Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp is an English musician, composer, record producer, and author, best known as the guitarist, founder and only constant member of the progressive rock band King Crimson. He has worked extensively as a session musician and collaborator, notably with David Bowie, Blondie, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Daryl Hall, the Roches, Talking Heads, and David Sylvian. He also composed the startup sound of Windows Vista, in collaboration with Tucker Martine and Steve Ball. His discography includes contributions to more than 700 official releases.
His compositions often feature unusual asymmetric rhythms, influenced by classical and folk traditions. His innovations include a tape delay system known as "Frippertronics" and New Standard Tuning.
Fripp is married to English singer and actress Toyah Willcox.
Early life
Robert Fripp was born in Wimborne Minster, a town in Dorset, England, the second child of a working-class family. His mother Edith was from a Welsh mining family; Fripp considers himself to be half Welsh. Her earnings from working at the Bournemouth Records Office allowed his father, Arthur Henry Fripp to start a business as an estate agent. In 1957, at age eleven, Fripp received a guitar for Christmas from his parents and recalled, "Almost immediately I knew that this guitar was going to be my life". He then took guitar lessons from Kathleen Gartell and Don Strike; Elvis Presley's guitarist Scotty Moore inspired Fripp to play rock and roll, moving on to traditional jazz at thirteen and modern jazz at fifteen. Fripp has cited jazz musicians Charlie Parker and Charles Mingus as musical influences during this time.In 1961, the fifteen-year-old Fripp joined his first band, the Ravens, which also included Gordon Haskell on bass. After they split in the following year, Fripp concentrated on his O-level studies and joined his father's firm as a junior negotiator. At this point, he intended to study estate management and, eventually, take over his father's business. However, at seventeen, Fripp decided to become a professional musician. He became the guitarist in the jazz outfit The Douglas Ward Trio, playing in the Chewton Glen hotel in New Milton, followed by a stint in the rock and roll band The League of Gentlemen, which included two former Ravens members. For a time, he gave guitar lessons to a local Wimborne friend, Al Stewart, who went on to achieve fame as a singer-songwriter. Much later, when Fripp was asked if any of his guitar students had found success, he replied, "Only one of them ever made it, and that was Al Stewart, and he did it by ignoring everything I ever tried to teach him.”
In 1965, Fripp left the group to attend Bournemouth College, where he studied economics, economic history, and political history for his A-levels. In February 1965, Fripp went to see the Duke Ellington Orchestra, an experience which moved him deeply. He subsequently spent three further years playing light jazz in the Majestic Dance Orchestra at Bournemouth's Majestic Hotel. During this time, Fripp met musicians that he would collaborate with in his career, including John Wetton, Richard Palmer-James, and Greg Lake. At age 21, going back home from college late at night, Fripp tuned on to Radio Luxembourg, where he heard the last moments of the Beatles' "A Day in the Life". "Galvanized" by the experience, he went on to listen to the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Béla Bartók's string quartets, Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony, Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. Many years later, Fripp would recall that "although all the dialects are different, the voice was the same... I knew I couldn't say no". As a band leader, Fripp pointed out that Miles Davis and Duke Ellington inspired him to seek "constant change".
Career
1967–1974: Giles, Giles and Fripp and King Crimson
In 1967, Fripp responded to an advertisement placed by Bournemouth-born brothers Peter and Michael Giles, who wanted to work with a singing organist. Though Fripp was not what they sought, his audition with them was a success and the trio relocated to London and became Giles, Giles and Fripp. Their only studio album, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp, was released in 1968. Despite the recruitment of two further members – singer Judy Dyble and multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald – Fripp felt that he was outgrowing the eccentric pop approach favoured by Peter Giles, preferring the more ambitious compositions being written by McDonald, and the band broke up in 1968.Almost immediately, Fripp, McDonald and Michael Giles formed the first lineup of King Crimson in mid-1968, recruiting Fripp's old Bournemouth College friend Greg Lake as lead singer and bassist and McDonald's writing partner Peter Sinfield as lyricist, light show designer and general creative consultant. King Crimson's debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King, was released in late 1969 to great success: drawing on rock, jazz and European folk/classical music ideas, it is now regarded as one of the most influential albums in the history of progressive rock. The band was tipped for stardom, but, due to growing musical differences between Fripp on one side and Giles and McDonald on the other, broke up after its first American tour in 1970. A despondent Fripp offered to leave if it would allow King Crimson to survive; however, Giles and McDonald had independently decided that the band's music was "more Fripp's than theirs" and that it would be better if they were the ones to leave.
During the recording of the band's second album In the Wake of Poseidon, Greg Lake departed to form Emerson, Lake and Palmer with Keith Emerson of the Nice and Carl Palmer of Atomic Rooster. King Crimson issued two more albums, Lizard and Islands, with Fripp and Sinfield the only constants in a regularly changing lineup variously including Gordon Haskell, woodwind player Mel Collins, drummers Andy McCulloch and Ian Wallace and future Bad Company bassist Boz Burrell, in addition to a palette of guest players. Fripp was listed as the sole composer of the band's music during this time, which built on the first album's blueprint but progressed further into jazz-rock and free jazz while also taking form from Sinfield's esoteric lyrical and mythological concepts.
