Part One: THE MAKING OF "I HAVE A DREAM"

NOVEMBER 11, 1999:  Pat, Trey, and Robert were in the studio trying a slower tempo for the instrumental LARK'S  IV.  I wasn't really needed so I took the opportunity to do some writing alone. I parked myself in the upstairs guest bedroom above the studio.  I could hear the pulse of the music they were rehearsing. 

I started writing a string of chord changes to their pulse. They were interesting changes.  Eight chord shapes moving downward chromatically which after 24 bars end up back where they began. The chord voicings were unique due to a new tuning I used throughout the record. The melody I had in mind was sad and mournful but emotionally highly-charged.  I worked for several hours.  

Later that afternoon I joined them for a rehearsal of the current form of LARK'S IV.  Afterwards I played them the new song which I described as a 'power ballad'.  I mentioned the idea of adding this as a vocal coda to LARK'S and to my surprise the idea was embraced.  This was an exciting new area to me because it meant for the first time a Krimson instrumental piece would turn into a song.  In this case a monumental piece 10 minutes long would suddenly develop into a song with words and melody.  (We used this device again for the piece THE CONSTRUkCTION OF LIGHT)

As the weeks rolled by the new song (working title CODA) became more integrated as the end of LARK'S IV making the entire piece more than 13 minutes long.  It became apparent and was eventually agreed upon that LARK'S IV would have to be the last piece on the record, it was too powerful to be followed by anything else.  As the lyricist I felt this placed added importance on the words to be sung. Consistently throughout countless interviews I've said this about writing lyrics: I study the music over and over until the song reveals what it wants to be about. Eventually a catchphrase, title, or subject matter comes to me at which point I begin the lengthy process of refining the song's meaning and working out the best phrasing and wording to fit the music.  For this song it occurred to me the subject matter had to be monumental in scope, something which could withstand the weighty emotional quality of the melody, something universal and open to interpretation. Knowing it would be the climax of the record, a record being made at the once-in-a-lifetime changing of the century and of the millennium, a review of the century past seemed fitting.  Eventually I narrowed it down to things which would be remembered from our lifetimes, in other words, the last half of the 20th century.

I am a student of modern history.  It's my preferred reading. Recently my wife Martha asked me the meaning of 'kamikaze' to which I instantly replied, "divine wind". The kind of useless information only accumulated through a lifetime of studying history. 

I HAVE A DREAM (it never was called I HAD a dream) comes of course from what historians voted the most well-known speech of the 20th century.  I read Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech as part of my research.  Did you know the first half of the speech, which was written beforehand, was being read by Dr. King when the line "I have a dream that one day..." suddenly came to him?  The rest of the speech, the part we all remember, was improvised on the spot.  He never looked at his notes again.  More useless information.  Research for a lyric of this depth was necessary despite my backlog of trivia.  As well as books I already own I bought and studied Our Century by Jennings and Brewster, American Chronicle by Gordon and Gordon, Witness To America by Ambrose and Brinkley, and Events That Shaped The Century by the Editors of Time-Life and Richard Stolley; all new releases concurrent with the millennium change.  I also taped and watched several specials on the subject from A&E, CNN, and the History channel (aka the Hitler channel).  Like a journalist, that's how I decided to write the song.  Just observations. No judgments.  Names, phrases, quotes. Single words which would allow the listeners to draw their own conclusions.  I began making lists, within days I realized this:

EVENTS AND NON-EVENTS.  Looking back at the last half of the 20th Century  what stands out most, unfortunately, are the bad things.  Wars, deaths, crimes, etc.  Of course many great and wonderful things happened or were discovered but are not as readily recalled.  Why?  Because the bad things are 'events' while the good things are mostly 'non-events'.  For example: people have a visual image of the JFK assassination, a sort of CNN moment.  By contrast the invention of the polio vaccine (a good thing which has affected far more lives) does not have a visual image.  It's a non-event.  We can picture the Vietnam War, it was chronicled on film, burned into our collective consciousness. It's an event.  Conversely, the affect of computers on our lives has been tremendous but gradual: a non-event. Everyone remembers where they were when John Lennon died, not so much when he was born.  With this in mind and with my journalistic approach of simply mentioning things, I had some words by mid- December.  I showed them to Robert.  The next day Robert came upstairs to give me a further approach to the lyric.  He suggested I write a second verse of good things, personal things, like the joy of having a child.  He suggested IN MY LIFETIME as a title.  I had been bothered by the one-sided dark nature of the lyric and I liked Robert's idea.  Over the course of the remaining few weeks I tried to make the idea work out.  But because of the emotional sadness of the melody nothing worked.  Joyful things did not sing well over the melody.   I tried my best.  Eventually I accepted it was a song which could not have a happy ending.  I have written other songs which do.  BRAVE NEW WORLD, for instance, celebrates mankind's accomplishments.

