One More Red Nightmare

Album: Red (1974)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • This song was inspired by aviation scare. In our interview with King Crimson lead singer John Wetton, he explained: "At that time we were taking about three flights a day. If we had air miles in those days, I'd still be flying on them! This went on for months and months and months on end. It goes without saying that we knew airline crews personally. We'd walk on the plane, 'Oh, hi, Joe. Hi Cindy, how you doing? How are the kids?' It's just incredible the amount of flying that that band did. And we had some pretty hairy experiences. 'One More Red Nightmare' is just that."
  • Running 7:07, this song contains a mixture of unusual time signatures that signify the discord of the unfortunate airline passengers in the lyric. King Crimson had the virtuoso musicians to pull this off: in addition to Wetton, this incarnation of the band included Robert Fripp (who co-wrote this song) on guitar and Bill Bruford on drums.

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

16 Songs With a Heartbeat

16 Songs With a HeartbeatSong Writing

We've heard of artists putting their hearts into their music, but some take it literally.

Ian Gillan of Deep Purple

Ian Gillan of Deep PurpleSongwriter Interviews

Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan explains the "few red lights" in "Smoke On The Water" and talks about songs from their 2020 album Whoosh!

Pete Anderson

Pete AndersonSongwriter Interviews

Pete produced Dwight Yoakam, Michelle Shocked, Meat Puppets, and a very memorable track for Roy Orbison.

Eric Burdon

Eric BurdonSongwriter Interviews

The renown rock singer talks about "The House of the Rising Sun" and "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood."

Mike Love of The Beach Boys

Mike Love of The Beach BoysSongwriter Interviews

The lead singer/lyricist of The Beach Boys talks about coming up with the words for "Good Vibrations," "Fun, Fun, Fun," "Kokomo" and other classic songs.

Christmas Songs

Christmas SongsFact or Fiction

Rudolf, Bob Dylan and the Singing Dogs all show up in this Fact or Fiction for seasonal favorites.