Road Cafe \u2014 vocalist-bassist Greg Lake, guitarist Robert Fripp, drummer Michael Giles and woodwind player Ian McDonald, along with lyricist and light-and-sound-man Peter Sinfield \u2014 had released a hit debut, <em>In the Court of the Crimson King<\/em>, and, following a Fillmore West gig on December 16th, promptly broken up.<\/p>\n<p>In between, though, they\u2019d managed to land any young band\u2019s dream gig: an opening slot at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/the-rolling-stones\/\" id=\"auto-tag_the-rolling-stones\" data-tag=\"the-rolling-stones\">the Rolling Stones<\/a>\u2019 free \u201cStones in the Park\u201d gig in Hyde Park on July 5th. Playing live for only the seventh time, King Crimson faced an audience numbering in the hundreds of thousands, there to see the Stones\u2019 first live show in more than two years. Here you can watch a tantalizingly brief clip of their signature song \u201c21st Century Schizoid Man\u201d from that momentous day. (The full audio of the show was released in 2002 via the band\u2019s Collectors\u2019 Club series.)<\/p>\n<p>The footage is grainy and shaky, but it still gives a sense of both the hugeness of the show \u2014 which looks like a Woodstock-esque bacchanalia, complete with stoned shimmying and a dude ill-advisedly climbing a light pole \u2014 and the utter weirdness of the music itself. It\u2019s fascinating to consider how King Crimson\u2019s punishing, saxophone-accented art-metal must have come across to all those unsuspecting viewers that day.<\/p>\n<p>For Robert Fripp, the group\u2019s leader and sole remaining original member, the Hyde Park gig laid the groundwork for everything that would come after. \u201cKing Crimson was considered the band of the day,\u201d Fripp later said at a <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/201961008\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">public talk<\/a> hosted by his sister Patricia, looking back on the show. \u201cThere were many people who\u2019d come from Europe and from the United States to see the Rolling Stones\u2019 return to live performance and they went back and said, \u2018There\u2019s a band you must see, a new band \u2014 it\u2019s King Crimson.\u2019 So from one point of view, this was a move to the international stage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Five decades and countless incarnations later, the band is still pushing, with an especially <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/king-crimson-tour-50-concerts-50th-anniversary-778601\/\">busy schedule<\/a> planned for 2019 in honor of the milestone year, complete with a new documentary and 50-date tour.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/king-crimson-21st-century-schizoid-man-london-1969-rolling-stones-778727\/\" target=\"_blank\">via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happy 50th birthday, King Crimson. As noted on their official website, this past Sunday marked exactly five decades since the legendary avant-rock outfit first rehearsed. The year that followed was a whirlwind: By the end of 1969, the core lineup that had convened on January 13th at London\u2019s Fulham Palace Road Cafe \u2014 vocalist-bassist Greg [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-480869","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-12 15:20:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}