Starless: A Tale of Desperation

On October 25, 2024, progressive rock band King Crimson released a collection of elemental mixes from their 1974 album Red to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its release. The collection was made up of every song from the original album, with the song Providence being the only missing track. The mixes were, overall, quite good. The collection provided insight on how different a song can be between its final, finished mix, and its initial recordings. The Red elemental mixes collection is a solid eight out of ten. It isn’t as good as the original album, as should be expected of any remix of such an amazing album, but it’s still great. In all honesty, though, when I saw that an elemental mix of Red was released, I wasn’t interested much in the overall quality of the album. When I learned of the future release of these mixes, I was concerned with only one song. That song was “Starless.”

Starless is the final track of Red, and it’s a very special song. You see, Starless is not only the greatest song King Crimson has ever written; it’s the greatest song ever written, period. 

I love music, and I especially love progressive rock as a genre. Camel, Pink Floyd, Rush, Gentle Giant, and, of course, King Crimson are, in my opinion, the greatest bands to ever exist, but no individual song from any of their discographies could ever hold a candle to the musical perfection of Starless. So it should be no surprise that when I learned of the Red elemental mixes, my first thought was, “I wonder how good Starless will be.”

The answer to my thoughts were, unfortunately, but not exactly surprisingly, that it wasn’t as good as the original mix. There are, in my perspective, two acceptable versions of Starless: the first being from the original 1974 album, and the second being from the 2015 live album, Radical Action To Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind. The 2024 elemental mix of the song is good, don’t get me wrong, but it on the whole feels as if it conveys the wrong tone. The elemental mix, in the simplest terms, feels overcomplicated. There are too many instruments trying to take center stage, which results in a track that feels unfocused. 

The original song has a sort of organization to it in its opening minutes, with the saxophone, cello, and electric guitar taking turns, for lack of a better word, at being the centerpiece. When one instrument takes the stage, the others fall back; still adding key instrumentation without overpowering the most important instrument of the moment. The 2015 live recording does the same thing, while still standing out and adding unique twangs to the original piece. The elemental mix fails to do this, particularly with the saxophone and oboe, which feel like they were haphazardly thrown in after the fact to add more “stuff” to the mix. Starless, though, isn’t a song that needs “stuff” added to it. Especially in the early minutes, the choruses, Starless thrives in its subtlety, in its simplistic somberness, which means that when the track is stuffed to the brim with complication, the emotional punch is severely numbed.

The instrumental after the choruses is fine. Listening to the original and the 2024 mix one after the other, you can tell there isn’t as much change between the two in the post-chorus instrumental. It still suffers a bit from the overcomplication issue, but this instrumental segment is a piece that is intended to be much more stress-inducing and chaotic, so it works much better, even if I still prefer the original mix. There is one thing that the 2024 elemental mix did nail though, and thankfully it’s the most important to get right: the finale. 

After twelve minutes of music, containing heart wrenching lyrics, soft but impactful instrumentation, and an instrumental break so powerful that it legitimately causes me stress, Starless comes to the finale. The finale is only about a minute long, if not shorter, but that minute has to be among the greatest musical compositions in history. Unfortunately there isn’t much of a way for me to describe its power in words, as it can only be truly understood if you hear it for yourself. All I can say about it is that it’s the culmination of all the song’s greatest elements. It follows roughly the same chord progression of the opening minutes, but with all the stress of the post-chorus instrumental. The cello mourns and the saxophone cries a song of desperation, while the electric guitar thrums with rage and hatred, all to the beat of a drum that gives form to such unbridled and uncertain emotion. This finale conveys feelings so specific, yet ambiguous, and it can mean so much in varying ways to each listener, and its impact isn’t lost with the 2024 elemental mix.

The mix manages to add so much to the finale, continuing the theme of overcomplication throughout the track, but used to its greatest potential. Where once there was the weeping of a lone brass, there is now the harmony of sax and oboe tears, giving the 2024 mix an ebb of anguish and pain that adds a new angle to such a phenomenal composition. Almost all of my critiques of the first twelve minutes of the song are washed away by the passion invoked by that short, minute long finale. I don’t think there are enough words to express how deeply this song affects me, especially in its final moments. Of all the songs I’ve ever heard, only one other rivals it in how it impacts me emotionally, and you can bet I’ll be writing about that song soon enough. 

All of this is to say that I love Starless. It’s my favorite song, and hardly anything comes close. Starless stands on a pedestal, around which so many hundreds of other songs stand in shame, and in the wake of the 2024 elemental mix, I’ve found myself coming back to it over and over again.

Though King Crimson is still alive and well today, at the time it seemed that any day the band could collapse into dust. Founding members Michael Giles, Greg Lake, Ian McDonald, and Peter Sinfield had departed from the band years ago, and tensions were high between the members that remained. Robert Fripp, as frontman and only remaining founder, had just undergone the band’s second drastic lineup shift, now consisting of John Wetton, David Cross, and former Yes drummer Bill Bruford. Though former members Ian McDonald and Mel Collins were part of the album’s recording, they were not official members, and all the musicians involved were not exactly on the best of terms, particularly Fripp and McDonald. In the month between the album’s final recording and its release, King Crimson was officially disbanded. Seven years passed before the band was rebuilt, with Fripp and Bruford being the only former members in the new lineup.

Starless is a song about loss and desperation. It’s a song performed by a band in decline, uncertain if they would survive to see the album’s release. In the end, they didn’t. Starless was composed by singer and songwriter John Wetton, whose tenure in the band only lasted two years and three albums. The song was intended to be the title track for their previous album, Starless and Bible Black, but Fripp and Bruford disliked the work-in-progress vocals, which prevented it from being finished until the recording of Red. Starless encompasses the state of the band towards the end of 1974. It’s a song that was hated by half of the band members, written by a man who had only joined a year prior, who was only allowed to finished it for the wrong album, at a time when all the members were at each other's throats, feeling as if they could implode any day now, mere weeks before the band fell apart to go silent for seven years. The stress of such a situation is palpable in every single measure of the song. It’s gut wrenching to hear the despair and anger behind every note, knowing that the wails of every instrument is the manifestation of the musicians’ emotions.

When I hear their song, I hear their cry, and I weep alongside them. Though I may not be a member of their band, I feel the desperation they play. Even in its calmest moments, life is filled with chaos and misunderstanding. College, work, family, friends, and the future all stress me to what feels like my breaking point, and I don’t even understand why. No matter how good things seem, it always feels as if there’s a knife hanging above me on a string, and at any moment that string could snap and send that blade directly into my skull.

When I hear the finale, that brief, wordless minute, I struggle to hold back tears, and my body locks up from the stress. Only when the anger of the electric guitar and the sobs of the saxophone finally fade do I feel relief, left to bask in the somber echo of a cello’s whisper. I’m consigned to ask when I can finally have my soft, gentle release, but a starless, bible black sky can give no answer.

Sundown, dazzling day

Gold through my eyes

But my eyes turned within only see

Starless and bible black

Old friend, charity

Cruel twisted smile

And the smile signals emptiness for me

Starless and bible black

Ice blue silver sky

Fades into grey

To a grey hope that yearns to be

Starless and bible black