A year after surviving a heart attack in Italy, Robert Fripp says he’s stronger, healthier and more physically active than he’s been in decades.

But the 80-year-old King Crimson electric guitar virtuoso is still searching for an answer to one lingering question from his hospital stay:

Why, exactly, did somebody shave his balls?

“Now this is the thing,” Fripp recalled thinking at the time. “You’re concerned with my heart, fine. What are you doing, shaving my balls?”

More than a year later, he still doesn’t know.

Fripp, who celebrated his 80th birthday earlier this month, suffered a heart attack while traveling from the U..K to Bergamo, Italy, in April 2025. He was due to perform a live improvisation with his Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists, but was rushed to the hospital shortly after arriving in the country.

Doctors ultimately performed a series of procedures to insert stents — tiny mesh tubes that help keep arteries open and blood flowing properly. While physicians identified some concerns, Fripp has said his heart was otherwise in relatively good condition.

Speaking to Uncut (via Guitar.com), the guitarist said the ordeal ultimately transformed his outlook on life.

“I look on it as a benevolent redirection of my life,” he said. “I go to the gym regularly. I’m deadlifting 120 kilograms, bench pressing 75 kilograms, doing weighted squats, stretching, balancing, and practicing yoga. I haven’t been this healthy or present within myself in decades, perhaps ever.”

The health scare also left him deeply appreciative of the medical staff who treated him in Bergamo. But one aspect of his care remains a mystery.

Recalling the events surrounding his surgery, Fripp said one hospital employee was assigned the unusual task of shaving his nether regions before the procedure.

“The man shaving my balls didn’t tell me,” Fripp said.

A language barrier may have contributed to the confusion. Fripp noted that few members of the hospital staff spoke English, which led to several unintentionally comic exchanges during his stay.

One misunderstanding proved especially memorable.

“Very few of the staff spoke English, which led to one or two funny moments,” he said, “like me taking my pants down for inspection by a matronly nurse, who was actually asking what I wanted for lunch.”

The misunderstanding was eventually cleared up. The mystery of the ball shaving, however, remains unsolved.

Fripp isn’t the only aging guitar hero to have needed medical assistance in recent memory. Adrian Belew has discussed his “scary” struggles with carpal tunnel while touring with Beat, while a serious illness not only saw Brian Setzer’s fall 2025 tour canceled, but left him struggling to play guitar at all.

Still, at least he didn’t have to go through the trauma of suffering a heart attack on stage like Al Di Meola, or David Bowie, whose health crisis brought his touring career to an end.

Of all the guitars Robert Fripp has played, one stands out: the now-iconic 1959 Gibson Les Paul Custom he played across King Crimson’s classic works and his collaborations with artists that include David Bowie.

In 1967, a young Robert Fripp responded to a newspaper advertisement from Bournemouth-based brothers Michael and Peter Giles. They were looking for a singing keyboardist for a new project. Fripp could neither play keyboards nor sing, but he applied anyway and got the gig. The resulting band, Giles, Giles and Fripp, established an iconic songwriting partnership that laid the groundwork for prog-rock progenitors King Crimson.

A year after that advert went to print, the trio released their only album, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp. Its hazy blend of jangling psychedelic pop, jazz, and classical music failed to find an audience, but it made a fan of a businessman by the name of Angus Hunking, whose generosity would make it possible for Fripp to buy the ’59 Custom.

“I bought it when Giles, Giles and Fripp were just about to become King Crimson,” Fripp tells Guitar World of the Les Paul’s origin story. “King Crimson were lent £7,000 by a businessman called Angus Hunking. He took an interest in us, and I believe £2,000 came in cash in a briefcase.”

Soon after, Fripp and Michael Giles, with whom he would form King Crimson, were shopping for a guitar in London’s West End.

“We went to a music shop on Shaftesbury Avenue,” Fripp says. “In the window was this Les Paul for £400.

“I asked for a cash discount. The shop assistant, a young man I disliked because of his attitude, said, ‘I could phone up Eric Clapton, and he’d come and buy it.’ And I thought, Then why haven’t you phoned him already?”

Fripp called the clerk’s bluff from a mile away.

“This young man was lying to me, and I didn’t like him,” he quips, before haggling a deal for £380.

According to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator, £380 in 1968, the year King Crimson formed, is equivalent to around £5,900 (approx. $8,000) in today’s economy. It wasn't an insignificant amount of money, even if it only made a small dent in their briefcase. Realistically, though, it would sell for far more than that were he to pop it on eBay.

“I went online today, and I found a pristine model the same as mine, advertised at $139,000,” Fripp gasps. “And that was an instrument without provenance.”

As he explains to GW, the guitar proved to be a workhorse. It featured on the band’s first seven records, breaking sonic ground again and again between 1969’s In the Court of the Crimson King and Red five years later. It would also be used to record his “celestial” guitar parts on David Bowie’s “Heroes,” which has sold 2.3 million copies worldwide.

The album’s title track has gotten a new lease of life in recent months thanks to its inclusion in the smash TV series Stranger Things.

Beyond that, the guitar would also be used during his collaborations with synth wizard Brian Eno.

After decades of toil, his staple guitar caught a break when a second ‘59 LP, bought in New York in 1978, took its place. Had he not stood his ground against that snarky guitar shop clerk, Robert Fripp’s story might read rather differently.

In related news, Fripp has laughed off rumors that King Crimson were back in the studio, while his interesting comments on Jimi Hendrix’s guitar playing have piqued the interest of many.

Robert Fripp is an original who always brings something new to the instrument and gets something entirely unique out of it in return.

Rising to prominence in the late ‘60s, when Eric Clapton was deemed a deity and blues guitar was dominating the charts, Fripp separated himself from the pack with a left-field approach to songwriting and what could be achieved on guitar. His talents earned him praise from high-profile supporters, with no less than Jimi Hendrix once hailing King Crimson as the best band in the world.

But a look at Fripp's early comments about guitar and guitarists reveals that he wasn't much of a diplomat when it came to his peers.

“I've never really listened to guitarists, because they've never really interested me,” he told Guitar Player in 1974.

It was a year that yielded Starless and Bible Black and Red, two of King Crimson's landmark albums. Fripp was at the top of his game.

At that time, Clapton — following the demise of Cream and subsequent rise and fall of Blind Faith and Derek & the Dominos — was two albums into his solo career. Jimi Hendrix was four years gone, but a raft of stellar players had risen to take his place as guitar gods for the 1970s

Even so, Fripp had little to say about his instrument's lofty place in the world of popular music.

“I think the guitar is a pretty feeble instrument,” he continued. “Virtually nothing interests me about the guitar.”

Fripp's contrarian views on the instrument were shaped in childhood, where he was seduced by “the early Sun records with Scotty Moore” before he discovered traditional jazz at the age of 15. By then, he was no longer going with the cultural currents, a bias that helped him forge an identity of his own rather than one based on earlier genres and players. .

