18.08
Terrible news: we're playing London on 3rd. July.
The Turku festival & London have both been added. An e-mail from Richard this morning suggested we could play them both as a package, but not the remaining four provincial UK dates which would cost us around £25,000. What was the call? Urgent! Urgent!
My reply: the other three of the Team are willing / keen to play London, our manager is recommending we do it, and I resent having to do this. So, unable to find any part of me which says yes, the best I could do was refrain from saying no. At that point, the call was Richard's. When I reported this to the guys Pat said, if I was so strongly against it we shouldn't do it. I suggested Pat should e-mail Richard and tell him. Pat said he would. Now, at the end of today's rehearsals, I see Turku & London posted as confirmed. So, the single UK date is now on.
This is the first time I am able to recall a decision taken in the knowledge that one of the group is strongly against any particular undertaking. King Crimson is not a democracy, neither is it anti-democratic. It is not an autocracy, anarchism, communitarian assembly, nor quite any other readily available political model. Conventionally, we don't vote on issues: if someone is very much against an idea, it tends to get dropped. Every member has the power of veto: this is powerful, and is to be respected. It is also double-edged: a veto which the group does not accept is tantamount to a resignation from the group.
There is a business rationale for this tour in playing London, linked with the Turku festival. Richard is our business manager and has the responsibility for keeping the band solvent. Presented with the same choice, and having the same responsibility, I would also, very likely, have made the same choice.
There is another business rationale to appearing in London: it is "promoting the album". I know this, because I have been told that this is so. But if I believed that our appearance in London was merely this, a promotional act, music has just died. My working maxim is that the act of music is primarily a musical act. Anything else is secondary - at a vast distance.
The next step, from a "promotional" point of view, is to encourage all manner of press, many of them hostile, to attend the show for nothing & then review it in the UK national press. Those "promoting" the event are not disturbed by this: they are, after all, not the target for resentment listening. Their work is not rubbished or sullied by those presented with an opportunity to vent negativity on an easy option: King Crimson is, by definition, a prog rock group! Ergo, they suck! The view that all press, even bad press, is good press is, in my view, cowardly: it's a policy effected by those who will never themselves be the focus of intentional nastiness.
I hope the Virgin press department allows this performance to be a performance. Please don't promote this show, guys! A significant proportion of London audiences come out to have a bad time; there will be sufficient guests with their own resentments & hostilities; and insufficient space for those who would actually like to hear the music. So, please, let it be.
The backstage area at Crimson appearances in London (eg Royal Albert Hall 1995 & Shepherds Bush 1996) are thriving spaces of vampirical endeavour. Several soul-suckers came long distances to feed on me, and one even wrote an unpleasant letter afterwards in response to my success in avoiding him. He had travelled from France specifically to speak to me. I wonder, did it occur to him that my presence in the RAH was for other matters, of greater concern than his demand for attention? This is rhetorical: the answer is no. (Readers may feel this is an exaggeration: regrettably, in this and many other cases, it is not).
The shows in Finland & London are posted, so the next step is for DGM & Opium Arts to receive an ongoing stream of calls & messages demanding free tickets. People have rights, after all. Old friends whose names I don't recall, but met once in a place I don't recall either, rightly expect that I will reciprocate their abiding interest in the backstage bar by putting their name on the door - with 3 guests, please. A musician I almost worked with - he was in the rehearsal room next door at Nomis in 1981 when I walked by - would like to come as well. Then there's the photographer who took Bartley Butsford's photo picture at the Rainbow in 1973 - don't I remember? - he had the Pink Floyd t-shirt. Then there is the stream of professional connections, almost none of which have any interest in Crimson musically or personally, which has also to be honoured - they also have rights, of course: professional rights.
My life is easier now than it was up until 1995: I took a decision. My aim in walking onstage is to give music my best shot. Anything which fails to support this aim is irrelevant; anything which distracts from this aim is better avoided; anything which detracts from this aim will be avoided. May I be allowed my space? Genuine friends understand this; my other "friends" will inform me that I should, in future, avoid their company.
Billy B. called Adrian today to check in.
"Music is a quality, organised in sound and in time."
