https://youtu.be/cjjkd5FXjg4 — Life and discography of Ian McDonald. He was a founding member of both King Crimson and Foreigner and produced and performed on dozens of albums over the years. Unfortunately, Ian lost his battle with cancer on February 9th, 2022, at the age of 75. Of course, we will continue to listen to and share his music throughout the years so that he is never forgotten.
Support Ian’s family by buying his albums on Amazon https://amzn.to/3GNtDwI
“In The Court of the Crimson King” is among the greatest and most influential albums of all time and often considered to be the first true progressive rock album. However, this album wouldn’t have had the same impact if not for the compositions and performances by multi-instrumentalist, Ian McDonald. A man that would go on to be a co-founder of the legendary rock group, Foreigner and produced and performed on many projects over the years.
Ian McDonald was born June 25th 1946 in Osterley Middlesex, within Greater London. As a teenager, he got into the guitar but took an unusual route to learning music and joined the British Army as a Junior Bandsman. He spent 5 years in the military and learned how to read music and play instruments such as clarinet, saxophone and flute.
In his mind, the birth of progressive rock was when The Beatles released “Yesterday,” a song introduced to the pop-rock world in which Paul McCartney is accompanied by a string quartet and none of the other Beatles appear on the track. This made Ian realize things were opening up and sort of gave him permission to start adding mellotron and classical aspects to his music.
Some of McDonald’s early influences were Louis Belson, Les Paul, and Earl Bostic, as well as classical composers like Stravinsky and Richard Strauss.
In 1967 he formed a group called Infinity with lyricist Pete Sinfield and had also dabbled in dance bands and orchestras. The group Giles, Giles and Fripp had recently released their debut album and were looking to collaborate with a songwriting team. They found Ian’s ad in Melody Maker Magazine and he and his girlfriend at the time, Fairport Convention’s Judy Dyble started to work with the group and introduced them to Pete Sinfield. You can hear demos of this five piece band do tracks like the McDonald and Sinfield classic, “I Talk to the Wind,” on “The Brondesbury Tapes (1968)” which was released in 2001.
Judy and Ian parted ways and bassist Peter Giles left the band and was replaced by Greg Lake and King Crimson was born. The band took their name from an epic song called “The Court of the Crimson King.” It had initially been a 3 chord folk song written by Pete Sinfield but Ian McDonald wrote all new music to it, creating one of the most progressive and awesome songs still to this date.
King Crimson’s debut album was released on October 10th of 1969 and has a huge and unique sound to it, largely due to Ian McDonald overtracking layers of mellotron, Harpsichord and various woodwind and reed instruments. Right at the beginning of the album we are introduced to Ian wailing on a saxophone with such power in both melody and tone that it isn’t something that can be easily overlooked. King Crimson spent 11 days in the studio producing and mixing the albums themselves and Ian McDonald was very involved in the process, finding it to be very natural to him, even though it was his first time working in a studio like that.
Of course, the album was a hit but Ian wasn’t thrilled with the dark directions that Fripp wanted to take the band and drummer Michael Giles didn’t like the stresses of touring so after their U.S. tour in late ‘69, Michael and Ian left King Crimson to form a new project. Of course, break ups are never totally clean and though Ian does not perform on the second King Crimson album, he is credited as co-writer for “The Devil’s Triangle” and “Cat Food.”
The album, “McDonald and Giles” was released in November of 1970 and the long track “Birdman” contains a couple minutes of music that King Crimson had previously played live. Pete Sinfield and Ian McDonald must have written “Cadence and Cascade” together, because Sinfield retains the lyrics with new music composed by Robert Fripp for the version on the second King Crimson album, but B.P. Fallon added new lyrics to Ian’s original melody and called it “Flight of the Ibis” for the version heard on “McDonald and Giles.”
I’ve always been a big fan of the “McDonald and Giles” album and I see it as similar to King Crimson but with the darker aspects removed. I very much enjoy the lighter atmosphere while maintaining the excellent melodies by Ian McDonald and the relentlessly awesome drumming by the underrated Michael Giles. Both of them sing on the record, Peter Giles played the bass, Steve Winwood from Traffic guest stars on the first track, and Ian plays guitar, piano, organ, saxes, flute, clarinet, zither and more. Though Michael Giles contributed one of the tracks, the great majority of the music on this record was composed by Ian McDonald and I couldn’t recommend it enough.
This group unfortunately did not record a second album and the first half of the ‘70s saw Ian produce several records for other musicians and make guest appearances on numerous songs.
He was part of Keith Tippet’s 50-piece jazz-rock orchestra and in June of 1971 he recorded on their album produced by Robert Fripp, “Septober Energy.”
He played on records by Keith Christmas, Silverhead, Herbie Mann, Phil Manzanera and contributed Saxophones to the hit single “Bang a Gong Get it on” by T. Rex
Some of the records he produced in this time were 1973’s “Canis Lupus” by Darry Way’s Wolf, 1975’s “Night on Bald Mountain” by Fire Ballet, and “Modern Masquerades” by North Irish proggers, Fruupp. And he also helped with The 1973 Original London Cast recording of a Stage Play called “Lonesome Stone.”