“I haven't been influenced by Hendrix and Clapton in the way that most people would say it,” he explained. “I don't think Hendrix was a guitarist. I very much doubt if he was interested in guitar playing as such. He was just a person who had something to say and got on and said it.”

Fripp had no similarly kind words for Clapton.

“Clapton I think is mostly quite banal, although he did some exciting things earlier in his life with Mayall. I saw Cream live once and I thought they were quite awful. Clapton's work since, I think, has been excessively tedious.”

Such comments come as no surprise to Steven Wilson. As the remixer behind several King Crimson anniversary reissues, he says Fripp's contrarian nature has often put him at odds with those around him.

“Every single Crimson record that’s ever come out was a battle,” Wilson states. “A battle between Robert and the rest of the band in some cases, a battle between Robert and the record company or the management or finances or touring schedules. Everything was against them, like the press telling them they were washed up.”

Rather than buckle to the whims of mainstream audiences, Fripp doubled down on his unique approach.

“I learned that a lot of Crimson records were similar to jazz and avant-garde jazz in the British jazz movement in the early '70s,” Wilson continues. “You realize that what made those records thrilling is that fact that the band were flying by the seat of their pants a lot of the time. The music was on the verge of falling apart in some respects.”

It’s interesting, then, that the one guitarist who escaped Fripp’s crosshairs during his 1974 GP interview was a guitarist that similarly challenged the status quo with his music: Jeff Beck, who was making waves at the time with his album Blow by Blow.

“Jeff Beck's guitar playing I can appreciate as good fun,” Fripp said. “It's where the guitarist and ‘poser-cum-ego tripper-cum-rock star-cum entertainer’ becomes all involved in the package. It's good fun, it's quite enjoyable, very exciting. I wish him all the best of luck.”

As the blues gave way to shred mania in the 1980s, Eddie Van Halen became the new Clapton, the new poster boy of the electric guitar, and the next player that every other guitarist aspired to be like.

Reflecting on the impact that had on the guitar scene last year, Wolfgang Van Halen theorized that his Dad “kind of ruined the musical landscape” during that period.

“Because,” he explains, “instead of everybody wanting to find out who they are, they wanted to be that.”

The late prog-rock legend Greg Lake began his musical life on six-strings, but when his childhood friend and bandmate Robert Fripp suggested he pivot to bass, he quickly learned the two instruments are not as similar as they appear.

Fripp and Lake cut their guitar-playing teeth under the tutelage of Don Strike, who Fripp said “gave me a very good technical foundation.” The pair grew up together, practiced their homework together, and developed a tight musical bond.

When Fripp saw Lake perform with one of his early bands, Unit Four, he was invited to join them, as a roadie, for a show on the Isle of Wight, just off England’s south coast.

The story goes that when no one turned up to watch them play, the pair resorted to jamming songs that Strike had taught them. It's a moment that typifies their relationship.

So when Fripp looked to form King Crimson after the demise of his group Giles, Giles, and Fripp in 1968, Lake was naturally in his mind. But there was a caveat.

“They really wanted me as the lead singer, and so Robert said, ‘Would you be prepared to play bass?’” he recalled in a 2016 interview with Bass Player. “And I thought, ‘Four strings, six strings... what could be the problem?’”

Lake would continue to hold down the low-end in the powerhouse supergroup Emerson, Lake & Palmer, which he co-founded after leaving Crimson in 1970. But his early experiences showed him just how steep the learning curve was. Electric guitar and bass are very different beasts.

“I was very cavalier when I picked up the bass,” he admitted. “Little did I realize that bass playing is an entirely different world; it's an art form within itself.

“And although the instruments look similar, they perform a totally different function. They require a different set of skills and knowledge.”

Of course, as a bassist, Lake's role was to bridge the divide between the drums and the guitar, but he soon felt the wrath of the man he was meant to be supplementing in King Crimson.

“The first thing to wake me up to the difference between guitar and bass was the first rehearsal I did with King Crimson,” he said. “Michael Giles, the drummer, started to bang furiously on his snare, and the whole band stopped.

“He looked up at me — I'll never forget the look on his face, a look of pity, sort of annoyed — and he said, ‘Listen, when I play the snare drum, you don't play. That's how the snare cuts through.’

“It was my first rude awakening to bass playing,” he added.

However, in a separate interview with For Bass Players Only, Lake found there to be a few upsides to his introduction to the instrument.

“At that time, most bass players were using tapewound strings; they were very dull, and had no sustain,” he explains. “Because I came from guitar, I really missed the sustain, and so one day I stumbled across the strings called Rotosound, and that was the solution to my problem.

“All of a sudden, I had a guitar that was just an octave lower with four strings. I was able to play much more melodic, sustained lines and a lot more percussive chords. Of course, when you get more response from a string, you’re able to play it with more alacrity. You can move around more quickly because you’re getting an instant response from it.”

Lake learned to be a bass player, but echoes of his guitarist days still influenced some of his decision-making, and it made him stand out on an instrument that, slowly but surely, he made fully his own.

Lake’s former bandmate Fripp suffered a heart attack earlier this year, although his recent Sunday Lunch antics with his wife, Toyah, suggest he’s back to full health.

He isn’t, however, working on a new album with the prog giants. He delivered a trademark response to a news story that circulated over the Summer in which Jakko Jakszyk suggested that work on his first-ever studio album with King Crimson was underway. Excitement for Crimson's first album since 2003’s The Power to Believe is sadly premature.

The internet went into a frenzy last month when King Crimson guitarist/vocalist Jakko Jakszyk said a new album was in the works. The band’s management doused the excitement a few days later, and now Robert Fripp himself has weighed in.

“As we speak, we're doing a King Crimson studio album,” Jakszyk told Goldmine Magazine during a promo run for his new solo album, Son of Glen. “We've been doing it piecemeal, and then a couple of months ago, the management said, ‘Can we?’” he added.

“So, yeah. I've been recording that with a view to it coming out in some format at some point. But who knows when?”

Guitar Player covered the story, as did countless other news sites. As the story heated up, the band’s management intervened, declaring such talk “premature,” especially given that Robert Fripp is still recovering from the heart attack he suffered earlier this year.

Posting on Facebook to share his latest Upbeat Moments video with his wife, Toyah Wilcox, Fripp shared an exchange he had with his old college friend Gordon Mowlam and guitarist Anthony Garone.

“How’s that new studio album coming along, Bob?” Marlow asked.

“I am not aware of any new studio album,” Fripp replied, before Garone chimed in with, “Robert Fripp, don’t you read the rumors? You’re working on a new album, whether you are aware or not!”

Fripp punctuated his caption with a laughing-face emoji, clearly seeing the funny side of how his bandmate’s words had snowballed to such massive proportions.

In his statement, band manager David Singleton via DGMLive didn't outright deny that Fripp-led writing was taking place. Rather, he entered the chat to manage fan expectations at a time of such excitement.

Referencing the band's latest three-drummer live lineup, he had said “there is the seed of a new recording. Whether it is an album, whether it sees the light of day, whether it is something else is unknown. As is the outcome of any creative process.

“Yes, recordings have taken place. Getting excited about the possibility of a new album, as has apparently been happening, is somewhat premature. Carts before horses.”

The band’s last studio album was 2003's The Power to Believe (which pretty much describes Crimson's avid fanbase and media reportage). As things stand, Jakszyk — who joined in 2013 to replace Adrian Belew — has featured only on Crimson’s live albums, having joined after his work with the 21st Century Schizoid Band, and on the album A Scarcity of Miracles, which featured Robert Fripp, and Crimson saxophonist, Mel Collins. Songs from that record have since been added to King Crimson’s live sets.

A Jakszyk-fronted Crimson studio album would be big news indeed. But expectations must be tempered in the short term, at least.

In related news, early King Crimson member Peter Giles has reflected on his musical experiments with Fripp and the strange hobby they struck up together.

Steve Vai, meanwhile, who assumed the role of Fripp in the King Crimson adjacent band Beat, has praised the majesty of Adrian Belew’s “underrated” guitar playing.

Peter Giles has looked back on his earliest memories of Robert Fripp, as their psychedelic songwriting escapades — and muso side quests — helped lay the foundations for one of the most important bands in progressive rock history.

Together, alongside Peter's drum-pounding brother, Michael, they produced one record, 1969's charmingly titled The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp before expanding their palette and personnel in an early, unofficial iteration of King Crimson. Peter didn’t stick around long enough to play on their 1969 debut, In the Court of the Crimson King, but his name is woven into the band’s formative years.

Across a career-charting interview with Prog magazine, Giles reflects on those early meetings and how Fripp’s nerdy musicality was already baked into his brain.

“He had a nice, droll sense of humor,” he recalls. “And his chops were really good — his chords and stuff. He was hot.”

The Giles brothers were no strangers to the stage, having racked up hundreds of gigs in the U.K. and Europe as part of the boy band Trendsetters Limited. They relocated to Bournemouth, approximately 100 miles south of London, in the mid 1960s, putting them on Fripp's turf.

It wasn't long before they crossed paths. Fripp responded to their advertisement seeking a singing organist, despite being a guitarist.

“The thing was, we auditioned every piano and keyboard player we could get our hands on,” Giles developed, “and they were all fucking useless.”

Fripp had other assets to offer.

“He’d been playing with some older musicians at the Majestic Hotel in Bournemouth, and you learn a lot from those people,” Giles adds. When Fripp eventually left that gig, he was replaced by future Police guitarist Andy Summers. (Fripp, who recorded three albums with Summers in the 1980s, believes the pair share an inexplicable “cosmic connection.” )

The trio relocated to London, and their whimsical songs soon earned them a deal with Deram Records. Their sole record together wasn't a commercial masterpiece, but it has since garnered a cult following given its place as a precursor to the pioneering King Crimson legacy.

While in London, Peter Giles and Robert Fripp struck up a slightly left-field hobby.

“We used to go to the La Gioconda Café in Denmark Street, where all the music publishers were,” Giles explains. “We’d go into some of them and ask if they had any old sheet music. We used to get handfuls of this bloody stuff and then go back home and stick it up, with Fripp reading the top line and the chords, and I used to read the bass parts. We’d have a go at it.

“We used to spend hours doing this! That’s what we did all day apart from writing and recording. Whenever one of us had a song or an idea, the three of us would chip in. My brother is a very good ideas man, not just a drummer. I mean, he has a lot of brilliant ideas, melodic, harmonic and rhythmic.”

Working under the guise of the expanded King Crimson project, their relationship would ultimately sour. Fripp, having seen the band Clouds perform at the Marquee Club, became inspired to integrate classical melodies into his songwriting, and creative differences led to Giles' departure. Michael, however, would stay put.

A gig supporting the Rolling Stones at a free concert in Hyde Park, said to be attended by 500,000 people, earned the band vital exposure before their debut album was released just months later. Peter later returned to the fray to contribute bass to their sophomore record "In the Wake of Poseidon" as part of a temporary lineup, alongside his brother.

He would also become part of the 21st Century Schizoid Band in 2002, which featured King Crimson alumni and guitarist/vocalist Jakko Jakszyk, who would go on to join the band proper in 2010.

Earlier this year, Jakszyk got King Crimson fans in a frenzy when he said that a new record was well underway. However, the band's management has since said that such comments, and the fervour caused, were “premature.”

Fripp is currently recovering from a heart attack he suffered in April. In true Fripp fashion, while his wife, Toyah, tearfully relayed the news on their YouTube channel, the guitarist was more concerned about why a nurse had to shave his balls during his time in hospital.

How difficult is it to perform the guitar parts from King Crimson's 1980s' catalog?

Apparently very. Adrian Belew said he required surgery on his left hand after performing the group's music on his recent tour with Beat, the supergroup featuring guitarist Steve Vai, bassist Tony Levin and Tool drummer Danny Carey that performs Crimson's 1980s music.

Their tour saw the quartet honoring the prog legends’ trio of ‘80s albums, Discipline (1981), Beat (1982), and Three of a Perfect Pair (1984), and the challenge of the material was not lost on the two guitarists.

In the build-up to the road show, Vai revealed that the “relentless” picking patterns of the Discipline track "Frame by Frame" were particularly difficult, especially in light of his 2021 shoulder surgery. Several dates into the tour, King Crimson founding guitarist Robert Fripp recognized Vai's struggles and emailed valuable tips to help him master the song.

Post-tour, however, it was Belew who was left nursing his wounds. He had to have surgery to combat the bout of carpal tunnel syndrome that plagued his left hand as the tour made its way across the US.

“It would get numb,” he tells Guitar World. “And during part of the tour, it would stay numb from the moment that I woke up, all the way until sometime during soundcheck.

“It was a little scary,” he adds. “I’d be like, ‘Oh, boy, you better wake up soon!’”

Fortunately for Belew, his co-guitarist could sympathize with him, having suffered two cases of carpal tunnel in the past.

“Steve Vai was able to walk me through the process since he’s had it done twice,” he explains. “He reassured me that it was a simple operation and that it was not something that was going to go wrong. And on top of that, he introduced me to one of the best surgeons in the United States, who had done this work.”

The surgery, as Vai had predicted, was a success. “It’s perfect,” Belew says of his hand now. “This was an easy recovery and an easy operation.

“I’m back to full use of my left hand. While recovering, you can’t do much with it, and it’s a little tender,” he continues. “And then, you finally work back up to tempo. Now, I’m playing as I always did, except that there’s no more pain.”

Although having a shared lineage in Frank Zappa's band, Beat is the first time Belew and Vai have worked together. Seeing the man who fronted King Crimson for just shy of two decades, night after night, left Vai gobsmacked.

“I would say Adrian is underrated in the echelons of guitar,” he said earlier this year. “Nobody plays like anybody else, nobody can play like me, but they can get sort of close. Honestly, there’s no one close to Adrian.

“There’s a special way he’s crafted his own dimension of sounds,” he extends, although his oddball, MIDI-propelled Parker Fly guitar, which he dusted down for the Beat shows, certainly helps him with that.

A BEAT live release, “BEAT LIVE”, is due for release September 26th via InsideOut Music. The first track to be lifted from it, “Neal and Jack and Me” shows how the Vai-Belew guitar tandem is walking the tightrope between faithful renditions and thoughtful reimaginings.

“This isn't a cover band,” Vai exaplined while preparing for their maiden show. “We're reinterpreting some things. My style and sound will flow into it, because it will be coming out of me.

“I'm trying my absolute best to respect every note that Robert wrote, it's just how I perform it might be a little different.”

In related news, Fripp’s somewhat controversial comments about Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton have resurfaced. The guitarist is currently recovering after suffering a heart attack earlier this year.

And hopes of a new King Crimson album have been dashed. Jakko Jakszyk had said that work on a new album was underway, but the band's management has since reduced expectations, calling excitement “premature.”

King Crimson guitarist and vocalist Jakko Jakszyk set the internet on fire this past July 7 when he told Goldmine the band is making a new album for the first time in 22 years.

"As we speak, we're doing a King Crimson studio album. When that will come out and what format or how — that's beyond my brief.

“But yeah, we've been doing it piecemeal, and then a couple of months ago, the management said, 'Can we?' So, yeah. I've been recording that with a view to it coming out in some format at some point. But who knows when?"

Jakszyk’s reveal was off the mark, according to Crimson manager David Singleton. Yes, Crimson are in the studio, he says, but an album project is not in the works, nor has there been any discussion about issuing what, if anything, comes from the effort.

Singleton released a statement via DGMLive, the website of Discipline Global Mobile (DGM), the record label founded by Fripp and Singleton, in which he makes a reference to late King Crimson drummer Bill Rieflin:

“Addressing the idea of some form of studio recording by the last incarnation of King Crimson, Bill Rieflin posed the excellent question ‘why make a studio album? There are excellent live recordings of all the songs out there already.’

“One possible answer would be an album the very sound of which no-one has ever heard before. A sound driven by the three drummers. And those drummers have now recorded studio versions of their parts — separately, so that there is perfect separation.

“So there is the seed of a new recording. Whether it is an album, whether it sees the light of day, whether it is something else is unknown. As is the outcome of any creative process.

“So yes, recordings have taken place. Getting excited about the possibility of a new album, as has apparently been happening, is somewhat premature. Carts before horses.”

King Crimson’s last studio album was 2003’s The Power to Believe. Extensive live recordings of past performances by Fripp and King Crimson continue to be released by DGM Live.

This isn’t the first time Jakszyk — who plays PRS electric guitars, including a custom PRS P24 model — has spoken out of turn. Shortly after joining Crimson in 2013 — where he replaced long-standing guitarist Adrian Belew — Jakszyk made the mistake of telling Classic Rock magazine what a nice guy Fripp is, earning him a rebuke from the guitarist.

As he recalled to Classic Album Review, he was asked if the notoriously fussy Fripp was difficult to work with.

“I said, ‘Look, all you can do is speak as you find,’” Jakszyk recalled. “And I said, ‘I gotta tell you that Robert has been incredibly supportive and encouraging. He hasn’t been difficult at all. It’s been amazing.’”

Shortly after the interview came out, Jakszyk was called on the rug during a rehearsal.

“Robert said, ‘Jakko, can I have a word, please?’

“And I thought, Oh, fuck…

“He called me over and said, ‘Jakko, I just read your interview with Classic Rock magazine.’ I went ‘Right.’ He said, ‘Yes. In the future, can you stop saying nice things about me? It’s ruining my reputation.’”

Indeed, Fripp — who suffered a heart attack last April and has been recovering — has a reputation as a taskmaster that was decades in the making, aided by interviews in which he gave unflinching assessments of guitarists like Eric Clapton, whose playing he described as “quite banal.”

Time will tell if Jakszyk’s original statement about a new Crimson record had any truth to it.

In recent years, all evidence has pointed toward Robert Fripp drawing a line under King Crimson. They played what was deemed to be their last show in Tokyo in December 2018, with his distance from future Crimson endeavors underlined by Steve Vai taking his place in BEAT as he focuses on his Sunday Lunch adventures with his wife, Toyah.

Now, however, guitarist/vocalist Jakko Jakszyk has blown all those thoughts out of the water by revealing that work on a new album is underway, and that Fripp is involved in the process.

Jakszyk joined the band in 2013, assuming the frontman role previously held by Adrian Belew as Fripp’s progressive-rock heavyweights returned after a five-year hiatus. Jakszyk's legacy with the group since has been written solely on the road, with their last album coming in the form of 2003’s The Power to Believe. That looks set to change.

“It was an amazing thing to have done,” he says of his part in King Crimson’s rich history. “And in a way, part of it's still happening. As we speak, we're doing a King Crimson studio album.”

Interestingly, in his conversation with Goldmine Magazine, he hints that King Crimson may only move forward as a studio-only project.

“When that will come out and what format or how — that's beyond my brief,” he confesses. “We've been doing it piecemeal, and then a couple of months ago, the management said, ‘Can we?’ So, yeah. I've been recording that with a view to it coming out in some format at some point. But who knows when?”

It has also been confirmed that King Crimson's 2021 lineup, which included Tony Levin and Porcupine Tree drummer Gavin Harrison, is returning for the record.

In the interim, Jakszyk’s pre-Crimson work with Robert Fripp — a chance afforded to him after the success of his KC tribute group, the 21st Century Schizoid Band — is set to return to the limelight. The pair, alongside Crimson alumni Tony Levin, Porcupine Tree drummer Gavin Harrison and saxophonist Mel Collins, released A Scarcity of Miracles in 2011. Despite its clear ties to the band, it was merely labelled as "a King Crimson ProjeKct" rather than an official release.

“There's a version of it that's about to come out with loads and loads of extra stuff,” the guitarist reveals. “Because of the nature of how we made that record, there's lots of improvisation and seriously alternate versions of things that we didn't release.

“There also are plans for some live film of us playing in various places. There's an ongoing thread. Whether that ever means we'll ever play live again, I don't know, especially after Robert's recent illness.”

