Bigger Strings: Maya Beiser-Epitaph

Maya Beiser: Epitaph
[purchase] 

I’m not sure where I first heard about Israel-born, avant-garde classical cellist Maya Beiser, but it might well have been from this piece by Cover Me founder Ray Padgett about her awesome cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir.” Beiser’s 2014 album Uncovered is a collection of ten rock songs completely reimagined by Beiser and arranger Evan Ziporyn, a fellow member of Bang on a Can All-Stars. The songs run the gamut from Muddy Waters to Janis Joplin, to Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Nirvana (which I wrote about here), and my favorite of them all, her cover of King Crimson’s elegiac “Epitaph,” from their debut album, In The Court of the Crimson King. 

“Epitaph” was written by Robert Fripp, Ian McDonald, Greg Lake, and Michael Giles with lyrics written by Peter Sinfield, and those lyrics, were sung beautifully by Lake, who explained that the song “is basically a song about looking with confusion upon a world gone mad.” It features heavy use of Mellotron along with woodwinds and dramatic tympani, giving it a symphonic feel. 

It was this complex, symphonic sound that attracted Beiser, whose classical training did not prevent her from consuming and appreciating popular music throughout her life. In an interview for Classical Voice, Beiser said:

I was very much entrenched in classical music, and none of my teachers knew anything about Genesis, King Crimson, Brian Eno. It was not part of my education. I started to listen to this music and it completely transformed me. Pink Floyd were totally revolutionary, creating a symphonic like piece. King Crimson’s ‘Epitaph’ is one of my favorite songs of all time, and it lends itself to cello because their thinking was symphonic — classical. 

She continued: 

Part of my motivation for doing this album is for people to see how this is great music, how the masters of our time are just as great as but different than Beethoven and Schubert. … All classical music performances are covers. 

Continuing this approach, Beiser recently released a version of David Bowie’s last album, Blackstar, re imagined as a cello concerto. 

To create her cover of “Epitaph,” Beiser overdubbed and processed her cello, and Ziporyn added just a hint of clarinet and bass clarinet. Beiser slows down the tempo a little, and if anything, her instrumental version is even sadder and statelier than the great original. 

As a brief aside, since this is a piece about the cello and King Crimson, about five years after the debut album, a mostly different lineup of King Crimson released Red, one of my favorite albums, and it includes a cellist (and acoustic bass player), who are uncredited, and whose identity appears to still be a mystery. 

One more aside--the punk record label Epitaph Records, home (at times) of bands such as Rancid, Bad Religion, Descendants, The Distillers and Social Distortion, was named after a lyric from this decidedly not punk song.

Red, Yellow or Orange: Red

King Crimson: Red
[purchase]

Trying not to overthink this, so I went with the first thing that came into my head when I heard what the new theme was. Red, the album, released in 1974, was King Crimson’s seventh studio album, and was supposed to be the last, until it wasn’t. It is probably the King Crimson album that I listen to the most, and I still think that it is great. For starters, at that point, the “official” band was a trio, all of whom were among the best in the business—Robert Fripp on guitar and mellotron, John Wetton on bass and vocals, and Bill Bruford on drums and percussion. They were augmented for certain songs by, among others, David Cross on violin (who had recently been kicked out as a "full" member), and Mel Collins and Ian McDonald (both of whom had been in prior versions of the band) on saxophones. Also, there’s a cellist, who is uncredited, and apparently is unknown to this day.

The song “Red” and the album are considered to be influential in progressive rock, but interestingly, they are different from what other prog bands were doing at the time—Yes, ELP and Genesis, for example, were more keyboard driven, with music that was filled with classical influences, while King Crimson’s sound on Red is harder, more metal even, although there are two more “ballady” songs on the record, including the stately “Starless,” which features atmospheric mellotron washes, and numerous jazzy passages. That’s why Red is cited as an influence by artists such as Tool, Primus, Kurt Cobain, Henry Rollins and Dream Theater.

The title track is an instrumental, in the vein of the earlier “Larks Tongues In Aspic, Part Two,” and it is “one of the more muscular pieces of Robert Fripp's, in particular the deployment of open strings and heavily attacked and syncopated bass and drums underlines this aspect.” That quote is from this post, which analyzes that song in truly granular detail.

Clearly, King Crimson’s complex and challenging music has been analyzed by music obsessives, including the band members (and management). So, you can read Fripp’s diary about how the song “Red” was pieced together. Here’s a typically dense Pitchfork analysis of the album. And here’s a piece by David Singleton, Fripp’s business and production partner, about the making of Red. Or, you can buy a 21-CD/1-DVD/2-Blu-Ray box set, The Road to Red, which features recordings of many of the concerts from the tour that preceded the recording of Red, so you can, if you are inclined, listen for improvisational sections that turned into parts of Red songs. I’m not that obsessive.

