In 2019 Saxon vocalist Biff Byford explained that if he’d had his way, the NWOBHM giants could have been a prog band, and how the music of King Crimson blew him away – and still plays a role in his work today.
“I was about 18 when In The Court Of The Crimson King came out. I think me and [Saxon guitarist] Paul Quinn were browsing through the vinyl at our local record shop when we found the cover with the face on. Before that I was more into pop rock, like The Kinks.
It really caught me at a time when everything was more bluesy. It was really inspirational, especially 21st Century Schizoid Man; my friends who were all musicians were like, ‘Whoah, that riff!’ That and Black Sabbath were the forerunners of heavy, dark riffs, and long tracks with lots of different time signatures in them.
I was playing bass at the time and we tried to learn the time signatures but failed miserably. It’s quite hard stuff! I did have Larks’ Tongues In Aspic as well, but Crimson King was the one that blasted into my psyche. We still play it in soundcheck to this day.
If me and Paul had got signed as our early band Coast, we could have been a prog band. The first Saxon album had quite a proggy feel to it – but our producer chopped down quite a lot of the songs to three or four minutes, whereas the original ones were much longer and stretched out into different signatures.
We did end up covering In The Court Of The King Crimson on [2001 album] Killing Ground. A lot of people have done 21st Century Schizoid Man – I wanted to do something different, and it came out really good.
Robert Fripp has written some great music. When you think of King Crimson, he comes straight to mind. He’s still out there and still doing it; he’s one of the great survivors, like we are.
Our other guitarist Doug Scarratt is a big Fripp fan, too, and we know [Fripp’s wife] Toyah from our first era with [drummer] Nigel Glockler. I’m a big fan of Yes and Genesis as well. Right now, I’m doing my solo album with Fredrik Åkesson from Opeth. We’ve written a couple of prog tracks for it too; I’m still into that music.”
