Trivia / U.K.

• One-Hit Wonder: "Nothing to Lose" was their only chart entry, reaching #67 in the UK.
• What Could Have Been: The band's earliest incarnation was a trio with John Wetton, Bill Bruford, and Rick Wakeman. That was before execs at Wakeman's label, A&M Records, put the kibosh on the idea.
  • Wetton said in his 1997 biography, My Own Time:
  Wetton: Some of the music we were playing was excellent. But Rick didn't want it to happen, and when there's only three of you and one person doesn't want it to happen, then it isn't going to fly. It's something that Bill has constantly downplayed, and I've never heard Rick talk about it at all, but it happened. We spent six weeks of our lives doing it and even had photographs done on the set of a James Bond movie. One of the songs I took out of it was "Thirty Years." We played that vaguely. One of the songs that Bill took in was "Beelzebub," and he took it out with him again. And apart from that, I don't know of any of the material that's ever surfaced, but then I haven't listened to that many Rick Wakeman albums."
  • Bruford said in a 1980 interview:
  Bruford: "It was [Wakeman's] vague suggestion that we should go and rehearse for a weekend — which I agreed to, and tried some of my tunes out with John Wetton and Rick. The next thing we knew, we were all in a group together, you know. Then he ran away and hid for about a week, while politicians thought about it. You know, could their star, the A&M Records star, be seen to hang out with Wetton and Bruford?
  • Bruford also wrote in his 1988 instructional book When In Doubt, Roll!:
  Bruford: Mercifully, A&M Records was unwilling to let its 'star,' Wakeman, walk off with a used, slightly soiled King Crimson rhythm section, and the idea failed.
• A reunion album was announced in 1997 that would be separate from the U.K. moniker. Called The Legacy, it touted the Wetton/Jobson/Bruford/Holdsworth lineup's return with guest appearances by Steve Hackett, Tony Levin, and It Bites frontman Francis Dunnery. The idea was canned shortly after when Wetton withdrew his involvement. Bruford, already busy in King Crimson's "double-trio" lineup with Levin, brushed off rumors of his involvement in a series of interviews throughout 1995 before the announcement.
  Bruford: It's just a thing we did for Eddie.