I’ve learned writing these posts is that sometimes you find something that says what you want better than you can, and when you do, just copy it. This is from a review of The Road to Red:

Red managed to encapsulate all the things that defined mid-'70s Crimson: ear-crunching instrumentals like the title track; improvisation-heavy excursions into the outer reaches of rock, jazz and beyond on "Providence" (recorded live on the penultimate night of Crimson's final North American tour, included in the current box); dynamic, mellotron-driven ballads that morphed into thundering solo opportunities for members past and present via a lengthy middle section that milked the hell out of just a few choice notes ("Starless"); and two songs ("Fallen Angel," "One More Red Nightmare") that suggested a shifting direction for Crimson, with even stronger song form than on [Starless and Bible Black] but delivered with the same—or, even, more—massive weight-bearing load of what was one of the loudest, most mind-blowingly powerful power trios in the history of rock music. 

Just to vary things up, though, the version of “Red” that I’ve embedded above is a live version recorded in Mexico in August of this year by the seven-piece version of King Crimson that features three drummers (!), Pat Mastellotto, Gavin Harrison and Jeremy Stacy (who also adds keyboards), along with Fripp on guitar, Tony Levin on bass and Chapman Stick, Mel Collins on flute and sax, and Jakko Jaksyzk on guitar and vocals (although not on this song).  You can download it here, for free!

Compare that to the original:


As I noted above, Red was supposed to be the last King Crimson album—and it is amazing that a band that was falling apart could create such a masterpiece--but a few years later, Fripp put together a band with Bruford, Levin and guitarist/singer Adrian Belew that eventually became a new version of King Crimson. The cover of their first album, Discipline, is red.

Same Name/Different Artist: Ian M(a)cDonald

King Crimson: The Court of the Crimson King
[purchase In The Court of the Crimson King]
Fairport Convention: Time Will Show The Wiser
[purchase Fairport Convention]
Quiet Sun: Rongwrong
[purchase Mainstream]

Surprisingly, there are a few Ian McDonalds or MacDonalds who are prominent in British music, although maybe it isn’t all that surprising, since I bet it is a pretty common name over there (and here, for that matter, according to Google). And there are some connections among them. So, you need to pay close attention here, or you might get lost.

Let’s start with multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald, born in 1946 in Osterly, England, best known for his woodwind playing. This McDonald participated in sessions in 1968 with Michael and Peter Giles, Robert Fripp and McDonald’s then-girlfriend, Judy Dyble (who had recently been replaced in Fairport Convention by Sandy Denny). After some personnel shifting, the nucleus of Fripp, Michael Giles and McDonald, along with Greg Lake, became King Crimson, releasing the classic In The Court of the Crimson King. He left the band after that record along with percussionist Michael Giles, and recorded an album as McDonald and Giles (although Giles also appeared on King Crimson’s second album as a session musician).

McDonald became a session musician playing on, among other songs, T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong,” before guesting on King Crimson’s great Red album, with plans to rejoin the band, until Fripp (temporarily) disbanded it. Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, he became a founding member of Foreigner (with one of the Mick Joneses), forcing me to mention that execrable band (Note—it is hard to type while holding your nose).

Thereafter, he was a member of the 21st Century Schizoid Band, essentially a Crimson cover band featuring mostly former (and future) members of King Crimson, has backed a number of other musicians, including former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett, former King Crimson singer/bassist John Wetton, Dyble, and others, and has guested with Asia.

Moving on to Ian Matthews MacDonald, also born in 1946 (9 days before the guy above), in the delightfully named Barton-upon Humber, England, although he later moved to the not delightfully named Scunthorpe. In 1967, this MacDonald was recruited to join Fairport Convention, and sang on their first two albums, the first of which included Judy Dyble. At some point, he changed his name to Ian Matthews, to avoid confusion with the King Crimson McDonald. When Fairport Convention began to move away from American folk/rock music and toward British folk, Ian found himself not invited to recording sessions, and quit/was fired before the release of Fairport’s great Unhalfbricking album.

Matthews then formed Matthews’ Southern Comfort, an essentially Americana album, initially featuring a number of members of Fairport and their circle—his second album spawned a hit cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock.” After that, he was in and out of various bands and released solo albums with very occasional commercial success, and changed the spelling of his first name to Iain.

British music critic Ian MacCormick changed his name to Ian MacDonald and is best known for a book, Revolution in the Head, a critical history of the Beatles. But this MacDonald was also a musician, providing lyrics to the band Quiet Sun, which featured his brother Bill MacCormick and future Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera. He sang backup on Quiet Sun’s excellent “reunion” album Mainstream. Maybe he is on this song. Sadly, he committed suicide in 2003 after suffering for years with depression.

There’s also an American actor named Ian MacDonald (born Ulva Pippy in 1914), possibly best known as villain Frank Miller in High Noon (although in 1949’s Come to the Stable, he played Mr. Matthews). I have no idea if his character’s first name was Ian, or Iain, for that matter.