Ian McDonald, Founding Member of Foreigner and King Crimson, Dies at 75

variety.com:

Chris Willman Music WriterIan McDonald, a multi-instrumentalist who was part of the founding lineups of the art-rock group King Crimson in the late 1960s and the more commercial Foreigner in the mid-’70s, died Wednesday at age 75.

No cause of death was immediately given but a spokesperson said he “passed away peacefully” surrounded by family at his home in New York City.Among the hits he played on were such platinum Foreigner radio staples as “Hot Blooded,” “Cold as Ice,” “Feels Like the First Time” and “Double Vision.”“I’m quite proud of the fact that the two bands I was a founding member of, King Crimson and Foreigner, are still out there playing,” McDonald said in a 2020 interview with Sound & Vision, even though he had little interest in reunions or rejoining the current iterations of those groups.

McDonald, original Foreigner singer Lou Gramm and some other original members did come back together to play some 40th anniversary shows commemorating the 40th anniversary of that band’s 1977 debut.

With King Crimson, McDonald played keyboard and woodwinds, and added guitar to his performing repertoire when he was part of the startup lineup for Foreigner’s first three albums. “Because I didn’t play guitar at all on the ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ album, sometimes, people are surprised that I do play guitar,” he told Sound & Vision. “Songs like ‘The Court of the Crimson King’ and ‘I Talk to the Wind’ were actually composed on guitar, but  I don’t have a guitar credit on the album since I didn’t play guitar on the album.”McDonald only stayed with King Crimson for one album, the group’s 1969 debut “In the Court of the Crimson King,” but was considered instrumental in establishing the prog-rock sound that still had.