Fripp is currently recovering from a heart attack, which he suffered earlier this year in Italy. That saw him rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. Though the operation was a success – he’s already back in action in his kitchen with Toyah — there appears to be an understandable reluctance to pile onto a tour bus any time soon.

Meanwhile, Jakszyk has revealed what it’s like to work alongside Fripp behind the scenes, and what happens when you try to dampen his tough-guy image.

He released a new solo album, Son of Glen, back in June with the assistance of his guitar-playing wife, Louise Patricia Crane. It arrived, he tells Prog, after a difficult post-Crimson period.

“After King Crimson ended in 2021, there was a kind of inertia,” he recalls. “I’d written the book [his autobiography, Who's the Boy with the Lovely Hair?], but I’d lost confidence musically somehow; like, ‘Who the fuck am I now?’ Louise built me back up.

“It’s definitely the proggiest thing I’ve done,” he continues. “But I didn’t want to just write a ‘prog’ album — I let whatever came out of my head come out.”

With his mojo back and Fripp’s thoughts returning to the band he formed in 1968, what would be the band's 14th album, and the first in over 20 years, is a welcome prospect.

In the early ‘80s, Robert Fripp and Andy Summers formed an unlikely alliance, producing two experimental albums that, against all odds, found harmony by combining their contrasting, catch-all stadium rock and avant-garde progressive rock playing styles.

Their collective feat can now be deemed even more impressive after Summers admitted to Guitarist that he wasn’t a King Crimson fan going into the project. Yet he felt drawn to Fripp by a “cosmic connection” that willed their disparate sounds together.

“I wasn’t into King Crimson at all,” Summers says, bluntly. “Definitely not my kind of music.”

Yet fate and geography made their worlds collide.

“Robert and I come from the same area of England," Summers explains. "I was part of the Bournemouth music scene, and you heard about this ‘weird kid’ out in Wimborne — and it was Robert Fripp, because he has a certain style."

It didn't take long for their paths to cross. At age 16, Summers became the guitarist for a hotel band, but it didn't last long. "I got fired for trying to pick up hotel girls," he says. "And Robert took over the ‘guitar seat,’ let’s call it. So there’s a sort of cosmic connection there, I suppose.”

Years would pass and, as the ‘60s wound into the ‘70s, King Crimson were shocking audiences with their skin-prickling take on progressive rock.

Summers took a different path, however. After stints in various London bands, including Zoot Money's Big Roll Band, he moved to America where he spent five years studying classical guitar at university, before leaning on Fripp to help reconnect him with the music scene.

That would eventually lead him to working in various bands and take jobs as a session musician, which is where he met Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland on a recording gig. The three would form the Police soon after.

“I subsequently became the world’s most famous guitarist with the Police,” Summers says.

However, his talents and creativity went well beyond the band’s radio-friendly new wave sound. “I was starting to feel somewhat musically hemmed in by being in that band. I wanted to stretch my legs and play with somebody else, just to see how I’d do, almost like an experiment on myself.

Enter Fripp for a third time.

“At that time, Robert was living in New York, and I was there all the time," Summers explains. "So he popped into my mind: Oh yeah, Robert Fripp. He’s a good guitarist. Maybe we could do something together.

"It started with a fairly casual hook-up when we went to practice in a photographer’s flat in Soho.”

The casual nature of their hangouts soon developed into two records: I Advance Masked, in 1982, and, two years later, Bewitched.

A compilation of previously unheard cuts, Mother Hold the Candle Steady, was recently unearthed and released as part of a special Complete Recordings reissue. Speaking to On the Record last year, Summers said he was "knocked out" upon hearing the tracks and surprised to realize they'd been left on the cutting-room floor.

“I went, ‘God, why didn't we do this? Why was I throwing those out?’ Because I was essentially the producer," he explains. "But listening to some of these songs all these years later, I thought I'd listen to them and think, Oh, my god, well, I see why. They were no good. They're terrible. That's why we didn't use them.

“But they weren't. They're all really much like the other tracks that we actually put out. And my god, it's a good album.”

In related news, Steven Wilson has explained what he learned about Fripp and King Crimson's music when remixing their change-making debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King, while Steve Vai has championed Fripp's former foil, Adrian Belew, believing he is “underrated.”

Both guitarists have played under Frank Zappa and are now celebrating King Crimson's '80s output together in Beat — and Fripp was on hand to offer Vai some sage advice.

Summers, meanwhile, has told Guitar Player how the Police's evolution amid punk’s rise made him a better player, and he's claimed he's written the world's most-played guitar riff.

Steven Wilson is no stranger to the intricacies of prog rock. After all, he’s remixed just about every classic prog album out there, from the back catalo of Jethro Tull to iconic works by Marillion and Yes.

He’ll often work intimately with the characters behind those albums to inject a new lease of life into their iconic recordings.

Which is how Wilson says he learned a great deal about what makes Robert Fripp such a revered guitarist.

In fact, Wilson’s first foray into the world of remixing came in 2009 when the Grammy-nominated artist was tasked with putting a new veneer on King Crimson's 1969 debut, In the Court of the Crimson King. He's described the opportunity as “a perfect storm” that resulted when Wilson’s growing reputation as a mixing engineer coincided with a refresh of King Crimson's back catalog.

How he arrived at that juncture was no small thing. Wilson had grown tired of other engineers making decisions about Porcupine Tree's discography that he didn’t align with. He accepted that he “didn't have the skills, or the technology at the time, to be able to do it myself,” he told Sound on Sound.

Consequently, he deep-dived into teaching himself the craft, and his mix of Porcupine Tree's 2007 album, Fear of a Blank Planet — which earned the band its first Grammy nod — set him on his way.

But there was still a great deal of learning to be done.

“I knew I was arrogant enough to believe that I knew how those records should be approached because they’re part of my DNA,” he tells Prog. “I also had experience from my own work, as my fans often know the music so much better than I do.

“I think it was the same with the Crimson stuff — the fans knew those records back to front, while Robert hadn’t listened to them for 40 years. He doesn’t want to. Looking back to music from your past is not often an easy thing for a musician. It’s reliving politics, arguments, trouble with the record company, the touring; it’s a whole massive thing.”

The project was eye opening, as Wilson discovered that much of King Crimson’s magic was in the group members' ability to live life on the edge.

“I learned that a lot of Crimson records were similar to jazz and avant-garde jazz in the British jazz movement in the early '70s,” he explains. “Most records cut today are duh-duh-duh, with everyone dead on time. On those records, Crimson are speeding up and slowing down all the way through, and that’s why they’re exciting.

“You realize that what made those records thrilling is that fact that the band were flying by the seat of their pants a lot of the time. The music was on the verge of falling apart in some respects. I really began to understand that with Crimson’s work.”

There was also the not-so-small matter of conflict. Fripp was constantly forced to be an aggressor due to band infighting to his own steely determination to prove the media wrong,

“I do know that every single Crimson record that’s ever come out was a battle,” Wilson continues. “A battle between Robert and the rest of the band in some cases, a battle between Robert and the record company or the management or finances or touring schedules. Everything was against them, like the press telling them they were washed up.”

