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Robert Fripp is an unique who all the time brings one thing new to the instrument and will get one thing fully distinctive out of it in return.
Rising to prominence within the late ‘60s, when Eric Clapton was deemed a deity and blues guitar was dominating the charts, Fripp separated himself from the pack with a left-field approach to songwriting and what could be achieved on guitar. His talents earned him praise from high-profile supporters, with no less than Jimi Hendrix once hailing King Crimson as the best band in the world.
But a have a look at Fripp’s early feedback about guitar and guitarists reveals that he wasn’t a lot of a diplomat when it got here to his friends.
“I’ve never really listened to guitarists, because they’ve never really interested me,” he advised Guitar Player in 1974.
It was a 12 months that yielded Starless and Bible Black and Red, two of King Crimson’s landmark albums. Fripp was on the high of his recreation.
At that point, Clapton — following the demise of Cream and subsequent rise and fall of Blind Faith and Derek & the Dominos — was two albums into his solo profession. Jimi Hendrix was 4 years gone, however a raft of stellar gamers had risen to take his place as guitar gods for the Seventies
Even so, Fripp had little to say about his instrument’s lofty place on the earth of in style music.
“I think the guitar is a pretty feeble instrument,” he continued. “Virtually nothing interests me about the guitar.”
I noticed Cream stay as soon as and I believed they have been fairly terrible. Clapton’s work since, I believe, has been excessively tedious.”
— Robert Fripp
Fripp’s contrarian views on the instrument have been formed in childhood, the place he was seduced by “the early Sun records with Scotty Moore” earlier than he found conventional jazz on the age of 15. By then, he was now not going with the cultural currents, a bias that helped him forge an id of his personal quite than one based mostly on earlier genres and gamers. .
“I haven’t been influenced by Hendrix and Clapton in the way that most people would say it,” he defined. “I don’t think Hendrix was a guitarist. I very much doubt if he was interested in guitar playing as such. He was just a person who had something to say and got on and said it.”
Fripp had no equally form phrases for Clapton.
“Clapton I think is mostly quite banal, although he did some exciting things earlier in his life with Mayall. I saw Cream live once and I thought they were quite awful. Clapton’s work since, I think, has been excessively tedious.”
Such feedback come as no shock to Steven Wilson. As the remixer behind a number of King Crimson anniversary reissues, he says Fripp’s contrarian nature has usually put him at odds with these round him.
“Every single Crimson record that’s ever come out was a battle,” Wilson states. “A battle between Robert and the rest of the band in some cases, a battle between Robert and the record company or the management or finances or touring schedules. Everything was against them, like the press telling them they were washed up.”
Rather than buckle to the whims of mainstream audiences, Fripp doubled down on his distinctive strategy.
“I learned that a lot of Crimson records were similar to jazz and avant-garde jazz in the British jazz movement in the early ’70s,” Wilson continues. “You realize that what made those records thrilling is that fact that the band were flying by the seat of their pants a lot of the time. The music was on the verge of falling apart in some respects.”
It’s fascinating, then, that the one guitarist who escaped Fripp’s crosshairs throughout his 1974 GP interview was a guitarist that equally challenged the established order along with his music: Jeff Beck, who was making waves on the time along with his album Blow by Blow.
“Jeff Beck’s guitar playing I can appreciate as good fun,” Fripp mentioned. “It’s where the guitarist and ‘poser-cum-ego tripper-cum-rock star-cum entertainer’ becomes all involved in the package. It’s good fun, it’s quite enjoyable, very exciting. I wish him all the best of luck.”
As the blues gave technique to shred mania within the Nineteen Eighties, Eddie Van Halen grew to become the brand new Clapton, the brand new poster boy of the electrical guitar, and the following participant that each different guitarist aspired to be like.
Reflecting on the influence that had on the guitar scene final 12 months, Wolfgang Van Halen theorized that his Dad “kind of ruined the musical landscape” throughout that interval.
“Because,” he explains, “instead of everybody wanting to find out who they are, they wanted to be that.”
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