TITLE: "21st Century Schizoid Man" (live 1972)
ARTIST: King Crimson
ALBUM: Schizoid Man e.p./Earthbound
RELEASE DATE: 1996/1972 (2002)
Inspired by a somewhat heated discussion last year with some equally opinionated former co-workers about "heavy metal credibility," I unsolicitedly added my two cents to the fray by submitting my Top Ten Heavy Metal acts (which resulted in this post) appended with reasons behind each choice, a runners-up roster and, more importantly, a list of bands who -- while not technically "heavy metal" -- still warrant inclusion in any discussion about the genre. Among this list were names like the Stooges, Queen, the MC5, Rush, Killing Joke (c'mon, you knew they were comin'), Hawkwind, the Ramones, Bad Brains, the Misfits and King Crimson. This last suggestion prompted incredulous hurrumphs that almost made me burst into white hot, chrome-melting flames. If you can't hear the METAL in "21st Century Schizoid Man," the unforgettable opening number from King Crimon's 1969 debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King, you've clearly been listening to way too much Dokken. Let's review, shall we?
Cat’s foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia’s poison door.
Twenty first century schizoid man.
Blood rack barbed wire
Polititians’ funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty first century schizoid man.
Death seed blind man’s greed
Poets’ starving children bleed
Nothing he’s got he really needs
Twenty first century schizoid man.
While it's true that the Crimbos were ultimately a post-psychedelic progressive band (Allmusic.com calls them a "thinking man's Pink Floyd," which seems like a somewhat unecessary dig, being that the `Floyd never struck me as particularly slackjawed), "21st Century Schizoid Man" always sounded to me like Black Sabbath after a few semesters at the Sorbonne. Despite wearing glasses and insisting on sitting down when playing (most un-metal), Crimson mastermind, Robert Fripp, was fully capable of playing hard and heavy! Listen to the similarities between "Schizoid…" (released in 1969) and the Sabbath' "War Pigs" (released in 1971) -- both feature somewhat crudely expressed social commentary, extended passages of era-fashionable instrumental noodlery, shifting tempos and, most importatnly, big ass riffs that stride out of the speakers like mighty behemoths. I find it nigh on impossible to believe that Ozzy and Iommi didn't have "Schizoid" in mind when they penned their anthem that opens Paranoid (the virtual blueprint of heavy metal). And that arguable homage might not have been lost on Crimson. This live recording of their doomy opus from 1971 (the same year Sabbath's Paranoid was released) boasts an added amount of guitar bombast (this version with the late Boz Burrell on vocals was culled from the entirely ass-lambasting Schizoid Man EP, released in 1996, featuring no fewer than thirty-nine bracing minutes of neck-snapping "Schizoid" fury, originally released on the long-deleted live album, Earthbound...re-released on disc at last in 2002). King Crimson may have ultimately been a bunch of hirsute sophisto hippies who liked to read Lewis Carrol, sipping Earl Grey tea while sitting cross legged in a dainty English garden, but they were as capable of musically conjuring the roar of the gaping maw of Hell as anyone.
So having long assumed King Crimson were effete, proggy mellotron-tweakers (again...not entirely untrue), I never payed them much heed until two separate friends introduced me to two separate incarnations of the band during my freshman year of college. Scowling comrade Jay (last seen in Seattle, working for a recycling agency) - othewise obsessed with the Stooges, Dead Kennedys, Velvet Underground and Berlin-era Bowie -- demanded I soak in the triad of albums from the Adrian Belew/Discipline era of the mid-80's wherein Fripp re-cast Crimson as a sleek quartet with an ear for danceable post-punk rhythms and crisp, angular guitars ("Sleepless" off Three of a Perfect Pair swiftly became and remains one of my favorite songs of all time). But it was my slightly deranged friend, Walt (last seen working -- appropriately enough -- for Hanna Barbera Cartoons) who turned me onto the cacophonous majesty of early Crimson. If I remember correctly, Walter's own band, Roosevelt's Maid, attempted a wholly ambitious-if-ill-considered cover of "21st Century Schizoid Main" (along with originals --and I'm not making these up, I assure you -- like "I Was On Air Force One When Reagan Lost Control of His Bowels" and "They Were Locked In the Closet And Forced To Eat Their Own…."). The wall-bulldozing opening strains of "Schizoid…" were often heard emanating from a long-suffering boom box in Walt's room, wherein he'd usually be found barking along to it through a make-shift megaphone, eyes-bugged and fist aloft.
Like other new albums I'd been recently turned onto (notably Funhouse by the Stooges, Chronic Town by R.E.M., the amazing Oil & Gold by Shriekback and the first albums by The Modern Lovers and the Violent Femmes), I quickly obtained my own copy of In the Court of the Crimson King and put it into regular rotation (my freshman year roommate used to make a habit of always turning the album cover over, as the screaming face on the front evidently severely creeped him out). I remember being struck at the incongruity of how "Schizoid.." segued immediately into the disarmingly mellow "I Talk to the Wind" (featuring a somewhat flaccid, thrill-dampening flute solo, for god's sakes) which sounded about as scary and metal as Perry Como. There were other moments on the album that packed a punch (notably the crescendo of the title track's chorus), but King Crimson were never so fierce and feral as on that opening track. Until the afore-mentioned Discipline era, though, Crimson became too impenetrably proggy for my taste (though I do like a lot of that stuff, notably Yes, with whom Crimson have shared the odd band member time and again). Ex-Crimbos even ended up in bands like Asia, Bad Company and Foreigner, not that I'd go out of my way to highlight those facts, were I them.
So maybe King Crimsom weren't a metal band per se, but "21st Century Schizoid Man" -- a song about death, futuristic paranoia and warfare featuring skull-crushing riff sorcery, extended drum and guitar solos PLAYED BY A BAND WHOSE NAME IS A PSEUDONYM FOR SATAN IS METAL TO THE VERY CORE, and it rocks WAY harder than its over-lauded proto-metal counterpart, "Inna Gadda Da Vida" by Iron Butterfly.
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