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Robert Fripp’s Extracurricular Activities

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Robert Fripp dresses like a building society manager and is as smutty as a navvy. He is King Crimson and he has kept himself busy in The League Of Gentlemen and a series of collaborative projects, most notably with Brian Eno. However, he also ‘guests’ his coruscating guitar on other people’s work, sometimes uncredited. The majority of this extracurricular activity was between 1974 and 1981 when he broke up his band but he has continued to indulge throughout his career. The most famous, of course, is his contribution to Bowie albums but there are loads.

Inspired by sarah’s inclusion of The Roches singing The Hammond Song, I’m putting together a playlist in an attempt to prove to a relative civilian that Fripp is one of the greatest dirty, filthy guitarists of all time.

Any notable examples? I’ve provided a gentle example in Blondie’s Fade Away And Radiate.

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        • On Eno’s “Another Green World”, Fripp plays on three of the tracks.
          Stylistically fairly different on each one but all recognizably him.
          On St. Elmo’s Fire you might at first think the recording of the guitar part had been speeded-up. It isn’t, he really is picking that fast with some kind of fuzz tone.
          On I’ll Come Running a more languid, lyrical approach with sustain is used.
          On Golden Hours it’s fast rhythmic playing of muted notes.

      • I think that would have been something to see, based on the collaborations that we have…although I can understand that Sylvian might not have been willing or able to immerse his own sensibility in the Crimsom id…

      • I know my fellow Sylvian fan our man in Vancouver won’t agree with me at all, but the collaborations with Fripp (as well as the first two Japan albums) are the only Sylvian records I don’t like. I don’t hear Sylvian’s influence in them.

        • The live ‘Damage’ is much better than the studio album which came before. Looser. Jean the Birdman in particular, where Fripp just sticks to the arpeggio stuff. Think it might be my favourite Sylvian track, despite all the other lps I’ve bought after your mentions of him on this site.

  6. Great idea for a thread. Many times I’ve been impressed with a guitar part on something, then looked it up to realise it’s Mr Fripp. I’ll be watching this thread for ones that might have passed me by.

  8. Robert added to several Judy Dyble recordings from 2006 onwards. Here is one, with Bob obvious in the second half. Ian MacDonald from Crimso also there on sax/flute.

  12. I got Exposure secondhand on vinyl recently. I played it a few times. There’s a few good things on it I guess. I think I’m currently in the position that his best work is contributions to other peoples’ records.

  13. ‘Minor Man’ from the League of Gentlemen. Is the best track on the lp. His guitar snarls away through it, with Barry Andrews’ keyboards at the threatening end of the rinky-dink spectrum he employed. I saw them live, and can’t remember if Sarah Lee did the vocals that Danielle Dax? does on the record. I do remember that their sound was the best of any band who played at DIHE Weymouth, and also the loudest.

  15. Can someone explain all of the above to me please.
    I’m not a guitarist but I do like some guitar playing.
    What I don’t understand (or care for) is all that kind of squally, disjointed, distorted guitar playing – and how you can tell whether it’s any good or not.
    I would have thought that anyone with the right equipment could make the same sounds.
    For reference – the kind of guitar playing I like is epitomised by Reggie Young.

    • Fripp is an unusual guitar player. He is naturally left-handed but plays right. He isn’t influenced by The Blues, more avant garde Jazz and Classical. He claims to be tone deaf and packing in a sense of rhythm. Much of what he does is noise and he exploits equipment with enthusiasm. However, he is a strong picker, crosspicking being his specialty. He is at his best alternate picking, crosspicking with motifs employing whole-tone of diminished pitch structures and sixteenth-note patterns for long stretches in a form called moto perpetuo*.

      I’m fascinated by how different he is in different settings. I don’t care for King Crimson much but when he turns up on other people’s records he invariably floors me because he adds such a level of excitement, it thrills me. Yes, he needs the equipment but he brings the imagination. Scratch the surface of the noise and you will reveal great skill.

      Reggie Young was an extremely skilful player too. I find him safe when making an album for himself, much more interesting when playing with The Swampers for someone else.

      *I’m not a guitarist and I cribbed this off the internet.

  22. Meanwhile, Mrs Fripp was special guesting on The Archers this evening.

    I would tell you what she was like, but Mrs F turned it off just as it started. ‘Tis on Sounds, I expect.

  24. Fripp is someone I admire and respect but don’t love. There’s something stiff and somewhat calculated about his playing which doesn’t do it for me. He is a good writer on guitar playing too and he talks at length about the challenge of uniting the emotionally steaming but somewhat trapped within his sphere rock player with over cerebral jazz players but I’m not sure he’s cracked it either. It doesn’t help that many of his collaborators are of only passing interest to me and there seems to be a lot of monotonous synth pad stuff going on with 2 note vocal melodies and RF squalling away over the top.

    I think I much prefer him with KC where the musical environment is much more interesting and the other soloists egg him on.

    Here’s a great guitar solo for when you need a bit of relief.

    • @Twang – I think some of his best work is as a guest “wild card” rather than as a collaborator, eg, the Bowie tracks, the Porcupine Tree track above. But, on balance, I agree that his best work is with KC and I suppose that’s not really surprising.

    • Yes. For a man whose style owes more to jazz than most of his peers, he plans extremely carefully & is very disciplined. In fact, didn’t he want to call one of his bands Discipline? He certainly doesn’t feel very spontaneous.

      I liked Bill Bruford’s anecdote about his passive-aggressive nature as the leader of King Crimson. Recording wasn’t going well. He stared at his favourite spot a couple of metres in front of him to the right, saying nothing. Some suggestions were thrown his way. He stared harder & more intently, saying nothing. More solutions were offered. He left the studio without a word.

      Working for others, given a specific brief, he could be bloody marvellous (Eno probably the master at getting the best out of him).

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