Robert Fripp

If I had to sum up Robert Fripp in one word (and why would I ever have to?) that word would be “discipline”. Not only is it the name of his company and one of the albums of his King Crimson group, it is also the word that best sums up the way he lives his life and practices his craft. And that’s the word he would use to describe what he does on the guitar – not art, not play, not technique, but craft.

Fripp first came to prominence as one of the founding fathers of legendary 60s art-rock band, King Crimson. The earliest incarnation of King Crimson was a sprawling affair, concerned with large, orchestral-scale pieces and concept albums – like many of the art-rock groups of the time (Yes, Genesis, Nektar, etc.). King Crimson disbanded in 1974, only to be retooled and reformed seven years later as an extremely tight and adventurous foursome. That incarnation (my personal favorite) lasted through three albums (Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair) before being retired again, only to come back again ten years later as a double trio (or triple duo – more about this later).

Throughout the stop and start career of the honorable and influential King Crimson, Robert Fripp worked on a number of solo projects and collaborations with other well-chosen musicians (Brian Eno, David Sylvian, and Blondie, among others (he even shows up on a Grid album)), and generally became the thinking man’s guitarist, equally at home with grinding clusters of heavy metal chords and incredibly detailed picking techniques. He even started a legendary school of life lessons disguised as guitar technique training and has released some of his prodigies’ work under the name League of Crafty Guitarists. He is an extraordinary musician and a highly principled intellectual, and has recently formed his own label to help musicians break away from the ongoing creative rape of artists that the music industry sees as business as usual (his biggest, and most understandable, gripe is the practice of “maintaining” (stealing) the copyright of a performer and retaining it in perpetuity – the artists that sign on his Discipline label (technically, Discipline Mobile Global) get to keep the copyright of their material, which is perfectly logical, but (unfortunately) entirely revolutionary). An example of his discipline: after years of perfecting his guitar technique, he decided that he could have a better range on his instrument if he tuned the strings in fifths instead of fourths. Most guitarists would’ve rejected such a notion out of hand, but he sat down, retuned his guitar, and learned to play it again from scratch.

One of my favorite Fripp related incidents happened while I was in high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy. I was sitting in the cafeteria with a bunch of friends, and one girl at our table had recently gotten the first Walkman that any of us had seen. We took turns trying it out and (predictably) yelling, “HEY, THIS SOUNDS GREAT!” to the amusement of our tablemates. One of the people at our table was a wonderfully weird guest dance teacher named Jeff (from the Ozone Dance Theatre, to give you an idea of his trajectory), and he had a tape of Fripp’s “dance” outfit League of Gentlemen (only danceable if you’ve got five legs and they’re all different lengths). One of the tracks started of with the declaration “rock and roll is about fucking” before screaming off into a brutal attack of noise. At the next table was the president of the Arts Academy, a prehistoric corpse named Roger that was so stiff you didn’t even have to make jokes about him, just mentioning his name was enough to get people giggling. In one of his many ill-advised attempts to cozy up with the younger generation, he asked what we were listening to. Jeff smiled slightly, rewound the tape, set the volume to 11, and handed the headset over. Once Roger had his headphones on and gave thumbs up, Jeff hit play, and blew Roger’s brain across the cafeteria.

At any rate, in 1993, Fripp’s beloved mother died, and he embarked on a series of tours featuring what he called “soundscapes” (a term, you may have noticed, that I use frequently in other contexts). These pieces were deeply personal and ranged from melancholy to rage, and grew out of his need to express musically what he was feeling emotionally. I had the opportunity to hear him perform a set of these threnodies, and it was a wondrous experience. The stage was empty save a small folding chair and a self-contained rack of equipment set up in the center of the stage. With an absolute lack of fanfare, Fripp came out on stage, dressed conservatively and carrying his guitar, sat down on the chair, and plugged into the rack of equipment (he, famously, always plays sitting down). Then he would slowly build up a huge, lush harmonic wall of tones. I’m not sure of the specifics, but he seemed to be using the electronics to grab onto and extend some notes, so that he could harmonize with them. Then he’d hold more notes and let others die away. The whole thing had to be very carefully controlled, lest you ended up with a giant screaming wall of throbbing dissonance – which he did do on occasion, just for fun. He admitted that he liked this technique because he could make the most noise possible out of a single guitar. These soundscapes were punctuated by performances by the California Guitar Trio, who would come out intermittently and perform something a little more recognizable. As Fripp writes in his liner notes for the tour: