Peter Sinfield, a co-founder of prog rockers King Crimson who went on to a profitable pop songwriting profession for artists similar to Céline Dion, has died aged 80.
King Crimson introduced the information, describing him because the band’s “authentic roadie, lyricist, lights operator and reside sound engineer”. No reason behind demise was given.
Sinfield was born in London and lived an itinerant and bohemian youth, together with spells in Spain and Morocco – he later described himself as King Crimson’s “pet hippie”.
He first partnered with the group’s multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald within the band the Creation, earlier than they fused with Giles, Giles and Fripp – the trio of Michael Giles, Peter Giles and Robert Fripp. Peter left and was changed by Greg Lake, and Sinfield named the group King Crimson. He co-produced and wrote lyrics for his or her first 4 albums – Within the Court docket of the Crimson King, Within the Wake of Poseidon, Lizard and Islands – between 1969 and 1971.
Matching the far-out sound of the band’s music, Sinfield’s fashion tended in the direction of mystical and psychedelic fable-like storytelling, however he additionally had a eager political chunk as he castigated commercialism, authoritarianism and battle. “Blood rack, barbed wire / Politicians’ funeral pyre / Innocents raped with napalm hearth,” ran one verse of King Crimson’s anti-Vietnam struggle track twenty first Century Schizoid Man.
After the discharge of Islands, Fripp requested Sinfield to depart the band. Sinfield went on to provide Roxy Music’s debut album, together with its iconic glam single Virginia Plain, and in 1973 recorded his solely solo album, Nonetheless, with a band together with King Crimson’s Greg Lake. The 2 labored collectively once more when Sinfield was known as on by Lake to offer lyrics for Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and he wrote Lake’s UK No 2 festive hit I Imagine in Father Christmas. He additionally labored with Procol Harum’s Gary Brooker, earlier than transferring to Ibiza and spending the rest of the Nineteen Seventies residing there.
On returning to the UK, he partnered with songwriter Andy Hill and wrote lyrics for mainstream pop music that was virtually diametrically against the fantastical prog of King Crimson: contributing to 4 albums by Bucks Fizz and writing songs for 5 Star, Leo Sayer, Abba’s Agnetha Fältskog and extra. One in every of his songs for Bucks Fizz, Coronary heart of Stone, grew to become a minor hit for Cher in 1990.
He had his greatest hit of all in 1994, writing lyrics for the Hill-composed Suppose Twice, recorded by Céline Dion. This determined plea for a lover to not finish a romance – “Don’t say what you’re about to say / Look again earlier than you permit my life” – grew to become a defining energy ballad of the 90s, topping charts within the UK and all over the world. It gained Sinfield an Ivor Novello award.
Sinfield’s work price lessened thereafter, significantly after open coronary heart surgical procedure within the mid-2000s, and he started specializing in poetry. He additionally made an look within the 2009 BBC documentary Prog Rock Britannia: An Remark in Three Actions, earlier than retiring to reside in Aldeburgh in Suffolk.
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