Guitarist Robert Fripp influenced David Bowie and Peter Gabriel but it’s only the latest revival of his band King Crimson that has brought out his happy side
Happiness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. At least according to Robert Fripp. In the early part of 2012, having given up playing live altogether, he found himself in a curious position. “I began to be happy, personally happy,” he explains.
“But while paradise is a wonderful place to be, nothing happens. My wife told me that I was in danger of becoming dull. So what I’m doing now was partly a personal necessity. When you’re happy, it’s time to pull out the pointed stick.”
Fripp’s response was to try things he might not otherwise have done. Having more or less retired from public life, the first visible manifestation bordered on the perverse: an appearance on TV’s All Star Mr & Mrs, with wife Toyah Wilcox.
The second was the revival of his band King Crimson.
Founded in 1968, Crimson were pack leaders in what became known as progressive rock. The dizzying intensity of their recorded work – a dense fusion of freak-rock, jazz, ambient textures and neoclassical fugues – took the band into places that most others were simply incapable of reaching.
Read the full interview here by Rob Hughes at The Telegraph
eil.com has the most extensive selection of back catalogue material from Robert Fripp, King Crimson and more – find it here.
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