The Court Of The Crimson King
The lush-textured, panoramic, epic title track that closes the album was actually the first track the band recorded, on July 16. Hearing this huge, gothic, densely orchestrated piece, it’s almost impossible to believe that it was originally “a sort of Bob Dylan song, if you can imagine that”, says Sinfield. “Ian took it and rewrote the music. He’d studied harmony, he’d studied orchestration, so his references were not just The Beatles, but also big, sweeping things like Stravinsky, Mahler, things that were emotional. And that would come out. That track did take quite a while to pull together.“I was sort of worried about the vocals. They recorded line by line and dropped in. I probably shouldn’t say that, but there you go.”
Source: King Crimson: How we made In The Court Of The Crimson King | Louder