King Crimson: Elephant Talk (Live At The Warfield Theatre, San Francisco 1995)

I love Bill Bruford’s YouTube channel. He recently shared a video that brought me back to my high school days – and a VHS tape of King Crimson’s 1984 performance in Tokyo. “Elephant Talk” was one of the highlights for me, with Tony Levin performing masterfully on the Stick.

This clip was recorded in 1995, and Bruford offers up the story behind it:

“Boy, this was a blast to play. I love words anyway, and Adrian’s lexicon of alliterations – clichés , commentary, controversy, chatter, chit-chat, etc – always made me smile. I’m also all for action rather than words, so the reminder that ‘It’s all talk, only talk’, at the beginning an end of every letter, resonated strongly with me. Many people talk about doing; fewer people actually do.

“It was also one of the quickest songs to come together in the origination stages, and that’s always a good omen. The guitar and stick parts, and the lyrical idea, seemed to appear from nowhere – really fast. I may have missed some long gestation in the back of Belew’s head, but I don’t think so. And we all knew very quickly it would work well on stage. All it needed was a backbeat from the drummer, but not on hi-hat or cymbals , of course. This was a model of collective collaboration. There was nothing to say about what any individual was doing. All the bits fitted together perfectly, like a jigsaw.

“This version is performed by six men, (five of whom are invisible), but nothing significant is added to the Tokyo version of 1984, also on this channel, performed by four men. The sound is a bit thicker with six, but the song could be played by one man and a kazoo and it would still work. It’s sort of indestructible.”