In 1971, Fripp ousted Sinfield and took over de facto leadership of King Crimson. From this point onwards, Fripp would be the only constant member of the band, which in turn would be defined primarily by his compositional and conceptual ideas. With avant-garde percussionist Jamie Muir, violinist David Cross, former Family bassist and singer John Wetton and former Yes drummer Bill Bruford now in the ranks, King Crimson produced three more albums of innovative and increasingly experimental rock, shedding members as they progressed: beginning with Larks' Tongues in Aspic, progressing with Starless and Bible Black after Muir's departure and culminating in Red after Cross was fired. Fripp formally disbanded the group in 1974, in what eventually turned out to be merely the first in a regular series of long hiatuses and further transformations.
1971–1985: Collaborations, side projects, and solo career
Fripp pursued side projects during King Crimson's less active periods. He worked with Keith Tippett on projects far from rock music, playing with and producing Centipede's Septober Energy in 1971 and Ovary Lodge in 1973. During this period he also worked with Van der Graaf Generator, playing on their albums H to He, Who Am the Only One and Pawn Hearts. He produced Matching Mole's Matching Mole's Little Red Record in 1972. Prior to forming the Larks-era KC, he collaborated on a spoken-word album with a woman he described as "a witch", but the resulting Robert Fripp & Walli Elmlark: The Cosmic Children of Rock was never officially released.With Brian Eno, Fripp recorded ' in 1972, and Evening Star in 1974. These experimented with several avant-garde musical techniques that were new to rock. On "The Heavenly Music Corporation" from ', Fripp used a delay system using two modified Revox A77 reel-to-reel tape machines. The technique went on to play a central role in Fripp's later work, and became known as "Frippertronics".
In 1973, Fripp performed the guitar solo on "Baby's on Fire" from Eno's solo album Here Come the Warm Jets. In 1975, Fripp and Eno played live shows in Europe, and Fripp also contributed guitar solos to Eno's 1975 album Another Green World.
Fripp started what was intended as a permanent sabbatical from his musical career in 1975, during which he studied at J. G. Bennett's International Academy for Continuous Education, becoming interested in the mystical and philosophical ideas of Bennett's teacher George Gurdjieff. He returned to musical work the following year as a session guitarist on Peter Gabriel's debut solo album, released in 1977. Fripp toured with Gabriel to support the album, but used the pseudonym "Dusty Rhodes" and concealed himself on stage.
Fripp also produced and played on Gabriel's second album in 1978. "Robert is particularly skilful at keeping things fresh, and I like that a lot," Gabriel enthused. "I was very interested in Robert's experimental side; that corresponded exactly to what I wanted to do on this second record… There are two solos: one on 'On the Air' and the other on 'White Shadow'. And then he plays on 'Exposure'. He gives the colour to this piece, being fifty per cent responsible for its construction. And he also plays classical guitar here and there. He's a musician I admire a lot, because he's one of the only ones to mix discipline and madness with so much talent."
In 1977, Fripp played on David Bowie's album "Heroes" at Eno's invitation. Fripp soon collaborated with Daryl Hall on Sacred Songs.
During this period, Fripp began working on solo material, with contributions from poet/lyricist Joanna Walton and several other musicians, including Eno, Gabriel, and Hall, as well as Peter Hammill, Jerry Marotta, Phil Collins, Tony Levin and Terre Roche. This material eventually became his first solo album, Exposure, released in 1979, followed by the Frippertronics tour in the same year.
While living in New York, Fripp contributed to albums and live performances by Blondie and Talking Heads, and produced The Roches' first and third albums, which featured several of Fripp's characteristic guitar solos. A second set of sessions with Bowie produced Scary Monsters , and he collaborated with Gabriel again on his third solo album. With Blondie, Fripp appeared live on stage at the Hammersmith Odeon on 12 January 1980, participating in a cover version of Bowie's Heroes.
In 1980, Fripp would release God Save the Queen/Under Heavy Manners, a project that saw two different musical approaches to Frippertronics on one LP. The "A" side of the record, titled "God Save the Queen" attempted what Fripp referred to as "pure Frippertronics" which is "where Frippertronics is used alone." The "B" side of the record, titled "Under Heavy Manners" featured a collaboration with bassist Busta Jones, drummer Paul Duskin, and David Byrne of Talking Heads. The sounds of this side of the record featured what Fripp called "Discotronics" which was defined as "that musical experience resulting at the interstice of Frippertronics and disco."
Concurrent to this, Fripp would assemble what he called a "second-division touring new wave instrumental dance band" under the name League of Gentlemen, with bassist Sara Lee, keyboardist Barry Andrews and drummer Johnny Elichaoff. Elichaoff was later replaced by Kevin Wilkinson. The LOG toured for the duration of 1980.
In 1985 he produced the album Journey to Inaccessible Places by classical pianist Elan Sicroff, released on the Editions E.G. label.