At sixteen he enrolled at South East Essex Technical College in Dagenham to study Graphic Design, where in 1964 he met Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher, who went on to form the band Crass.
[3][4] After graduating from South East Essex Technical College in 1967, for the next ten years King worked for a succession of London advertising agencies,[5] first as a graphic designer and later as an art director,[6] including for the firms DDB Worldwide (Doyle Dane Bernbach) and Blackburn Daley.
[7] Originally a logo for Rimbaud's pamphlet ‘Christ’s Reality Asylum and Les Pommes de Printemps’,[8] the symbol was designed as a circular piece that seemed to include a Christian cross, a snake, the Union Jack, and a swastika.
King has said the symbol was inspired by Japanese family crests and says it was created as “a reflection of Pen’s anger at what he felt were these destructive aspects of Christianity.”[9] During this time he also performed with EXIT at the International Carnival of Experimental Sound in 1972.
[10] In 1977 King moved to the SoHo neighborhood of New York, where he became part of the burgeoning Punk / No Wave scene, first as the drummer for The Gynecologists, leaving to form Arsenal (later known as Sleeping Dogs and Brain Rust) with Charlie Nash and Rhys Chatham in 1978.