But more importantly, Wilson’s experiences revealed to him the man behind the music. The band's former vocalist, Jakko Jakszyk, recently joked that Fripp had accused him of trying to dilute his tough boss image when he said nice things about him in the press.

Then there’s the story of Fripp offering Steve Vai valuable playing advice several days into the Beat tour. Fripp had no involvement in the stint but took it upon himself to watch YouTube clips of the first few shows so he could help Vai fill his shoes properly. He may have been painted as the villain in the past, but that doesn’t mean he always was.

There is a disparity between Robert Fripp the man, and Robert Fripp, the hard-nosed prog rock genius.

“He’s a very modest chap,” Wilson reflects. “He can’t understand why the myths have grown up around him, and why there’s such an incredible passion — obsession — about the music. But of course, he’s not looking at it the way everyone else looks at it, and he can’t.

“You’d have to be a real egomaniac to want to listen to your own music. When I finish a record I don’t want to hear it ever again as long as I live.”

For now, Wilson has returned to the familiar role of creator with his latest solo LP, The Overview.

As he's revealed to Guitar Player, Wilson's approach to the album's guitar tones redefined the modern-day guitar solo.

“I think a lot of old-school guitar players can play beautiful solos,” he explains. “But sometimes they’re not so innovative with the actual sound."

He said his guitarist, Randy McStine, is a great example of someone who understands that.

"We spent a lot of time actually looking for the right sound before we even approached how he was going to play and the kind of scale he was going to play. It was kind of a way to redefine the notion of the classic, extended rock electric guitar solo.”

Steve Vai says he had underrated Adrian Belew’s “brilliance” before teaming up with him in Beat, the prog-rock supergroup devoted to performing King Crimson's 1980s output.

Crimson’s music has always been defined by intricate guitar partnerships between Robert Fripp and whoever his counterpart happened to be. Vai knew that to make the Beat tour a success, he needed a sizzling chemistry with co-guitarist Adrian Belew.

It was never going to be an easy task, thanks to the sheer complexity of the music at hand. Belew himself has admitted he struggled to lock in with Fripp when he joined in 1981 while Jakko Jakszyk has spoken of how their knotted polyrhythms could quickly turn into a “car crash,” if someone slipped up.

However, Vai is full of praise of Belew, telling Music Radar that he “can't say enough about Adrian,” who gave him a small dose of inferiority.

“I knew about his work with Zappa, but that didn’t show me all of his brilliance,” he waxes lyrical. “You need to hear him flexing his muscles in different situations to discover the breadth of the man’s abilities.

“There are his contributions to David Bowie and Talking Heads,” he adds, “but what he did on those ’80s King Crimson records was monumental.”

“I would say Adrian is underrated in the echelons of guitar. Nobody plays like anybody else, nobody can play like me, but they can get sort of close. Honestly, there’s no one close to Adrian.

“There’s a special way he’s crafted his own dimension of sounds,” he maintains. “To see him play this complex polymetric music while singing at 75 is unbelievable. He still hits the notes with that silky voice. He’ll talk and joke around while I have to keep my head down. The man is a marvel!”

He’s also spoken fondly of the partnership they have forged, stating: “Together we’ve merged our sounds in a way that creates a really dynamic show.”

The Beat tour hasn’t been without its teething problems, though. In the much-covered build-up to the tour, Vai admitted that, in the wake of shoulder surgery, playing “Frame by Frame” had proved particularly challenging.

Then, several nights into the tour, he received an email from Robert Fripp, offering him some sage bits of advice to improve his playing on that song, and it made all the difference.

Having trailed across North America last year, Beat will tour South America in April as the King Crimson love-in continues, with Vai still in awe of his bandmate.

Vai is also set to tour with Joe Satriani as part of the SatchVai Band, having tapped up Pete Thorn as a rhythm guitarist.

Two dates into 2024’s headline-grabbing Beat tour, Steve Vai received some helpful advice on how to play a King Crimson song. It came from a reliable source: Robert Fripp.

Vai has of course made no bones about the size of the task he accepted when he signed up to play Fripp's parts in Beat, the all-star King Crimson tribute band featuring Adrian Belew, bassist Tony Levin and drummer Danny Carey. The “relentlessness” of Fripp’s picking style was the biggest mountain he had to climb as he prepared for last year’s 65-date tour.

Belew, who joined King Crimson in 1981 and recorded six albums with the group, was sympathetic to Vai's woes, having experienced similar struggles himself.

“It took me quite a while to be able to lock in with him,” he's said of working with Fripp. “Robert told me I don’t hold my pick correctly. Which is true. I never concentrated on that. There are other things about the instrument that I preferred.”

While Belew was forthcoming with tips and tricks for his new guitar partner, Fripp had left him to his own devices. Until two nights into the tour, that is.

“We get to our second show and I get an email from Robert,” Vai says in a newly released mini-film made by Sweetwater to document the tour. “He was commenting on some of the clips he saw, which was very nice and constructive. And then he said at the end, 'Can I make a suggestion for 'Frame by Frame'?’”

"Frame by Frame" is one of two songs Vai described as the biggest challenges in the set ("Elephant Talk" is the other). It proved especially difficult for Vai due to shoulder surgery he had in 2021, and Fripp had seen something in a video of the show that he didn't like.

"He said, ‘Why don’t you hammer 'Frame by Frame'? Grab the initial notes and then improvise on it. Then go to the next chord and do that.’

“This was something I kind of thought of in the beginning, but I thought it would be so far from the original that it was maybe crossing a line,” Vai explains. “But here it is; he's recommending it.”

The suggestion was spot on. “I did it that night at the show, and it worked beautifully," he told Guitar World. "It’s unique to me — yet it was birthed by Robert and Adrian.”

Vai will reprise his Beat role at a show in Chile this May before embarking on a tour with the SatchVai band.

From his time with Frank Zappa through his work with David Bowie, Talking Heads and King Crimson, Adrian Belew could be spotted onstage with a battle-scarred sunburst-finish Fender Stratocaster. Given its history, that electric guitar may be one of the most storied Strats in the history of avant-garde rock. How it came to play such a vital role in Belew’s career is a tale in itself, one that began in the 1970s, when the guitarist was still a young unknown from Covington, Kentucky, who was suddenly dropped alongside Frank Zappa, an unflinching perfectionist guitar virtuoso.

As Belew reveals to Guitar Player, his Stratocaster was certainly not the prettiest or most expensive example — just one that he could afford. And he rode it all the way to his breakout success as one of the premier Strat-slingers in history. Here, the guitarist talks us through his history with the Strat.

How did you come to own your first Strat?

