In terms of pop music, musicians who can claim to be at the origin of a style without the slightest reservation being able to be expressed (“yes but no, before there had been…”) are rare. It turns out that Ian McDonald, experts in wind instruments (saxophone, flutes, oboe, clarinet…) but also keyboardist emeritus, who died on Wednesday at the age of 75, was one of them: the saxophone of 21st Century Schizoid Man opening In the Court of Crimson King of 1969, kilometer zero of progressive rock descended in a crash of “politicians’ funeral pyres” and D’‘Innocents raped with napalm’it was him.
Everything explodes at once: the harmonic and rhythmic languages as well as the temporal shackles of pop, in a way of headlong rush that is both allusive and dark, carried by an irrational sonic violence, which we guess does not is not the way but the goal. If the architect of the King Crimson sound is Robert Fripp, McDonald brings a free jazz component then foreign to rock. Aymeric Leroy emphasizes in his reference work on progressive rock (1) his “dizzying instrumental multiplication, in turn meticulous orchestrator (Mellotron pads of course but also expert superimpositions of flutes and clarinets) and prolific soloist, both on the quasi-free alto sax and on the twirling transverse flute”. The group thus owed him its sound complexity, a complexity which was precisely the launching pad borrowed by all the first English prog, from Van Der Graaf Generator to Genesis via Yes or the groups of keyboardist Keith Emerson.
“The whole middle section is mine”
Born in Middlesex, in the south-east of England, McDonald spent five years in the army where he officiated in the marching band before integrating Giles, Giles & Fripp, the proto-King Crimson, in the luggage of his little girl. friend of the moment, ex-Fairport Convention singer Judy Dyble. She leaves but he stays, all the more easily since a wealthy uncle lends her enough to acquire the indispensable Mellotron, which will become THE sound signature of the progressive style, allowing the harmonics to fall in bursts on the melodies of the group.
It’s McDonald’s that brings the central part of 21st Century Schizoid Man : “When I was in the army, I was into that Stan Kenton stuff [un orchestre où tous les musiciens de jazz estampillés Côte Ouest firent leurs armes, ndlr] and I listened to the Big Bands, he will confide in 2019 to the magazine RollingStone. I wrote this piece called Three Score and Four, and we put it in Schizoid Man then. The whole middle section is mine.” A free cavalcade, where the musicians improvise all but each in turn, which gives the paradoxical impression of stability and freedom which did a lot for the impact of the group.
McDonald’s luck passes. But he does not seize it: he leaves King Crimson “without telling anyone” in the wake of In the Court of… We will quickly understand that the darkness of the Purple King was not his own: he then teamed up with Michael Giles, ex of King Crimson like him, for the bucolic McDonald & Giles (1970), one of the sumptuous nooks cherished by successive generations of prog enthusiasts. Lacking an artistic personality and a leadership worthy of his qualities as a soloist or arranger, McDonald then blends into the landscape, collaborating for example with T-Rex on Electric Warrior and becoming a sought-following session musician.
Foreigner debut
Fripp used it as such in the seventh and last King Crimson of the 70s, recorded at the Olympic Sound Studio in London in August 1974, Red. Thus, McDonald was offered the Himalayan summit of the group, a testament like an open wound forever: the Starless finale, a suite in three parts where the delicacy of his phrasing manages to blend – no small feat – into the apocalyptic excess of the piece. With Fripp taking a step back, the touring plans fell through.
McDonald then founded Foreigner with an ex-Spooky Tooth, a group he left before it met with success in an FM style. In the 2000s, the reissues of King Crimson will bring him back to life: an opportunity for him to bear witness to the creative effervescence and faith in music that had guided his early years. In 1997, in a box, Fripp paid homage to his “musicality” and to his “exceptional sense of short and expressive melodic lines, as well as his ability to express himself through many instruments”.
(1) Progressive Rock, Aymeric Leroy, 2014, The Word and the Rest.
