King Crimson, the band behind strange hits “21st Century Schizoid Man” and “In the Court of the Crimson King,” disbanded in 1974. In 1981, members Robert Fripp and Bill Bruford recruited new bandmates in Adrian Belew and Tony Levin. The new lineup went on to create a different percussive and funkier sound, and released the albums Discipline, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair.
Now four decades later, this era of King Crimson is being celebrated in a live concert setting known as the BEAT tour.
Belew and Levin, with Fripp’s blessing, are hitting the road to honor the chaotic yet captivating sounds of Discipline, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair. The duo is joined by guitar virtuoso Steve Vai and drumming powerhouse Danny Carey (Tool). You can catch BEAT at the Grand Sierra Resort on Thursday, Nov. 21.
During a recent Zoom chat with Tony Levin, he explained how the BEAT tour celebrates King Crimson while keeping things fresh.
“When you’ve got great players, it’s going to be really good, but I didn’t know how far we would veer from the original versions of the King Crimson music,” Levin said. “Steve Vai and Danny Carey are new to it—except they way did their homework. They seriously did their homework, so they’re up and running, and it’s turning out that we veer away from the original arrangements quite a bit. We’re playing the same pieces, and they’re certainly recognizable, but fortunately, as far as I’m concerned, Steve Vai is still Steve Vai, even though he’s playing and covering Robert Fripp’s guitar parts very well. Danny Carey was a fan of Bill Bruford when Danny was young, so he’s keeping to it somewhat, but he’s got a very unique style of playing the drums, as evidenced by anybody who’s heard Tool. … I’m extra-happy, because I’m happy when the music kind of has a life on the road, and it keeps growing, and it doesn’t just stay the same every night.”
Discipline, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair were quite different from the operatic, proggy and conceptual style of King Crimson’s earlier work. Levin recalled how audiences reacted to the band’s new sound.
“We were youngish, and we were making a new kind of music, a new kind of rock that really was unlike anything we had heard,” Levin said. “King Crimson fans are a unique breed … but a good percent of the fans wanted to hear the older King Crimson music, which we were not playing. We weren’t playing anything like that, so they were less than happy with the band. They weren’t miserable, but they gradually opened their musical minds up to the new style of music. Now, of course, anybody who’s coming who was a fan of the music in the ’80s knows what to expect, and like me, they’re looking forward to seeing what these guys are going to do with these pieces. In preparation for this tour, I listened to quite a few live performances from the ’80s, and we did veer off quite a bit from the original records.”
Forty years removed from writing and performing the challenging bass work left Levin feeling “daunted” when revisiting these albums.
“Some of it, I was like, ‘Oh, how did I do that?’” he said. “I really had played these counter rhythms and cross-time signatures so much that at some point, they just become automatic in your fingers, and you can then do a third thing, which in my case would be singing background vocals with Adrian Belew, where he’s singing a whole third tempo. I practice quite a bit, but I cannot quite get back to where I was in the ’80s for that. So, I minimize, and I’ll be two guys at once, but not three.”
While popular, King Crimson often falls into the “your favorite band’s favorite band” category, as their pioneering prog paved the way for bands like Nirvana, Tool, Rush and Primus. Levin said he didn’t expect there to be such a demand for a revisitation of some of the band’s less-popular work.
“People are a lot more excited about it than I thought they were,” said Levin. “We booked an ambitious tour of 42 shows, and they sold so well that they added 23 more shows. I was not the only one who didn’t expect the passionate turnout of ticket-buyers from King Crimson fans. Because I’ve been playing rock music for a long time, I maybe know better than to really think I know what’s going to happen, or to have expectations about the tour. … Of course, it’s very gratifying to have very good reception and people giving you standing ovations and a lot of good word on the web about the concerts. That’s not the most important thing, but of course, that’s gratifying, and way better than the opposite, of people having trouble dealing with the music you’re playing. Admittedly, some of this music is very challenging, but these audiences seem to be coming prepared for that.”
Even though he has played with Peter Gabriel, John Lennon and many others, Levin said nostalgia plays a very small role in his career.
“I’ve been around a long time, and there are a lot that I have done, but I’m not really the kind of guy who goes back and listens to things I’ve done, not things I did last year or not things I did last century,” Levin said. “… My musical life consists almost completely of doing my homework for new music, stuff that’s coming up, or stuff that I’m working on right now, or writing maybe an album for next year. Very, very little of it is involved with listening to what I’ve done before, and sadly, very little of it is involved with just listening to music for fun. I don’t have the musical space in my brain as much as I used to for that. … When I’m going to play a piece, or a whole concert of pieces that I’ve done before, of course, I listen to the old parts, and I really remember them. I don’t have to memorize them. I kind of know them; they’re in there. My musical brain jumps to, ‘Where am I going to go with this part? How is it going to change?’ I have no desire to exactly reproduce what I did before, but mind you, I will reproduce it if it’s the right thing musically, and if I can’t come up with something better. … If it’s good music, then it deserves to have a life of continuing to grow on the road, as you do it for people, and so it doesn’t need to stay exactly the same.”
The BEAT tour’s setlist only manages to miss a few of the songs from the trio of albums.
“We’re doing a great deal more than I thought we would,” Levin said. “We picked most of it to rehearse, thinking that we would either swap things out or just only do some of it, and it turned out we’re allowed to do a longer show than we first expected, so we can do all of what we rehearsed. Then, we lengthened our rehearsal time from two weeks to three weeks, which is unusual … so we got it pretty solid before we headed out. I think we’re doing a very good representation of those three albums—not every single song that’s on them, but a lot of them—and we’re doing all the ones that have a road life that can be valid when you play them live.”
BEAT will perform at 8 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 21, at the Grand Sierra Resort, 2500 E. Second St., in Reno. Tickets start at $39.50. For tickets and more information, visit www.grandsierraresort.com.