In 2019 Saxon vocalist Biff Byford defined that if he’d had his approach, the NWOBHM giants may have been a prog band, and the way the music of King Crimson blew him away – and nonetheless performs a task in his work at the moment.
“I used to be about 18 when In The Courtroom Of The Crimson King got here out. I believe me and [Saxon guitarist] Paul Quinn had been looking by the vinyl at our native file store after we discovered the duvet with the face on. Earlier than that I used to be extra into pop rock, like The Kinks.
It actually caught me at a time when every little thing was extra bluesy. It was actually inspirational, particularly twenty first Century Schizoid Man; my pals who had been all musicians had been like, ‘Whoah, that riff!’ That and Black Sabbath had been the forerunners of heavy, darkish riffs, and lengthy tracks with a lot of totally different time signatures in them.
I used to be enjoying bass on the time and we tried to be taught the time signatures however failed miserably. It’s fairly exhausting stuff! I did have Larks’ Tongues In Aspic as properly, however Crimson King was the one which blasted into my psyche. We nonetheless play it in soundcheck to at the present time.
If me and Paul had bought signed as our early band Coast, we may have been a prog band. The first Saxon album had fairly a proggy really feel to it – however our producer chopped down numerous the songs to 3 or 4 minutes, whereas the unique ones had been for much longer and stretched out into totally different signatures.
We did find yourself protecting In The Courtroom Of The King Crimson on [2001 album] Killing Floor. Lots of people have achieved twenty first Century Schizoid Man – I wished to do one thing totally different, and it got here out actually good.
Robert Fripp has written some nice music. If you consider King Crimson, he comes straight to thoughts. He’s nonetheless on the market and nonetheless doing it; he’s one of many nice survivors, like we’re.
Our different guitarist Doug Scarratt is an enormous Fripp fan, too, and we all know [Fripp’s wife] Toyah from our first period with [drummer] Nigel Glockler. I’m an enormous fan of Sure and Genesis as properly. Proper now, I’m doing my solo album with Fredrik Åkesson from Opeth. We’ve written a few prog tracks for it too; I’m nonetheless into that music.”
