King Crimson - Starless

STARLESS

Sundown dazzling day
Gold through my eyes
But my eyes turned within only see
Starless and bible black

Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness for me
Starless and bible black

Ice blue silver sky
Fades into grey
To a grey hope that all yearns to be
Starless and bible black

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Robert Fripp: Guitar and Mellotron
John Wetton: Bass and Voice
William Bruford: Percussives

With thanks to:
David Cross: Violin
Mel Collins: Soprano Saxophone
Ian McDonald: Alto Saxophone
Robin Miller: Oboe
Marc Charig: Cornet

George Chkiantz: Engineer
Rod Thear: Assistant Engineer

Equipment by: Chris, Tex, Harvey and Peter Walmsley
Cover by: John Kosh
Photography: Gered Mankowitz
Produced by King Crimson at Olympic Sound Studios, London, England, July and August 1974

#KingCrimson
#RobertFripp
#Red

[etherealnico]

for real this could be the best song in the history of music

[SimMaster]

You know the night is over when you're listening to Starless

[InvisibleMan]

One of the best tracks in the history of music.

[michaloliwer]

My life would be starless without this song

[juankgonzalez]

Just checking in to see if it's still one of the best songs ever.

Yup. Still is

[zsatsfm]

One of the best finales in rock, when Wetton's crunching bass joins the mellotron at 11:24, it can't help but send shivers down the spine of any mortal.

[johnbeekman]

11:38 Wetton's massive bass sound against those Mellotron chords here always kills me.

[AlejandroDoce]

Recently started getting more and more interested in King Crimson's discography, and I think I've found one of my favorite bands of all time.

[glizzymcguire]

favorite part: the ending bit when the saxophone brings the main theme back and the drums smack back in for the hard rock finale. as if theyre announcing this is final

[AncroAnnaki]

It's that point at 11:18 where the song goes from fantastic to one of the best songs ever made, literally perfection.

[criminal]

11:37 is pure eargasm, perfection even

[carlosenriquetrejo]

I'm leaving this comment here and when someone likes it, I will listen to this masterpiece again and again.

[lambda]

Recently had an overnight flight. I was listening to this album and looking out the illuminator. The red lights flickered in tempo, and the sky was starless and bible black, just like the title. One of the most exciting experiences of my life.

[tenzinsmith]

My favorite song, probably. There is nothing as hauntingly beautiful and intense as this for me.

I see it as an aural representation of King Crimson tearing apart their classic sound after giving one final performance- and they just happen to make it their best ever.

Vocals and mellotron to rival Epitaph, Fripp’s signature guitar, Bruford’s masterful percussion, and a crescendo that beats out even The Talking Drum for me.

The definition of the word “masterpiece”. This is where Crimson firmly cemented their roles as musical legends.

[thatmckenzie]

My dad hated this song. He thought it was prententious bullshit. He never understood why I loved this stuff, even though he started it all by having a freaking big vinyl copy of Emerson, Lake, & Palmer's Tarkus on the shelf. I think he must've gotten it accidentally from Columbia House or something.

Song starts pretty normally. About the time a normal radio tune would end, it starts doing... something else. There're only a few sparse sounds, but they're layered, all in different times, playing different lines. Tension builds. All the different lines keep coming in and out of synch because they're all built from each other, each having different pieces nipped away. No. They aren't built from each other by subtracting one thing or another like a synth would do to generate a tone. They're ALL built around an intangibile, ineffable Platonic ideal out there in the unexperienced universe and each of the smaller pieces we're feeling is only a limited, mortal glimpse of the REAL thing. We're guessing at what the outside world is like by staring at shadows cast on the walls.

Tension builds. Moments of cacophony. Seems like random noise, but your ear keeps catching *something* every so often, like that little chirp of happiness inside your brain when you were younger, scanning the AM band, and a voice pops in out of nowhere, from the static, and fades back into the noise before you can stop the dial.

Then, after seven minutes of building uncertainty, we get sinister, nameless terror. The metal soundtrack to Pandemonium.

And at eight and a half minutes we sublimate all that stygian horror into this absolutely sexual jazz groove that just feels DIRTY, but the GOOD kind of dirty, you know?

And that groove calls back to the original, normal-radio-music theme, only changed in a way that makes it poke fun at you for having enjoyed that vapid, commercial shit...

And then, at ten minutes, the song just divebombs off a cliff and becomes something that the very best musicians in the world, playing at the very tops of their games, can only keep up with for a few moments before they have to fall away. And we're left back where we started, only we're not the same person that began the journey. We've Bilbo Bagginsed that shit and we are forced to realize that we can never come home again.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.

It isn't pretentious because there's no pretense. It's a sermon. A philosophy course. An advanced degree in get-the-fuck-over-yourself.

That's probably why dad hated it.

Or maybe he just smoked so much he couldn't pay attention for that long.

Who knows.

I miss him.

[kylejohnson]

This is not a song, it's an experience

[AP-sdfl]

Starless was the real epitaph of King Crimson.

[sankalchi]

The last part of the song moves my mind even harder knowing that this song was originally planned to be Crimson's last song ever.

[matthewfinger]

The intro was written by John Wetton and originally meant to be the title track for Starless and Bible Black, but Fripp and Bruford didn't like it so they replaced it with a different piece.
Imagine if they scrapped it entirely instead of bringing it back for this album.

[josedealbuquerquejr.]

RIP John Wetton 🙏🏻 He wrote the fantastic melody of this music