King Crimson's 'Lizard'

[Apex]

'Lizard' was King Crimson's 3rd album, released in 1970. "Wikipedia states: The record is arguably King Crimson's most jazz-inflected album."

It certainly is.

Albums 1 & 2 saw EL&P's Greg Lake on vocals, but by the time Lizard came out, the line up had changed, with the only original members being Robert Fripp, KC's founder, and lyricist Peter Sinfield. Fripp and Sinfield were solely in charge of composing for the album.

Jon Anderson of Yes makes an appearance on one of the tunes.

Their were innumerous problems with the "squad of jazz musicians" Fripp brought in to record the album.

However, what is remarkable about the album is the cover artwork, in my opinion, one of greatest album covers of all time. Check out the images on Google

http://www.thedorkreport.com/king-crimson-lizard/

From that article: "The album's immaculately beautiful cover painting by Gini Barris (19 at the time), painstakingly executed in the style of medieval manuscript illuminations."

From johnharveyblog, see below: "Gini conceived the artwork without ever having heard the music. She had only the lyrics by Peter Sinfield (who had commissioned the cover from her) to go on."

In the artwork are some friends of ours: In the letter "N": Jimi Hendrix, Ginger Baker, Dave Wade (Gini's future husband), and Rupert Bear in a plane flying above them. The letter "I": The Beatles, Yoko Ono coming out of a bottle, and the Yellow Submarine in the background.

Other images in the artwork are from Peter Sinfield's lyrics.

You can see the artwork at Google: 'Images for the cover artwork of king crimson lizard'

or here:

http://johnharveyblog.wordpress.com/201 ... -lizard-4/

The vinyl version of the album is framed and up there on my studio wall with two other albums from that era which have artsy covers: Cream's 'Disraeli Gears' and Jethro Tull's 'Stand Up'.

[Sprocket]

Excellent post, thanks..

I too appreciate "sleeve" and cover art, and seems to me back in the day much more effort were put into delivering music as a piece of art, as a package, as is evident from your posting.

But then, perhaps it appeals to me because I am a keen fan of Greg Lake's, and enjoy the music of King Crimson, ELP and such....the deep stuff you know.. Pink Floyd as well.

Jan

[Apex]

Hey Sprocket, thanks for the reply. Back in the early 70's I had great pleasure/privilege of actually playing/performing two great early Crimson tunes, '21st Century Schizoid Man' and 'Pictures of a City'
with my group back then. If you're familiar with those 2 tunes, you know how difficult they are to play. Our drummer was more than up to it, and was able to easily cut these tunes, without that,
forget it. Of course, on Schizoid Man I just improved a standard sounding rock/jazz solo, Fripp's solo there is pretty far out, I must say, but not exactly a crowd pleaser.

Peter Sinfield's super poetic lyrics were always a big draw for Crimson fans, I would imagine. He later on cut his own album, 'Stillusion', later on renamed 'Still', or maybe the other way around, whatever, a bunch of mellow somewhat jazzy tunes, with a pure country style tune in the middle of it all, all very well done, with Sinfield himself on vocals.

Flautist Ian MacDonald and drummer Michael Giles also cut an album together later on, I think it was just called MacDonald and Giles.