Michael Giles Quotations

Since 1981, we've had the emergence of more global music, the most popular first explorer of that area was of course Peter Gabriel.

I did quite a lot of the arranging, fitting different sections together, tempo changes, all sorts of things like that. I actually acted as a bridge between Robert and Ian. Not so much composing, rather presenting musical ideas at each rehearsal.

I think we were just coming out and being ourselves, instead of operating within boundaries that other people had created. We decided to do away with those boundaries.

We didn't go for music that sounded like blues, or jazz, or rock, or Led Zeppelin, or Rolling Stones. We didn't want to be like any of the other bands.

Yes, there was a sort of underground cult following, which came from nowhere, and grew, and grew. It was quite surprising to us all, because all of us had spent probably the previous five to ten years without it. So it was quite overwhelming. Overwhelming and humbling.

Every generation's got to have somewhere to play. But of course I suppose the punk thing was just too ugly, and too aggressive, and too reactionary.

These tapes have been found, which were taken from the desk and various bootlegs. At the time we never got to hear them, they didn't seem to be available or they just got put to one side.

The rise of King Crimson was so fast that, to me, it felt as if it was going out of control. And it was going so fast that I couldn't keep up with what was happening.

I'm amazed at how adventurous and how dangerous the music was, and still is. I haven't heard anything like it since. I'm quite surprised, because a lot of the music on there we never heard at the time.

If anything's progressive, then we make progress.

I think that what I'm interested with is the creative side of music-making, rather than all the travelling.

I still don't know anything about drugs, or who takes them, or what happens.