“Constant change”: The two idols who inspired the approach of Robert Fripp
While Robert Fripp may have recently garnered attention with his bizarro Sunday Lunch series alongside wife, Toyah Willcox, his contributions extend far beyond their eccentric covers. Despite his penchant for quirky antics, including pulling funny faces and donning peculiar attire, it’s important not to overlook Fripp’s mastery of his craft. As the leader of King Crimson and a key figure in David Bowie’s journey, Fripp has left an unforgettable mark on the music industry.
Of course, Fripp is inextricable from the outlandish, laughable and mostly forgettable music of the divisive prog-rock era. Still, this is a touch erroneous. He and King Crimson always stood apart from the genre to which they are closely tied due to the quality and type of sonics they conceived. When the rest of the supposed movement was deeply ensconced in fantasy realms and the fallacy of their genius, the London band were conceiving an increasingly complex form of art rock that took the meaning of cerebral to new climes.
Whether it 1969’s storied In the Court of the Crimson King or 1981’s Discipline, Fripp devised many fantastic moments. The latter is particularly significant for the band and music, as it saw them return after seven long years away with a new lineup comprised of Fripp, longtime drummer Bill Bruford, and fresh faces Adrian Belew and Tony Levin. This chapter saw the times and technology finally catch up with Fripp’s boundary-pushing ideas.
This rejuvenated iteration conflated genres more complexly than ever before, as typified by the perennially grooving ‘Thela Hun Ginjeet’, opening a chapter that then produced 1982’s Beat and 1984’s Three of a Perfect Pair. Fripp and the group’s triumph in this chapter was apparent to all, and it inspired everyone from Les Claypool and Primus to The Mars Volta.
Giving a taste of how important Fripp and the group are in a broader sense, many punk acts have cited their importance despite being ostensibly prog, including Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, Black Flag, Henry Rollins and Bad Religion.
A total innovator who devised a new standard tuning and a unique tape delay system, it makes sense that Fripp draws from across the musical timeline for inspiration. Furthermore, in King Crimson’s early days, the convergence of classical, jazz, and orchestral music, as found on their 1969 debut album, often led to comparisons with The Beatles. This was thanks to their intricate efforts on albums such as Sgt. Pepper’s and the fact that King Crimson’s third studio effort, Lizard, contains the song ‘Happy Family’, which lyricist Peter Sinfield conceived as an allegory about the break-up of the Fab Four.
Fripp has, on several occasions, mentioned The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s influence, as well as other efforts by innovative contemporaries such as Jimi Hendrix. However, it was not acts such as these that inspired his overarching approach to music, which treasures continual evolution above everything else. That was guided by two jazz greats, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington, figures who wrote their own handbooks years before it was cool to do so.
When speaking to Rolling Stone in 2019, Fripp outlined how Davis and Ellington, not contemporaries such as The Beatles, inspired him to strive for “constant change”.
“Going back to a 1969 interview, Miles said he looked on his need for constant change as a curse,” the King Crimson man explained. “However, Miles, along with Duke Ellington, in terms of looking for models of how you strategize with a band, have been there constantly in the background for me. Not the Beatles as a construct for a group, not Led Zeppelin, not the Floyd. My guides have always been Miles and Duke.”