Ian performs on two tracks of King Crimson’s 1974 album, “Red” and had been invited to join the successful new lineup. He and John Wetton were very excited about the rising future of King Crimson, but Robert Fripp suddenly put the band to rest.
Ian moved to New York City where he joined the sessions for Ian Lloyd’s 1976 solo album, adding sax, flute, piano, and percussion. It was here that he would meet another out of place British rocker, Mick Jones. They hit it off and Ian McDonald is known as one of the founding members of the rock band, Foreigner.
Ian performed rhythm guitar, keyboards, backing vocals, on the first 3 studio albums and 2 live albums by Foreigner. He had a big hand in the arrangements and production but most of the material for this group was written by Mick Jones and Lou Gramm, with Ian only receiving 1 or 2 songwriting credits per album. He had played some Sax and flute on the first album but by their third album, those elements were completely removed from the band’s sound, the third album didn’t sell as well as previous albums and it seems Ian McDonald and keyboardist Al Greenwood were removed from the band to see if they would have better success as a four-piece.
In 1985, Ian McDonald produced and performed on a new wave album by Steve Taylor, “On the Fritz” but otherwise didn’t seem very active in the ‘80s and the first of the ‘90s.
In 1996, he went on tour as part of a super group put together by Steve Hackett that also featured John Wetton. Recordings from this tour were released in 1998 as “The Tokyo Tapes” and the group performed Ian’s classics, “The Court of the Crimson King” and “I Talk to the Wind” among songs from Steve and John’s careers. Ian does guest performances on three of Steve’s albums from 1997 to 2003.
He contributed a couple tracks to a 1998 Sega Saturn game called, Wachenroder and he performs rhythm guitar on a cool harp cover of “I Talk to the Wind” on an album called “Action Harp Play Set” from 1999.
1999 would also see the release of a solo album under the name Ian McDonald caled “Drivers Eyes.” It took him time to find a label willing to fund the project and eventually made a deal with a Japanese company for release in Japan and his buddy Steve Hackett released the album in the U.K. under his Camino Records Label. The album was bootlegged in The United States, much to Ian’s displeasure.
He had a lot of material written and even partially recorded for several years and wanted to create an album that was truly about the music that would flow from beginning to end. He got lots of guest stars on it for variety and did not want to take the spotlight though he ended up singing on more songs than he had initially intended. Ian wrote all of the basslines and provided his array of usual instruments, that being basically everything you can think of.
“Drivers Eyes” has contributions by Lou Gramm, Michael Giles, Steve Hacket, Pete Sinfield, Gary Brooker, Peter Frampton, John Wetton, Iian Lloyd and more. The tenth track, “Deminonde” only has two musicians on it, that being Mcdonald and Giles. “Let there be Light” has Gary Brooker from Procol Harum singing lyrics by Sinfield over a dark atmosphere with a string section, and Ian provided clarinets, flutes, and synths. I always like Steve Hackett so I very much enjoyed his solo on the song that Lou Gramm sings “Straight Back to You.”
In 2002, a band formed called the “21st Century Schizoid Band.” It included past King Crimson members, Ian McDonald, Mel Collins, Peter Giles, Michael Giles, and Future King Crimson member, Jakko Jaksyzyk. The band would would perform songs from the first four King Crimson records and other works from the band member’s back catalogues, including the McDonald and Giles album. Michael Giles would leave the band in early 2003 to be replaced by another previous Crimson drummer, Ian Wallace. This band recorded 3 live albums and a studio album comprised of old material before disbanding in 2006.
During the last 20 years, Ian made guest appearances on albums by Judy Dyble, Ian Wallace, and Jakko Jakszyk and appeared in a 2009 documentary about the Mellotron.
He performed alongside Keith Emerson and Greg Lake in May of 2010 and in 2011, John Wetton’s band Asia released a Live DVD from 2009 in which Ian is a guest star.
In 2011 he worked with the Frog and Peach Theatre Company, providing compositions, guitar and piano to their off-Broadway Shakespeare plays. The company’s co-founder, Ted Zurkowski was a singing guitarist and he lived across the street from Ian in Manhattan. The two of them put together an album called “Bad Old World” under the name, Honey West in 2017. The two were co-writers Ian was a fan of Ted’s “Smart lyrics” as he had put it and was immensely proud of his son, Maxwell who not only provided the bass for three of the tracks but made a really awesome music video for the song, “Dementia” that they recorded in one take. And truly it is very impressive and It’s nice to know that Ian was so happy and proud of the mark he left on this world.
It’s a real shame that Ian recently lost his battle to cancer and left us on February 9th at the age of 75. He went peacefully, with his family at his side.
I typically make documentaries about obscure bands on this channel and know that I’ll be doing deep dives into many more musicians in this style, assuming you guys liked this video. I hate that Ian leaving this world had to be the inspiration for this video, but truly he deserves to be remembered forever and not necessarily for just one or two things. This was a wonderfully talented man and if it weren’t for his inspiration on music, I may not have created this YouTube channel in the first place.
If this video provided some value to you, please go ahead and give it a “Like” and consider sharing it with others in memory of the incredible Ian McDonald. Subscribe if you’d like to learn the history of other obscure bands, I really appreciate you watching and until I see you again, have a happy listening session.
Sean's Music Hunt 
Leave a comment