What could Yes and King Crimson learn from each ..

With Crimson, I met Fripp a few times, he used to come to see Yes at The Marquee. And I didn't know Fripp was a guitar player, I didn't know much about him. He used to come and he was always wearing a cape, like a cloak with a hood, like a monk. And he had little glasses on, like John Lennon, and he was very tense and he always talked to me after the show and we would talk about guitar strings and guitars, all that kind of stuff. 

And he was quite nice but seemed a little eccentric and I didn't know much about Crimson, but I do knew that we was putting some sort of band together, I didn't know much more about it than that. And they had very secretive rehearsals. I've known Greg (Lake), 'cause he was with a band from Bournemouth called The Gods. Chris (Squire) and I knew Greg. 

I think that was the very first gig King Crimson ever did, certainly the first night I saw them, and it was absolutely amazing! And I was standing at the bar with a drink and I never touch my drink throughout the whole set, I just stood there in total amazement. Bill (Bruford) was standing next to me, I think, and we just stood there kind of open mouthed and... I think all of us were there. And we just watched them and immediately we were just amazed about how tight they were, and how good they were, and how good the composition was, and how original they sounded, and we just realized immediately... We thought that we were the best band around, and we probably were. We were pretty confident, as far as London bands went, that Yes were the one. We thought that nobody else was better than us. 

Crimson tore all that apart. I think we actually said that night we needed to rehearse a lot more. 

 (RIP Peter Banks!)

Yes is Yes and KC is KC. Never the twain should meet IMHO. We get the perfect crossover with Bruford dipping into both bands across the early 70's. He "coincidentally" plays on some of their best recordings. As others have mentioned, Anderson did some guest vocals for KC.

I've had people tell me Yes is "too Christian sounding" for their ears. I've also had people say KC is too complicated for their ears. They should check out Gentle Giant! 

If I was Crimson I would have kept Giles, Lake, Mcdonald and Sinfield in 1971 and built a band with strong melody and continued past 1975 until 1980 at least.

If I was Yes I would have kept Wakeman and Bruford and allow them more control to give us more of the melody we had up until 1972.