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Robert Fripp: ‘My videos with Toyah upset some King Crimson fans’

Robert Fripp reveals how lockdown changed him
Robert Fripp reveals how lockdown changed him

Robert Fripp starts the day with a cold shower. “Your body doesn’t want to go into a cold shower, so you’re saying to your body, do as you're told.” By the same principle, the 76-year-old guitarist, composer and leader of progressive rock band King Crimson dresses immaculately whatever the occasion.

“When I enter my day, I do so with intention and set myself a standard,” he explains in his warm Dorset accent, looking dapper in a tailored three-piece suit, seated in a regally decorated room in the home in Pershore, Worcestershire he shares with his wife, singer Toyah Wilcox. “I also accept my wife’s suggestions,” he adds, proffering a voluptuous neckwear. “This is a tie my wife bought me.”

Fripp is a man of discipline, a world-renowned virtuoso who practises his instrument every day. He is incredulous to the point of being offended that anyone might expect otherwise.

“Would you ask an Olympic athlete not to practice? King Crimson guitar parts are, if you like, the Olympics of rock guitar, they're phenomenally difficult and require two to four hours a day practising. So in response to the question, do you really need to practise? The answer is yeah, you really need to f__ing practise, all the f__ing time!”

Fripp is a master of releasing the F-bomb in bursts of tightly controlled outrage, as musicians who have worked with him could no doubt testify. A legendarily demanding taskmaster, he has presided over multiple everchanging line-ups of King Crimson since 1969.

It is a band whose music requires world beating virtuosity, blending classical, jazz, folk, heavy metal, gamelan, industrial and electro elements across pieces with outrageously complex time signatures and long passages of sustained communal improvisation. Jimi Hendrix once called them the best group in the world, Pete Townshend, David Bowie and Kurt Cobain were all devotees, and Kanye West sampled them for his 2010 single Power. Now an extraordinary documentary, In the Court of the Crimson King, depicts past and present members talking about their struggles to maintain Fripp’s standards in the face of tetchiness, rudeness and criticism.

Bassist Trey Gunn (who served 9 years, from 1993-2004) likens being in Crimson to “a low-grade infection. You’re not really sick, but you don’t feel well either.” Guitarist and singer Adrian Belew (who came and went over a 28-year period from 1981 to 2009) claims the stress made his hair fall out.

Fripp remains unrepentant. “If our primary aim is to serve the music, everything follows from that,” he insists. “How do you tell a musician they have a blind spot, that their arrogance is so deeply ingrained that they get in the way of the unfolding of the music? Well, over the years, I've employed different strategies, sometimes a few pokes, sometimes shining a torch, on one or two occasions a kick.”

Yet at the root of this is a profound sense of suffering Fripp himself experiences when the music fails to achieve its potential. “Perfection is not my aim. Perfection is impossible, but we may aim to serve perfection. Dealing with characters who favour their own personal interests above what is possible, it's heart-breaking. It's like going to Holy Communion and someone comes up and pisses on the altar.”

King Crimson performing on Top of the Pops in 1970, with Robert Fripp on the right - Alamy
King Crimson performing on Top of the Pops in 1970, with Robert Fripp on the right - Alamy

The documentary focuses on the most recent line up of King Crimson on a 50th anniversary tour, with Fripp presiding over proceedings like a stern if benevolent headmaster. Recruited from a King Crimson cover band, singer/guitarist Jakko Jaksyk nervously reveals he has a dog named Fripp. Drummer Gavin Harrison reassures him “You’re irreplaceable. Just like the last bloke.” By turns comical and melancholy, it may be the most revealing film about working life in a band since Spinal Tap.

Roadies grumble about moving heavy gear, musicians fret about mistakes (“My finger slipped” admits Mel Collins, as if uttering his last words) as they slog from place to place, their labours rewarded by moments of musical transcendence. I think it is fair to say, however, that Fripp himself is not overly enthusiastic. “You missed everything,” he is shown telling director Toby Amies at the end. “Thus rendering this ineffectual, and of little use or interest at all.”

He is more measured in his assessment today, albeit couching comments in forensically precise and often obtuse language, carefully laying out principles for each statement like a lawyer trying to describe the ineffable. He agreed to make the film because “there are so many misconceptions about King Crimson, I had hoped for an objective view, or at least impartial insight, that could perhaps refute, confirm, inform or redirect my own views and experiences.” The upshot is that he thinks the film offers a “grown up portrait of the lives of mature working players” but that it failed to “tell me what King Crimson is.”

King Crimson's first line-up, with Robert Fripp on the left - Michael Ochs Archives
King Crimson's first line-up, with Robert Fripp on the left - Michael Ochs Archives

That seems a curious question for Crimson’s key creator, but it lies at the centre of a lifelong, quasi-mystical quest, tied up with Fripp’s dedication to George Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way theories of consciousness. “The origin of music is within the divine, music moves from love. The primary assumption in the western approach is that musicians make music, which I find preposterous. For me, music makes the musician.” As Fripp speaks, he sits between two mirrors, carefully placed so that his head seems to repeat into infinity, a quality many fans would also detect in his guitar work.

It may be difficult to equate such intense, mystical seriousness about music with the videos of him japing about with Toyah and performing comical covers of rock standards on YouTube during lockdown. These sometimes sexy, funny videos were posted as Toyah and Robert’s Sunday Lunch, in which Fripp plays hard rock guitar with a straight face while Toyah cavorts licentiously. “At the beginning of lockdown, my wife handed me a tutu and a pair of her black tights and took me to the end of the garden and put on Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. My wife insists performers have a responsibility to lift people's spirits in hard times. Do I respect that? My answer is yes, completely and utterly I do.”

Fripp gets visibly emotional talking about this, fighting to hold back tears. “We’re keenly aware of what people have experienced during lockdown. I mean, banged up in a small apartment while your mother's dying and you can't go to the funeral. My wife said to me, if all we've done in two years is help one person through their bad time, it's all worth it. So I'm not sure if that meets a criteria of serving what is highest in music, but for me, it's a real undertaking that I respect. And I am quite prepared to strap on a guitar and rock out to a classic riff in order to achieve it.” He pauses for comic timing. “But it upset some King Crimson fans.”

Upsetting fans is par for the course for Fripp, who has been known to have people thrown out of concerts, or shut them down, particularly for the sin of filming on mobile phones. “When someone holds up a camera, it is moving attention away from the performance and puncturing the energy within that contained atmosphere. I can give you the example of King Crimson, London Palladium, 2018, two hours and 10 minutes into the performance: Click, click, click. And what I felt was f__k you, f__k you, f__k you. So my show died. My body stayed on stage, but anything real available to guide it was gone. We’d been killed off.”

Fripp, you may have ascertained, does not suffer fools gladly. And that particularly goes for interviewers. “I gave myself permission decades ago not to censor my intelligence. When I'm asked dumb f__ing questions, which indicate the person asking has their head placed so far from the sunshine that they will never get to see the light, how do I deal with that? Sometimes, politely, sometimes more directly. How does that go down, Neil?”

He smiles mischievously. “At age 76, why should I give a f__k? This is my life. And do I know, in my experience, what is real and possible and available within the act of musical performance. F__k yes!”


In the Court of King Crimson is screened in cinemas today (Wednesday 19 October) for 1 Day only @ Everyman Cinemas. 24 hour Live Stream Event and special Q&A Sat 22 Oct https://nugs.net/kingcrimson