Robert Fripp: From King Crimson to Guitar Craft

Most rock stars aren’t worth writing about. They're not up there playing music because they’ve got a lot of interesting things to say. Otherwise they’d be writers or public speakers, wouldn’t they?

But Robert Fripp, founder and leader of the band King Crimson through several incarnations from 1969 to the present, student of the mystic Gurdjieff, inventor of “The Drive to 1981” and other three-year plans, founder of the Guitar Craft workshops, small, mobile, intelligent unit — Robert Fripp is different. He’s, you know, an intellectual. “Me and a book is a party,” he says, “me and a book and a cup of coffee is an orgy.” He puts out solo albums with songs on them in 17/8 time. Leading rock luminaries - like Eno and show more Bowie - call on him to ‘spray burning guitar’ over their songs, yet he’d just as soon write articles about the history of stereo mixing for Musician magazine.

I find the guy quite interesting, in short, and his music three parts fascinating, one part awe-inspiring, and one part extremely irritating. And he’s a short bloke from Wimborne, Dorset who sounds like rather like Arthur C. Clarke. That makes it even better.

But let’s talk about the book. Eric Tamm is an academic musicologist, but don’t let that put you off. He’s also a rock musician, and was a student at one of Fripp’s Guitar Craft workshops. In this book, he does three things — no, make that four:

1. He gives a partial biography of Fripp (who is disinclined to spill out personal details).

2. He goes chronologically through the albums Fripp’s been involved in, from King Crimson to the League of Gentlemen to ventures with Brian Eno to solo efforts, treating some briefly and others in depth.

3. He takes us through the twists and turns of Fripp’s thinking, particularly after he disbanded King Crimson for the first time in 1974 and spent ten months attending the Fifth Course at the Sherborne Centre of the International Society for Continuous Education, founded by J.G. Bennett, a student of Gurdjieff’s who was, in Fripp’s words, “living proof that if a creepy, uptight Englishman, with severe emotional problems, could become a human being through dint of effort, so could I.” What Fripp learned (experienced?) there has been in the background of his work ever since, and comes out most notably in the Guitar Craft workshops, in which he teaches young guitarists a new way of tuning, thinking about, and playing acoustic guitar.

4. He describes his time at a Guitar Craft workshop led by Fripp. It sounds a bit like encounter group therapy — it’s fascinating, but scary; you feel most of the time that you’re making a major breakthrough, and then some of the time it feels like it’s all a con, or maybe you’re being brainwashed. What I’ve heard from Guitar Craft graduates sounds technically impressive but empty to me — but then, I’ve never liked Bach, either. The workshop certainly made a big impact on Eric Tamm, and this is the best part of the book, because his feelings about Fripp and his music come to the fore, and the academic musicology is set to one side for a while.

At one point, Tamm remarks that Fripp has, by becoming a teacher, turned being an egotistical smart-ass into his greatest strength. Fripp may be as full of ego and delusion as any other guitar hero, but it’s interesting ego and delusion, and it makes good reading.

(Review originally written for Aotearapa) show less

[Originally published in EST magazine, 1991]

This is Tamm's second book, his first being a very comprehensive if slightly academic look at the work of Brian Eno. Released from the constraints of a musicology degree, in this volume he feels better able to add the personal touch, avoid some of the more tediously academic dissection, and stop apologising for the validity of "low culture" music as a topic for discussion.

Fripp's music has varied from the unlistenable (both through sheer banality, rarely, and through sheer esotericism, frequently) to the sublime, but it has maintained a high standard for innovation. Basically a rock guitarist, he's taken the influences of minimalism, jazz and ethnic musics, and used them to create a highly show more individual, highly complex range of his own music. Highlights from his long career include his two classic albums of looped and manipulated guitar noise recorded with Brian Eno, the intricate contrapuntal rhythms of the second King Crimson band (especially on the album Discipline), and some of his solo work from the late seventies and early eighties, such as Exposure and God Save the King. Whether playing horribly fast series of plucked notes on the electric guitar or turning it's output into long, stretched out tones using his tape-manipulating Frippertronics system, there's a lot of worthwhile music there.

The book reflects this, suffering mainly from a tendency to idolise Fripp. Some of the academic rigour of the Eno book might actually have helped matters here. But in return it scores highly by presenting the most thorough examination in print of the influence of Russian "spiritual" "guru" Gurdjieff on Fripp, and how this has affected Fripp's approach to guitar tuition.

For fans, an essential purchase, but it may well contain plenty of interest for the more casual reader as well. show less