Robert Fripp
“My introduction to Robert Fripp would have been with In The Court Of The Crimson King and 21st Century Schizoid Man. All the sixth-formers had that album, as did my cousin. For me as a kid it was extraordinary – it allowed me to think outside of the pop box. It was so diverse, unfathomable; I couldn’t get in there, I couldn’t see through its intricacies. But it had such a great rock energy, and it showed me that there was so much more to music than I thought.
“That first Crimson album is the beginning of prog rock. We all knew
there was something intricate beginning to happen, and that the middle classes were being satiated musically with early Pink Floyd. Here was something that was a little more difficult, a little more intellectual. Before, rock music was a very workingclass folk music. Fripp then grabbed that and took it to darker, even furtherout places on the edges of the universe, mixing it with jazz and with classical.
“Fripp was taking the psychedelia of Floyd, the Syd stuff, playing around with loops and tapes. I saw Pete Townshend recently. He said when he’d been to Pink Floyd’s very first UFO gig that Syd had Echorecs on stage with him, getting this double tape loop
“He’s the godfather of prog rock, but he also helped psychedelia become progressive rock, and helped glam become ambient.”
going, which is what Fripp ended up doing with Brian Eno.
“Robert Fripp has never stayed in this snooty University Challenge area of music, where no one else is ever allowed to come in, or turned his nose up at anything that was going on in the other music worlds. He’s been totally willing – probably with the influence of Eno – to come into pop, but never to bend for it, to say: ‘I’ll give you a straight blues riff on this one.’ He has always brought his beauty and his wonderfully intricate sound into other pop genres. Obviously, I fell in love with “Heroes” by David Bowie, and that wonderful sustaining guitar that he is very famous for, and Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) later on.
“Fripp turned up the weird. His playing has an exotic, erotic quality. That sustained drone that we associate with Eastern music but also with old British folk music and the hurdy-gurdy. This beautiful, ambient, abstract guitar playing, using odd tunings and tape delays that became a sound that everyone craved in the 70s. It bounced out of the wonderful solo on Eno’s Baby’s On Fire or that wonderful first side of ambience of [Fripp & Eno’s] No Pussyfooting. Then he went as pop as you can get, playing on Blondie’s Parallel Lines and that wonderful solo album he produced for Daryl Hall [Sacred Songs].
“Here’s a very interesting, strange, left-field man, who doesn’t mind marrying himself to pop music. I mean, he literally did that with Toyah. I’m slightly afraid of him. There are certain musicians in the world that we’re all afraid of, and I think Fripp’s one of them. I don’t think I’d ever have the nerve to introduce myself to him, and I’m sure he’s never heard of Spandau Ballet. He’s never been afraid to challenge himself and challenge music in general.
“Here’s the guy who’s the godfather of prog rock, but he also helped psychedelia become progressive rock, he also helped glam become ambient with his work with Eno and Bowie. In that sense he brought a glam pop star [Bowie] into a darker, stranger landscape. Everything was on a slightly higher plane, we were out of reality here – we weren’t singing about waking up that morning and his baby was gone. Bowie’s lyrics were matched by Fripp’s strangeness on guitar.
“I don’t know all of his catalogue intimately, because it is so vast, and pretty much all encompassing, but if I had to pick my favourite Robert
Fripp song ever it would be Starless from Red. That melody he falls upon, no matter how many times that I listen to it, it’s always heart-breaking. It’s always full of yearning, an absolutely gorgeous riff.”