BIFF BYFORD
Saxon’s frontman has been holding court with King Crimson since he was a teen!
“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 and 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 the heavy, dark riffs, and the 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 and we still play it in soundcheck to this day.
If me and Paul had got signed as [pre-Saxon band] Coast, we could have been a prog band. The first Saxon album [Saxon] had quite a proggy feel to it but our producer [Argent’s John Verity] 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 The Court Of The King Crimson on [2001 album] Killing Ground. A lot of people have done 21st Century Schizoid Man but I wanted to do something different and it came out really good.
Robert Fripp has written some great music and 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 the Nigel days [former Saxon drummer Nigel Glockler played on Anthem].
I’m a big fan of Yes and Genesis as well. Right now, I’m doing my solo album with Fredrik Åkesson [guitarist] from Opeth and we’ve written a couple of prog tracks for it too, so I’m still into that music.” NRS
Tickets are now on sale for Saxon’s 40th anniversary shows and The Eagle Has Landed 40 will be out later this year. For more, visit www.saxon747.com.
“Fripp is one of the great survivors, like we are.”