"The Court of the Crimson King" is the fifth and final track from the British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 progressive rock

Progressive rock

Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...

 band King Crimson

King Crimson

King Crimson are a rock band founded in London, England in 1969. Often categorised as a foundational progressive rock group, the band have incorporated diverse influences and instrumentation during their history...

's debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King

In the Court of the Crimson King

In the Court of the Crimson King is the 1969 debut album by the British progressive rock group King Crimson. The album reached No. 5 on the British charts, and is certified gold in the United States....

. It was also released as a single. It reached #80 on the US charts, and is the band's only charting single in the United States.

Background

The track is dominated by a distinct riff performed on the Mellotron

Mellotron

The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. It superseded the Chamberlin Music Master, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard intended for music...

. The main part of the song is split up into 4 verses, divided by an instrumental section called "The Return of the Fire Witch". The song climaxes at 7 minutes, but continues with a little reprise (called "The Dance of the Puppets"), before ending on an abrupt and free time scale.

Covers

• Doc Severinsen
  Doc Severinsen
  Carl Hilding "Doc" Severinsen is an American pop and jazz trumpeter. He is best known for leading the NBC Orchestra on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.-Early life:...
  
   covered the song for his 1970 album Doc Severinsen's Closet.
• It has been covered by British heavy metal
  Heavy metal music
  Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
  
   band Saxon
  Saxon (band)
  Saxon are an English heavy metal band, formed in 1976 in Barnsley, Yorkshire. As front-runners of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, they had 8 UK Top 40 albums in the 1980s including 4 UK Top 10 albums. Saxon also had numerous singles in the Top 20 singles chart...
  
   on their 2001 album Killing Ground
  Killing Ground
  Killing Ground is the fifteenth full-length studio album by heavy metal band Saxon released in 2001 .Killing Ground was also released as a special Digi-pack edition with a bonus disc featuring 8 classics re-recorded tracks which would later appear in Heavy Metal Thunder."The Court of the Crimson...
  
  .
• The song has been covered by Asia
  Asia (band)
  Asia are an English rock group formed in 1981. The band was labelled a supergroup as it included former members of several veteran progressive rock bands, namely John Wetton , Geoff Downes , Steve Howe and Carl Palmer Asia are an English rock group formed in 1981. The band was labelled a...
  
   on their 2006 reunion tour.
• The song was covered by King Crimson members Ian McDonald
  Ian McDonald (musician)
  Ian McDonald is an English multi-instrumental musician, best known as a founding member of progressive rock group King Crimson, formed in 1969, and of the hard rock band Foreigner in 1976. He is well-known as a rock session musician, predominantly as a saxophonist...
  
   and John Wetton
  John Wetton
  John Kenneth Wetton is an English bassist, guitarist, keyboardist, singer and songwriter. He was born in Willington, Derbyshire, and grew up in Bournemouth. He has been a professional musician since the late 1960s...
  
   with Steve Hackett
  Steve Hackett
  Stephen Richard Hackett is a British singer-songwriter and guitarist. He gained prominence as a member of the British progressive rock group Genesis, which he joined in 1970 and left in 1977 to pursue a solo career...
  
   on Hackett's Tokyo Tapes
  The Tokyo Tapes
  The Tokyo Tapes is a live Steve Hackett album featuring a progressive rock supergroup lineup of John Wetton from King Crimson, UK and Asia; Chester Thompson from Weather Report, Frank Zappa and Genesis live; Ian McDonald, also from King Crimson, and Foreigner; and rounded out by keyboards man...
  
  and by Greg Lake
  Greg Lake
  Gregory Stuart "Greg" Lake is an English musician, songwriter and producer, best known as a vocalist and bassist of King Crimson, and the bassist, guitarist, vocalist, and lyricist of Emerson, Lake & Palmer.-1960s: King Crimson:...
  
   featuring Gary Moore
  Gary Moore
  Robert William Gary Moore , better known simply as Gary Moore, was a Northern Irish musician from Belfast, best recognised as a blues rock guitarist and singer....
  
   on Lake's Live at Hammersmith Odeon 1981 live album released by King Biscuit Records in 1996.
• The song was covered live by Howard Stern
  Howard Stern
  Howard Allan Stern is an American radio personality, television host, author, and actor best known for his radio show, which was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2005. He gained wide recognition in the 1990s where he was labeled a "shock jock" for his outspoken and sometimes controversial style...
  
  's in-studio band The Losers
  The Losers (Howard Stern)
  The Losers were a band made up of staff members of The Howard Stern Show. The group was formed in 1997 when the show staff started playing with instruments that Green Day had brought to the studio prior to their own performance. The band was named after their original drummer Scott the Engineer,...
  
   used the song to win a contest in a Battle of the Bands contest against Tina Yothers
  Tina Yothers
  Kristina Louise "Tina" Yothers is an American actress and singer. Beginning a career as a child actor at the age of 8, she is perhaps best known for her role as Jennifer Keaton on the hit NBC series Family Ties, as well as for her roles in numerous television films throughout the 1980s and early...
  
   and her band Jaded, who performed one of their original songs.
• The song was featured in the set list on the 2001 tour of the Seventh Edition of Ringo Starr
  Ringo Starr
  Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...
  
  's All-Starr Band.

Cultural references

The track was used in the 2006 dystopian film Children of Men

Children of Men

Children of Men is a 2006 science fiction film loosely adapted from P. D. James's 1992 novel The Children of Men, directed by Alfonso Cuarón. In 2027, two decades of human infertility have left society on the brink of collapse. Illegal immigrants seek sanctuary in England, where the last...

, appearing on its soundtrack. It is also heard briefly in the first episode of the Red Riding

Red Riding

Red Riding is a television adaptation of English author David Peace's Red Riding Quartet. Published between 1999 and 2002, the quartet comprises the novels Nineteen Seventy-Four , Nineteen Seventy-Seven , Nineteen Eighty and Nineteen Eighty-Three...

trilogy. The instrumental part of the song can be heard in the French movie Cinéman.

External links

• "The Court of the Crimson King" lyrics