A wordsmith of progrock universe has left this earth

Peter Sinfield (left) and Robert Fripp in a recording studio for King Crimson in 1969. Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Pete Sinfield has died. The death should not go without passing comment. Sinfield was there at the start of prog-rock. Some may say this is good enough reason to not remark on his death. But the prog-pros outweigh the pro-cons.

Yes, there were moments, many long, long moments of tedium dressed in flowing capes of earnestness – as if some performers and creators had stumbled into a new world of perception lesser humans did not know exist. Boring? How dare anyone criticise this higher level of creation.

And then there was in its innovation, its mixing of musical forms, its destruction of what was regarded as a song into something new, a breathtaking force of sound before unknown. Pete Sinfield was in the lab when the grand experiment began. He was a co-founder of King Crimson.

Sinfield was a war child, born in 1943 in London. Out of the ashes of World War II, he moved into an alternative world of creativity.

Before Crimson. he was in the band Creation, aptly named, with Ian McDonald. In 1968, McDonald had joined the lawyerlike-named Giles, Giles and Fripp (Michael, Peter and Robert respectively). Peter left soon thereafter and Sinfield and Greg Lake joined.

Sinfield came up with the name King Crimson, suitably enigmatic. Sinfield wrote the lyrics on the Crimson’s first four albums “In the Court of the Crimson King”, “In the Wake of Poseidon”, “Lizard” and “Islands”, all in the years 1969 to 1971. He was also co-producer and the lighting man at their shows.

The band not so much stamped their pedigree in musical technique and the formulation of a new music on to the industry at the time as detonate a bomb under it. No more so than with the opening track of their first album, “21st Century Schizoid Man”. (“Earthbound” live version is even more menacing.) This was 1969, and the chart hits included “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies and “Build Me Up Buttercup” by The Foundations.

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Heavy doesn’t even come close. It was the apocalypse, amplified. Play it now at max volume. The roof will fall in.

As one commentator on YouTube of “21St Schizoid Man” said: “Imagine buying this album back in 1969, putting the record on the turntable and having this blast through your speakers for the first time.”

Indeed. Among the many fantastical, other-earthly lyrics that Sinfield presented to the band, and which others such as Yes and Genesis perfected, Schizoid Man veered violently to the other side of the street. It was fury unleashed.

Cat’s foot, iron claw,
Neurosurgeons scream for more,
At paranoia’s poison door
Twenty-first century schizoid man.

Death seed, blind man’s greed,
Poets’ starving children bleed,
Nothing he’s got he really needs
Twenty-first century schizoid man.

Sinfield’s time with Crimson did not last long. Fripp and he fell out, and he left after the Islands album. But the prog-rock circle was a world within a small region of England.

Sinfield produced Roxy Music’s debut, when Roxy were neither prog-rock nor pop. He also worked with Lake on Sinfield’s solo album “Still”, worked with Gary Brooker of Procol Harum, and wrote for one of the other monsters of prog-rock (or as others would latter unkindly call them, dinosaurs), Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

After moving to Ibiza for the 1970s, Sinfield returned to England and began writing lyrics for mainstream artists. Bucks Fizz anyone? Yes, he did. And Leo Sayer. He wrote the lyrics for a song called “Think Twice”, which became a hit virtually everywhere for Celine Dion.

He won two Ivor Novello Awards, and perhaps unknowingly, will be remembered every Christmas in England for his lyrics to the hardy annual, Lake’s “I Believe in Father Christmas”.

It’s a jolly, jaunty song, full of warmth and optimism. For the range of his talents, go back to the prog-rock universe of half a century ago, and “21st Century Schizoid Man”. Warn your speakers.