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Audio By Carbonatix
The Venn diagram for iconic rock bands Foreigner and King Crimson do not have a lot of overlap. It’s safe to say that most devoted fans of one do not own any records by the other, and the descriptor “rock band primarily active in the 1970s” is about as far as you’ll get when it comes to their similarities – except for one extraordinarily key element of both groups: multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald.
McDonald, who died Feb. 9 at the age of 75 after a battle with cancer, was the unsung hero of two of the most successful yet stylistically and philosophically disparate rock bands of all-time. Foreigner is the essence of classic rock as a concept: seemingly endless hits beloved by worldwide audiences of all ages, a dependably non-changing sound reliant mainly on guitars and the occasional synthesizer, hooks in a state of near-overabundance, an ubiquity on classic rock radio.
King Crimson is the antithesis of that: not a single song ever cracking the top 40 of any chart anywhere on Earth, with a sense of experimentation that led to the band not making two records with the same sound – or lineup, until almost a decade into their career, a sound that is equal parts terrifying and erotic, with a fanbase primarily comprising college professors and music store managers. Somehow Ian McDonald was not only a member of both of these bands, but essential to their respective successes.
King Crimson was formed in 1968 when mad genius guitarist Robert Fripp and machine gun-like drummer Michael Giles left behind their former group in pursuit of less whimsical sounds, recruiting McDonald and bassist/vocalist Greg Lake to aid them on their journey along with lyricist/roadie/lighting engineer Peter Sinfield. The quintet went on to record only one album together, 1969’s In the Court of the Crimson King, an album that is now widely considered the impetus of “progressive rock” and one of the greatest albums of all time.
A glance at the liner notes for In the Court reveals that McDonald had the lion’s share of instrumental duties: “reeds, woodwind, vibes, keyboards, mellotron, vocals.” He is the sole instrumental composer on the album’s title track and “I Talk to the Wind” (Sinfield’s compositional contributions were purely lyrical), along with co-composing the mighty riff to “21st Century Schizoid Man” along with Lake. Considering that the first thing you hear on the record is the atomic saxophone blast of that riff, it’s safe to say that the band’s greeting belongs to McDonald. Funny enough, 41 years later, Kanye West would go on to sample Lake’s distorted chorus and McDonald’s Earth-rattling Saxophone from “Schizoid Man” as the hook for “Power,” a song that would become one of West’s most influential and defining songs.
Throughout the rest of the record, the orchestral sounds, particularly on “Epitaph,” “Moonchild,” and the title track are a dense weaving of mellotron, reeds, and woodwinds, all dubbed together by McDonald.
While Robert Fripp was (and still is) the clear-cut artistic leader of King Crimson, determining with great diligence (and occasional force) how the band operates on nearly every level, McDonald’s compositional and instrumental contributions are debatably the most obvious and notable elements of the “progressive” side of In the Court of the Crimson King. For the 100,000+ fans in attendance for King Crimson’s debut opening for The Rolling Stones’ legendary free concert at Hyde Park, hearing the free-jazz madness take the form of rock ‘n’ roll via McDonald’s saxophone was nothing less than game-changing.
According to the band’s official biographer Sid Smith as recounted in his book In The Court of King Crimson, McDonald and Giles became weary of Fripp’s ever-deepening pursuit of darker and more challenging sounds. When Fripp offered to resign from King Crimson as a result, McDonald and Giles declared that King Crimson was “more (him) than them” and they resigned instead.
The duo made one record together, McDonald and Giles, which contained King Crimson’s aesthetic sound, but none of the band’s glorious madness. That was something that Fripp retained and pursued with relentless enthusiasm as he went on to make 12 more records that kept with the King Crimson name and ethos. Imagine if King Crimson had debuted with one of their much weirder McDonald-less albums, such as Larks’ Tongues in Aspic? Even the most stoned of hippies at Hyde Park would have ran for the hills. There’s a reason the sole King Crimson record featuring McDonald is the band’s most celebrated work – he can be merited for its accessibility.
After he and Giles went their separate ways, McDonald served as a session musician on numerous recordings, including Herbie Mann’s London Underground and T. Rex’s Electric Warrior (where McDonald held down the saxophone’s low end on “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” before finally finding a kindred musical spirit in former Spooky Tooth guitarist Mick Jones, who was putting together a new band that eventually found a lead singer in Lou Gramm. The pieces fit, and Foreigner was born.
Boston may have beat Foreigner to the punch by a year in introducing the lighter-waving “How’s-everybody-feeling-tonight” every-song-sounds-the-same quasi-corporate cheese-rock that would come to define rock music’s identity in the 1980s, but Foreigner followed suit with a touch more class.
The band’s multinational lineup balanced Gramm’s American fist-pumping belting with a dose of English restraint. McDonald’s ability to provide tasteful dashes of saxophone, synthesizer, supplementary guitar, and production assistance prevented Foreigner from slouching into monochromatic schlock, and instead elevated them into colorful, multiplatinum schlock. Likewise, McDonald’s ability to see the light in straightforward musical simplicity provided a much-needed antidote to Fripp’s acidic experimentation back in King Crimson.
McDonald’s only writing credit on Foreigner’s smash self-titled album comes on “Long Long Way from Home,” and if there’s anything you remember about the song outside of its fairly conventional rock ‘n’ roll body, it’s the teal synthesizer sweep that colors the song’s opening riff and that glorious saxophone solo – both courtesy of Ian McDonald.
McDonald’s finest individual achievement may be something he never actually received credit for: the iconic synth riff to Foreigner’s “Waiting For a Girl Like You.” McDonald supposedly wrote the riff immediately prior to his departure from the band, and as a result it was performed on the record by then-up-and-coming keyboardist Thomas Dolby. Remove that synth riff from the song, and you have a by-the-numbers power ballad with an above average vocal performance. McDonald’s riff encapsulates the sensual mystery of the song’s romance more than any other element.
Would King Crimson have even gotten off the ground without Ian McDonald’s key contributions? Would the progressive rock movement that yielded bands such as Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes or Rush have even happened if not for the twisted saxophones and swirling orchestral sounds that McDonald wrung out onto vinyl in 1969? Would Foreigner have become the massive success they went on to be without McDonald’s gilded touch preventing them from becoming another square cult-rock act a la Moxy or Starz? What song would Christina Ricci have tap-danced to in Buffalo’66 if “Moonchild” had never been recorded? Would Kanye West have been able to create his masterpiece My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy without the gargantuan saxophone riff of “21st Century Schizoid Man?” It’s ultimately pointless to speculate on what might NOT have been, but it’s eternally comforting to know that Ian McDonald’s contributions to modern music are safely documented in the record shelves of music lovers everywhere and currently playing on a classic rock station rear you. Even if you don’t know it. That is Ian McDonald’s epitaph.
