SS: You’ve spoken about the amount of time Toby was embedded, but how many hours a day was he literally following you around? Did it extend beyond your rehearsal and playing time? Was he trailing you?

TL: Well that’s all there is when we’re on the road… At 1:30 or at 2:30, you can go over to the venue. And you get there and there’s Toby. And we’re there until 11:00, 11:30pm at night, after the show, and there’s Toby. He was there the whole day with us.

SS: The bus where he catches Robert sleeping was pretty revealing.

TL: There’s a lot that’s extraordinary in that film. Having seen it a few times, I’m learning more about what’s in there. It’s pretty amazing.

SS: Yeah, I agree. This was my third time. And I have to say, the first couple of times I saw the scene where Robert is remembering his meeting with J.G. Bennett, and there’s that extraordinarily long silence, that silence like nothing I’ve seen in practically any film before—this was the first time I could actually see the tears rolling down his face.

TL: Me too.

SS: It’s also remarkable how much candor is in the film. You really get a sense of Adrian [Belew] and Trey [Gunn], more than I would have imagined, having calluses and pain, still feeling a lot of resentment towards aspects of their experience. Now, we exchanged an email earlier, and this leads me to the question I’ve been wanting to ask since: you said watching Toby’s film made you feel differently about this band that has been a part of your life, and that you’ve been a part of, on and off, for 40 years. How is that?

TL: Well, as you all know now, it’s one weird ass band. You knew that. I sort of knew it. I think you would all agree, the degree of honesty and just putting it right out front of some of the guys who were interviewed, it was extraordinary. For me personally, it made me wonder why, there I was for 40 years, not thinking about that stuff. It’s not that I’m not an intellectual guy. I can be intellectual, but I spent some time thinking, “Why didn’t I have anything to say or to think even about the overall picture of King Crimson?” All those years doing it and I don’t have a complete explanation. But it’s been an interesting experience for me seeing the correct wisdom of the other guys. These guys really got into it, especially the dark side of the band, which exists. I think part of the reason for me is I am really deeply a bass player. It’s deeply embedded. That’s what I am, and that’s what I do. And the bass player in me doesn’t want to know about any of that stuff and doesn’t need to. Maybe that sense comes across in the band, maybe not. But I’m realizing now for the first time that I have my head down in a figurative way, and my intellectual side turned off, and I’m just taken up, 100% of my being, with trying to play the bass the right way. Not because I have to, not to please Robert or anything like that, just because that’s what I do and what I am. So what an interesting awakening for me, especially Bill Bruford’s description of how humorous—and it was always humorous, we always laughed a lot in the band—but also how difficult, and painful in ways it was. I kind of cruised through about 40 years without even realizing. That’s extraordinary to me.

SS: When you mentioned that you had learned a lot from hearing the things Robert had to say and the things Bill had to say, I wondered, because the other extraordinary thing about this film is how deeply, how far in Bill Rieflin invites Toby into his life, something that is clear from the home scenes and the extended candid conversations... There’s no easy way to say this, but was Bill talking in those ways to all of you about what he was going through, or was this saved for the film?

TL: Well, it’s a large band. So each relationship between any two people in it is between the two of them, I don’t know about those. I know that was very poignant for me. And I shed tears the first time I saw that. Bill and I were very good friends. So I’ve been seeing it in the movies, the conversations that I kind of wish I did have with him, because I would give him a chance to share the amazing things about himself, and because I would emotionally learn and grow from doing that... I wish I had had it in me to face that. “Hey, Bill, we all know you’re dying here on the road. Tell me about that.” I just never had that conversation. I had a lot of conversations with him. Bizarre meals. Most nights we weren’t playing I went out to eat with Bill. It was... I don’t know how to describe it, it was fun. But Bill was so passionate about food and where we would go, it was kind of insane, but in a funny way to me. The meal became the Bill adventure, I never tired of it. You know, I could be here all night telling stories of Bill.

SS: My wife watched this film with me—and she is not characteristically one of we Crimsoes; she is glad that I am here, among my people, having a good time tonight. Her response was that she thought it was a remarkable film, but she also thought it is an atypical documentary. There’s no linear chronology to it; it has a lot of different things to say. I wonder what you feel about that? I mean, clearly, you’ve seen your share of films over the years and a number of music documentaries. And reading through the booklet that comes with the box set this morning, I noticed David Singleton said specifically, “We wanted to make a film that was not that documentary we’ve already seen over and over 100 times.”

TL: I agree with that. And, like I’ll bet every person in this room, I feel it was unusual. I didn’t know that was the plan. It’s very like King Crimson, which is not playing normal rock band stuff, in that they come from a different place. When I first saw it, I was in a hotel in Miami for a couple of days on my own; I said, “Take a deep breath, and I’ll watch this film, and I hope I don’t squirm when I see myself.” That’s the fear when you’re going to be in a movie. And when the two minutes of Robert just facing the camera came, after maybe 15 seconds I thought the wifi had frozen. I went offline, and I loaded, waited, downloaded it again, and got to the same place. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I almost still can’t.