Not unlike David Bowie or Pablo Picasso, Robert Fripp is an artist who continually evolved, whose work can be conveniently categorized into distinct periods, who was willing to try his hand on many things. Perhaps with greater deliberation and consciousness than either Bowie or Picasso, Fripp sought not only new systems of creativity but new systems of belief.
British writer Pete Tomsett sorts through Fripp’s formidable oeuvre in Fifty Shades of Crimson. The guitarist-composer was widely regarded in rock circles (including his early collaborators) as difficult—especially if the complainers, whether musicians or fans couldn’t keep up with or comprehend his ideas and ideals. As the anti-rock star, Fripp was always the austere figure seated on a stool with a guitar he wielded like a sorcerer’s wand.
As Tomsett dutifully chronicles, Fripp made his first mark on the world with King Crimson, a band that went from 0 to 100 in an instant. They played their first gig at a dinky London club in April 1969. They were heard across the UK on a BBC broadcast in June. In July they played before hundreds of thousands opening for The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park. By the end of that month they were signed to Island Records and in October they released their debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King.
Although that album was considered part of progressive rock’s first wave, it included “21st Century Schizoid Man,” a track that continues to shatter expectations of what rock can be. And unlike many progressive rock bands, Fripp was never content to allow his music to harden into a genre easily pigeonholed. Most prog bands got stuck and Fripp kept moving, expanding the emotional mathematics of his music.
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Some of Tomsett’s most astute observations reflect on Fripp’s good fortune to come of age on the fertile ground of London at an extraordinary moment in cultural history. In 1969, “so much was possible and it was far easier to be original, with so many unexplored avenues to try.”
Nowadays, when every chord has been struck and the avant-garde has nowhere to go, musicians can record and release more easily than ever—but release into “a vast sea of good, bad or indifferent music, and without anyone to curate or filter for us, we are at the mercy of the algorithms and the sales-driven motives of their programmers.”
He wonders “just how any equivalents of Crimson would fare starting out today,” assuming there could be any equivalent.
King Crimson performs Tuesday, Aug. 31 at the Miller High Life Theater.