DECEMBER 16, 1999:  For 3 nights running we had listened at the end of the day  to different running orders of the material.  We all agreed a 'breath of air' of some sort  needed to precede LARK'S IV, the epic last piece.  Without some sort of 'breath' the record sequence seemed too heavy, too dense.  Your ears needed a break.  After discussion the best-liked idea seemed to be an acoustic guitar/vocal rendition of CODA.  I loved the idea because a) it gives the record contrast making LARK'S even more powerful when it comes in, b) there has been no acoustic guitar on a Krimson record in the20 years I've been making them, c) it serves as an intro to the monumental LARK'S piece and then repeats itself at the end with the full band, and finally, this device has historical precedence in earlier Krimson records.  For this last reason I suggested it would be more effective (and meaningful to the fans) if Robert played the acoustic, but he declined.  Still, we agreed for me to record a short minute-or-so acoustic intro version of the song.  An exciting and practical concept.

DECEMBER 17, 1999:  Pat, Trey, and Robert left for Christmas. They were to return January 5.  In the meantime I was to finish lyrics and record vocals. 

After seven weeks of pondering, studying, and writing the song I now called I HAVE A DREAM I felt I had said all I could say in one verse. There are other instances in Krim history where this has been true. Songs like FRAME BY FRAME, HEARTBEAT, and ONE TIME also seem to have said what they have to say  in just one stanza.

HOW TO SPEND NEW YEAR'S EVE AT THE END OF A MILLENNIUM:
At home working in the studio.  Symbolically I recorded my acoustic guitar and vocal version about the century past on New Year's Eve.  With Graham Elvis and Brenda Goodbread listening in the control room, Ken and I finished with minutes to spare at exactly 11:45 P. M.   Then we all went upstairs to join Martha in a bottle of Dom Perignon to bring in  the next century.  Cheers!

JANUARY 5, 2000:  Everyone returned.  Next came the sometimes painful 'first listen' of all the new material I had written. For Pat, Trey, and Robert  I can appreciate how awful it can be when you've heard a track without vocals for so long and suddenly the lyricist/singer has imposed meaning and melody.  Everyone seemed a mixture of unsetted and happily surprised.   At the end of LARK'S  Pat expressed concern about the single verse being repeated (which it was at the time) and we quickly agreed it should happen only once at the very end.  We now had two versions of I HAVE A DREAM:  the acoustic guitar / vocal intro to LARK'S, and the full band/vocal version at the end of LARK'S.

JANUARY 7, 2000:  Robert added strings to the acoustic version.
This made the song a duet.  We discussed how well this would work live to have Robert and me perform a quietly delicate acoustic/soundscape-type version onstage followed by the full-blown Almighty Krim.  By the 20th the record had been mixed and mastered with me, Ken, Robert, and Stan Hertzman present.  For me it had been the most satisfying of all Krimson records to make.  Fun almost. Then everyone flew away, all of us happily  in agreement over our new baby.

Part Two: THE GIFT OF ACCEPTANCE

"The happenings set in motion by a particular scheme of action will rarely be those narrowly intended, are intrinsically unpredictable and will ramify far beyond the anticipation of the instigator." British historian John Keegan.

FEBRUARY 3, 2000:  The day began beautifully.  As sometimes happens a bird, a Tufted Titmouse, had flown into our picture window and stunned itself.  Whenever this occurs I run outside, pick up the bird and calm it for a few minutes until it realizes it's sitting on the palm of a human being and it flies away.  This bird let me hold it for nearly 15 minutes, a new record, and a lovely way to start the day.  Then Stan called to say Robert had called to say Virgin Records felt  I HAVE A DREAM was too "controversial" and should be dropped.  A huge silence followed.  Stan and I talked for a very long time and could not understand this new turn of events.  We both felt there had to be something more to it.  So I called Robert.  He began to explain the situation.  I asked a very direct question: "Do you want the song on the record, yes or no?"  When Robert did not answer "yes" I should have know the answer was some shade of "no".  Instead he told me the lyrics depressed him and he was still waiting for the "good things" that happened.  I explained my troubles at writing joyful things over this particular melody and he understood.  Robert said, "It's your call, Ade," to which I replied,  "Then I would like the song to stay as it is on the record".  

Then Declan from Virgin called.  His concern was the words might be "mis-interpreted".  My point was they would be "interpreted".   In my opinion, only the last line could be seen as colored with cynicism.  He said it sounded personal which I agreed it probably would in such a bare form, but that it was not a personal song in that it dealt with historic events and that since it was meant as a 'breath of air' and did not involve the entire band and was in fact just an acoustic guitar and one voice, it would sound intimate at  the very least.  He said it sounded like an American perspective. Admittedly it's from an American viewpoint.  I am an American writer.  He said the first time he heard it he thought I had sung "Rodney King went to jail".   I told him that was not the lyric but even if it was I saw no problem with it.  After all, Rodney King DID go to jail.  And so it went.

