Peter Sinfield

Peter Sinfield is best known as the lyricist and a founding member of the original King Crimson and its immediate offshoots, up through the version of the band that recorded Islands in late 1971. He later took on a similar role, as lyricist for Emerson, Lake and Palmer and for the Italian progressive rock band PFM, at just about the same time that he recorded his one and only solo album, Still. As a lyricist, he has an approach to words as distinctive as any in rock, filled with surreal (and sometimes fiercely sexual) imagery, and a special facility with water-images and ideas involving the sea. If he isn't as well known as Keith Reid of Procol Harum, it is only because King Crimson appealed to more eclectic tastes, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer's fans never cared as much about words as the band did. Born in Putney, West London, to mixed English-Irish ancestry, Sinfield was raised largely by his mother's German housekeeper until the age of eight, after which he was sent off to a school called Danes Hill in Oxshott. It was there that Sinfield discovered a love of words and their use and meanings, with the guidance of John Mawson. He came to devour books of all kinds, especially poetry. He left school at 16, stooged around for a while, and worked for a computer company for six years, traveling around Europe when he could and hanging around with friends from the Chelsea Art School. Sinfield began writing poetry again in the mid-'60s, and made a living building and selling kites and lampshades. He spent a number of years drifting around Morocco and Spain before returning to England. Sometime in 1967, he started a band that didn't have any future -- but one of the members was Ian McDonald, who was impressed with Sinfield's talents as a lyricist, if not his abilities as a...