A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers

It runs 23:04 in ten sections: Eyewitness, Pictures/Lighthouse, Eyewitness, S.H.M., Presence of the Night, Kosmos Tours, (Custard's) Last Stand, The Clot Thickens, Land's End (Sineline) and We Go Now. Hammill wrote the words; Evans wrote Kosmos Tours, Jackson Land's End, and the four together The Clot Thickens. Credits for Pictures/Lighthouse differ between booklets, Banton and Jackson in one, Hammill and Banton in another. It was recorded at Trident from July to September 1971 in sections between gigs and pieced together at the mix, with tape manipulation, Banton's Mellotron and synthesizer and some musique concrete. John Anthony said the band pushed the facilities at Trident to the limit, using nearly every tape machine, and Jackson said one section has the whole band overdubbed sixteen times. Fripp's guitar is heard briefly in Presence of the Night.

Hammill told Sounds that on the basic level it is the story of a lighthouse keeper, with guilt and complexes at seeing people die and letting them die, unable to help; the ending is open, he kills himself or rationalizes it and finds peace. It has also been read on a psychic or religious level and a social level. Banton resisted including it at first, then agreed, and later recalled the band wondering if it was the way to go and thinking they could not even play it. AllMusic called it monumental but not as concise as it might have been, Mojo found it quite preposterous from one viewpoint, and uDiscover a sort of psychodynamic operetta.

The band filmed it for Belgian television in March 1972, with sections filmed separately and spliced, released on the DVD Masters from the Vaults in 2003, which mislabels it 1971. In 1977 and 1978 they played it as a medley with The Sleepwalkers, the January 1978 version (13:41) is on Vital, and Hammill played the medley solo from 1978 to 1980. In March 2013 he announced the band would play it in full every night on the next tour, and a live version is on Merlin Atmos (2015). Setlist.fm counts 14 plays plus 21 as the combined medley. We found no covers or samples.