This picture is courtesy of Peter Giles and Robert Fripp. Well they both said they didn’t mind me using it.
Somehow, somewhere I met up with Ian McDonald (not Iain Matthews) who was, at the time, at the Army Music School, but in the process of buying himself out. He played saxophone, flute and guitar and just about a million other things. We sang a few songs together and were a couple for a while. We wanted to play with more people so we advertised for musicians. Peter Giles answered us and we met up with Peter, his brother Mike and their friend, Robert Fripp. They had just released an album called ‘The Cheerful Insanity of Giles Giles and Fripp’ and very splendid it was too, but I don’t think the world was quite ready for them. Ian and I spent some time at their flat in Brondesbury Park, Kilburn and tried out a lot of songs together. We recorded a lot of them on Peter’s Revox, I guess so that we could hear them back. Robert made me really stretch my voice to sing what had been worked out, and, let me tell you, the improvised vocal booth that I think was carpet underfelt draped over a frame, was the hottest, itchiest place ever. These tracks have since been released as ‘The Brondesbury Tapes’; some on the vinyl album ‘Metaphormosis’; and one on ‘The Young Person’s Guide to King Crimson’. For that was what became of Giles, Giles, Fripp, McDonald and Dyble when Dyble left and Pete Sinfield joined them.