It was something like the American political show Crossfire in which opposing viewpoints of the same issues are discussed and in the end neither side has convinced the other side of anything other than the sincerity of their convictions. As our conversation went on I learned Declan had only heard 4 of the songs on the record and none of the instrumentals.  He had no idea the acoustic version was meant as an intro, nor did he realize it returned at the end of LARK'S IV.  In other words, he heard the song completely out of context.  With this in mind I better understood his concerns, though I still could not imagine the song being "controversial" in today's climate of Rap and Death Metal. Though it seemed extremely odd to me to hear from Declan, something which had never happened since Krimson had been with Virgin, I appreciated his right to his opinion and valued his role as the main Krimson supporter at Virgin.  Naturally I wanted Declan to feel great about the record.  I recommended he listen to the entire record to hear the song in context, assuring him he would then see how well it helped the flow of the record.

FEBRUARY 15, 2000: Twelve days later I was still hearing about this issue which had by  now caused me to be sick and sleepless. Declan called again to say he still didn't think the song worked. Another long  conversation ensued in which he me told the record would be "flawed" with I HAVE A DREAM on it, but admitted all his favorite records were "flawed" having at least one song which should have been dropped.  I asked which one he would have dropped from SGT. PEPPER.  He replied, "WHEN I'M SIXTY-FOUR" and we had a laugh over that because my daughter Ava had just been singing that one over breakfast only she thought the words were "When I get older, losing my HEAD".  It was a pleasant conversation and even though we still disagreed I was glad to have expressed my thoughts and to hear the perspective of a record executive.  Later that day an e-mail came from Robert asking me to consider putting I HAVE A DREAM on the next record, giving me time to re-write it.  Again I was being asked to 'make the call', in other words to reject my own material which I had already deemed Krim-worthy, even necessary for the record.  At the same time there was a glut of Internet comments as to whether or not King Crimson should or would allow a record label to censor it's material.  Let me make this clear: King Crimson has never allowed anyone, record label or not, to interfere with our work.  In fact we pride ourselves on being "uncompromising".

So what did happen? Simply put, Robert did not want it on the record so it is not on the record.  Or to look at it a different way, if Robert had wanted it on the record it would be on the record, regardless of what Virgin might say.  So it wasn't 'my call'. On the 16th I phoned Robert and told him this and he agreed it was true.  I then recommended he 'make the call' knowing he would take it off the record. Why?  For 20 years on and off Robert and I have worked together and made some very  interesting music.  It works best in King Crimson if someone has the last word in situations such as this and Robert is the right person for the job.  He may not always be correct in his judgments (I'm certain I would be worse) but I respect his vision for King Crimson and the dedication he brings to it, even when his thoughts negate my own.  And I've learned what it takes to make Robert a "happy boy".  I accept Robert's need to have things his way.  That's not a criticism. There's nothing wrong with it, in fact, I can be the same way.  To me the true gift of friendship is acceptance.

I only wish Robert had come to me directly and said,  "Hey Buddy, your song gives me the creeps," and we could have arm-wrestled for it.

FURTHER ISSUES, A FOREWARNING, AND AN IRONY.
I keep a factual journal of what I do each day but I don't often make my private feelings public nor do I have time to post a dairy.  So why come forth with such a lengthy dissertation?  Because as concerns King Crimson the Internet has become the Great Disseminator of mis-information, subjective opinion, and conjecture.  Even the title of this song has been widely publicized incorrectly!  A great many pounds of bullshit has been written about me and my contributions or shortcomings in Krimson.  The affect on me personally has made it difficult to do my job with the full enthusiasm I strive for.  At times I have been embarrassed, even humiliated at the cruel faceless commentaries.  Imagine being able to read what people REALLY think of you.  Furthermore, the deification of someone you work with is not easy to be around.  Some people worship Robert.  I don't blame them, nor him, it's not his fault, but it's not healthy for me to deal with.  To me Robert is a life-long friend, an incredible artist, and a human being.

Now the forewarning: with all the brouhaha and accompanying suspense you WILL be disappointed with the track.  It's nothing.  (But at least it's free)  Not the best or the worst thing I've written.  You will not hear it in context of the entire record, and you will probably wonder why the fuss.  All part of life's rich tapestry.

Oh, the irony? This song still exists on the record at the end of LARK'S IV. Same words, same melody. It was only ever the acoustic version which was in question.