I was in a band and had been playing drums, but I was starting to play guitar again. I’d always wanted a Strat, so I bought one with a natural wood finish at [Chuck Levin’s] Washington Music Center [in Maryland]. I drove up from Nashville and bought it off the rack — the plainest, simplest, cheapest Stratocaster that I could buy.

This was the same Strat you went to California with when you auditioned for Frank Zappa?

It was. I took it to California and auditioned with Frank. After I got the job, I used it during our three-month rehearsal and then on a two-month tour of the United States. But that Strat never returned to my house; it was lost in the shuffle. It’s out there somewhere.

How did you go about replacing it?

At the time, I was living here in Nashville. I went down to a little music store, and in the back they had a kind of really ugly Strat hanging on the wall. It was a brown sunburst, and it didn’t have a case. But that was okay, because with all the travel we were doing, I knew I would get a serious road case for it. I paid $285 for the Strat.

And that’s the guitar you ended up recording with while with Frank and beyond?

Yes. That’s the Stratocaster that I played on Frank’s records. And then I played it on David Bowie’s Lodger and toured the world with David with it. Then I played it with the Talking Heads, did the Remain in Light album with them, the Tom Tom Club album [with Talking Heads drummer and bassist Chris Frant\z and Tina Weymouth], Jerry Harrison’s solo debut, and so many other things.

Was that the same Strat you used in the 1980s with King Crimson?

It was. I played it with King Crimson on Discipline, and on my first solo record [Lone Rhino]. And then I finally switched to a guitar synthesizer. So that Strat has an amazing amount of history. It’s on a lot of records, and it only cost me 285 bucks!

What were some of the mods you performed on it?

When I first had one in the late ’70s, I put a [Alembic] Strat-o-blaster [preamp] in it. That really helped, but before that I just plugged the guitar straight into the amp. That’s the Stratocaster sound. It doesn’t have everything in terms of richness, overtones and sparkle... Well, maybe it does. It would depend heavily on the amp. But I’ve always gone into a compressor first, and that helped bring those sparkly notes and added sustain.

You found two winning Strats in succession in the 1970s. Is that indicative of the quality of older Stratocasters?

If you want to go right into the piece of wood called a Stratocaster, they’re different. You might pick one up and it seems flat sounding, but then you might try the one next to it and decide that it’s the one you should buy. I don’t know why that is. They’re made to the exact same tolerances, but they’re not the same.

What’s the key to finding the right one?

I think this is true for any guitar: It’s not about the sound coming off the guitar alone; it’s about how it feels under your fingers. Sometimes you pick up a guitar and it just feels right. I think that’s the Stratocaster you should have. For me, a Stratocaster is a fabulous tool. I think Leo Fender got it absolutely right, but there are other ways to go about it now and other improvements that have been made.

Do you prefer the depth of rosewood necks or the spank of maple?

I always loved rosewood necks. Recently I had some guitars made for the Talking Heads shows that I’ve been doing [Remain in Light] and I wanted to go back to Strats and get whatever was the best now. For example, I found a wonderful new tremolo to put on, and I went with a maple neck, thinking it was brighter for me. But I made a mistake; I think I’m a rosewood guy. I love the guitars, but if I had the chance to do it over again, I would have stuck with the rosewood.

You mentioned amps a moment ago. You’ve long championed the Roland Jazz Chorus. Is that what you’d choose to pair with a Strat, especially since it’s a great pedal platform?

Oh, gee. A Strat sounds great through a Fender amp. Now, with pedals… I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t play guitar — except acoustic guitar — without first putting it through a compressor. But that’s just me. Some people don’t like that sound. It seems to make the guitar hum a little better, and the notes have more sustain. I’ve always liked that.

But in general, Strats are really something. Once you have a good one and a good amp, you have 90 percent of the battle won. From there, it’s down to personal taste.

Jakko Jakszyk has singled out the two King Crimson songs he found most difficult to play, and how songs would become “a complete car crash” if anyone slipped up.

The guitarist was asked by Classic Album Review to name the hardest King Crimson tracks to play.

As he explains, in live performance he found himself forced to play Fripp’s parts on the cut "Larks' Tongues in Aspic (Part One)" because Fripp himself couldn't pull it off. The reason? Fripp's new standard tuning.

“The trouble is, in the '80s Robert devised this new tuning, which he calls new standard tuning," Jakszyk explains. "And that meant he couldn't play some of that stuff.

"For instance, those fast-picked lines — a root, fifth, and flattened fifth — you're three or four frets away. But in new standard tuning, they're further away, and he couldn't reach.”

Fripp's new standard tuning sees strings approximating an all-fifths tuning — C2-G2-D3-A3-E4-G4 — similar to tunings for violin, mandolin and cello,. While the guitarist found it offered new possibilities for the instrument, it came with new challenges as well, particularly where "Larks' Tongues" was concerned.

“One, it's technically difficult," Jakszyk says of the cut. "You're playing these fast crosspicked lines. I'm playing Robert's part.

“And two, I had to play those parts as I stood next to Robert Fripp!”

To make matters worse, the song is built on difficult polyrhythms. Indeed, Fripp and King Crimson were early advocates for polyrhythms in rock music, a mantle later taken up by Meshuggah and the modern djent movement. When the number crunching gets as precise as it does on "Larks' Tongues," mistakes can be perilous.

"I think I'm playing in alternating bars of five and six, and everyone else is playing in seven," Jakszysk says. "I have to come in on beat four on their second bar of seven, and then it resolves.”

“The first few times, I thought, 'I have no idea if I've played this right,' right up until the moment it goes 'bang!' ” he says . “That was always a challenge."

No less challenging for its rhythmic intricacies was the track "The ConstruKtion of Light," from the 2000 album of the same name.

“We were playing in New Jersey," Jakszyk says. "Half the band is in one time signature and the other half is in another.

“And then Tony Levin came in two notes early or late and the whole thing fell to bits. We didn't know what was going on. Tony knew he'd screwed up and he's kind of improvised his way out of it. He played a phrase and Robert and I then knew where we were."

Even so, Jakszyk says the performance "was a complete car crash.”

Undoubtedly, guitarist Adrian Belew can sympathize with Jakszyk. He recently admitted he struggled to lock into Robert Fripp’s playing style when he joined the band in 1981.

“Robert told me I don’t hold my pick correctly,” he remembers. “Which is true. I never concentrated on that. I’ve never really tried to be a fast-picking guitar player.”

He admits he was more concerned with making interesting, un-guitar-like noises from his instrument instead. That led to him working with Ken Parker and Larry Fishman on a signature Parker Fly guitar packed with MIDI compatibility and synth features.

Even the virtuoso Steve Vai has found Fripp's picking style to be “relentless.” Vai certainly would know: He's currently on tour with Belew, Levin and Tool drummer Danny Carey, peforming together as Beat, a band formed with Fripp’s blessing. to perform King Crimson’s trio of ‘80s albums live

Over his half century leading King Crimson, Robert Fripp has built a reputation as a steely dictator. But former frontman Jakko Jakszyk says he nearly ruined that image with just one sentence.

A singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Jakko got to know Fripp through his musical connections with former King Crimson members. Their friendship eventually resulted in the 2011 album A Scarcity of Miracles , created with British saxophonist and flautist Mel Collins and credited to Jakszyk Fripp & Collins. Jakko joined Fripp's revised King Crimson lineup in 2013, replacing long-standing guitarist Adrian Belew.

But as Jakko tells Classic Album Review, he nearly got off on the wrong foot with Fripp after Classic Rock magazine asked him if he found the band leader difficult to work with.

“I said, 'Look, all you can do is speak as you find,'” Jakko recalled. “And I said, 'I gotta tell you that Robert has been incredibly supportive and encouraging. He hasn't been difficult at all. It's been amazing.'"

“Months went by, and we started rehearsing,” he continued. “In the first week of rehearsal, the magazine in which I did this interview came out. And at the end of one rehearsal, Robert said, 'Jakko, can I have a word, please?'

"And I thought, Oh, fuck…

“He called me over and said, 'Jakko, I just read your interview with Classic Rock magazine.’ I went ‘Right.' He said, 'Yes. In the future, can you stop saying nice things about me? It's ruining my reputation.’”

The exchange may have been tongue in cheek, but it underscores an important point about King Crimson's leader. As Jakko explains, there's a divide between Fripp the character and Fripp the man. "It isn't black and white," he says.

Jakko has also worked with Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson, who shares a similarly authoritarian reputation. Anderson gave an example of this himself when he recently revealed to Guitar Player that he could only rely on himself to fix "Locomotive Breath" when recording Tull's classic Aqualung record. But here again, Jakko says, his experience differs from the perception.

“It's like all of these things,” he says, “they're much more complicated and nuanced. Sometimes people are arseholes, I get [it]. And sometimes, it says more about the person that’s slagging the other person off than it does that person, too."

He addds, "Robert's a pretty unique bloke. He created his own universe. He lives in a world of his own creation. And some of the things he objects to and doesn't want to tolerate, well that's his thing. Luckily, I've not really been at the sharp end of some of that stuff. I've seen him be, what would he call it? Direct.”

As time goes on, Fripp does seem to be softening his public image, as noted by the successful Sunday Lunch project he created with his wife, Toyah. He even jokingly launched an OnlyFans account for April Fool’s Day.

Still, Fripp's brusqueness remains, as when he said in 2022 that he “doesn’t give a fuck” what King Crimson fans think of his YouTube covers.

While Sunday Lunch remains his priority, he’s given his blessing for former bandmates Belew and Tony Levin to continue flying King Crimson’s flag with Beat.

That tour, which is currently ongoing, sees Steve Vai having to master Fripp’s parts, which he’s talked about in great length. Belew too faced similar challenges when he first joined the band, admitting he only locked in with Fripp after he showed him a new way to hold his pick.

It’s also seen Belew pick up his signature Parker Fly guitar, a MIDI synth guitar he begged Ken Parker and Larry Fishman to make for him.

Adrian Belew has admitted it took “a lot of hours” of rehearsing with Robert Fripp to lock into his atypical approach to guitar playing.

He played alongside Robert Fripp in King Crimson for 18 years across two stints in the band and is currently celebrating that legacy with the band Beat. But speaking in the new issue of Guitar Player, Belew has opened up about the challenges he faced upon first entering the band.

“It was very difficult for me,” he admits. “I had to adapt my playing to that style, because it was not at all what I do. It took me quite awhile to be able to lock in with him. Robert told me I don’t hold my pick correctly. Which is true. I never concentrated on that. I’ve never really tried to be a fast-picking guitar player.

“There are other things about the instrument that I preferred,” he expands. “So I had to rehearse with him a lot of hours, every day. You get it to the point where we call it being ‘in the body.’ That means you can do it without really having to think about it all the time.”

Likewise, Steve Vai faced similar challenges joining Beat, which sees him stepping into Fripp’s shoes – with the prog legend’s blessing – to play the band’s trio of ‘80s albums alongside Belew, Tony Levin, and Danny Carey.

“His style is so specific and refined, it's not something I could just jump into,” Vai says. “There are a couple of things that are a little difficult. Elephant Talk is a peculiar kind of thing. Plus, this isn't a cover band, we're reinterpreting some things. My style and sound will flow into it, because it will be coming out of me.

“I'm trying my absolute best to respect every note that Robert wrote, it's just how I perform it might be a little different.”

He's also mentioned how Fripp's relentlessness provided a stark early challenge, citing Frame By Frame as an example.

“The thing about Robert’s parts is not necessarily the complexity; it’s the relentlessness,” he says. “If you take something like Frame by Frame, the riff itself is hard enough – you have to have a particular picking technique in order to be able to play it. But what makes it so excruciating is the relentlessness. It doesn’t stop. It’s fast and it’s hard and incredibly difficult. [You] need for bulletproof attention. He is highly disciplined. It’s the only way you could achieve the kinds of things he achieved on the guitar.”

Despite his struggles – ones Belew can no doubt sympathize with – he’s said that Vai was the only man he had in mind when it came to putting the new band together.

For Belew, the Beat tour has provided him an opportunity to dust off his signature Parker Fly guitar, an instrument he’s often seen playing when not wielding his Seymour Duncan-“relic’d” Fender Stratocaster.

The original Parker Fly was designed by luthier Ken Parker and pickup guru Larry Fishman in 1993, with Belew's highly spec'd signature coming 18 years later, with Belew convincing Parker to bestow the guitar with MIDI integration.

As such, his signature model comes with a 13-pin out for MIDI-synth connectivity and a 25-point knob to reconfigure the instrument's tones to mimic everything from a Fender Telecaster to a sitar.

The band kicked off the tour earlier this month, with Vai reflecting on a successful but stressful opening night by saying, “You can rehearse until you're blue in the face, but once you hit the stage and the lights go out, all bets are off.”

The latest issue of Guitar Player sees David Gilmour gracing the cover, and discussing the stories and gear behind his new solo album, Luck and Stange, inside. There are also interviews with Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson, Doug Gillard, Luther Dickinson, and many more.

Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

As the BEAT tour kicked off last week, all eyes were understandably on Steve Vai as he deputized for Robert Fripp in the new King Crimson-adjacent outfit.

However, Adrian Belew, playing alongside Vai, his former King Crimson bandmate Tony Levin, and Tool drummer Danny Carey, has quietly caught the eye in his own way.

The guitarist, whose glittering career has included spells in Talking Heads, and with Frank Zappa and David Bowie – not to mention an accidental number-one hit with Mariah Carey – is himself an illustrious player, known for his wholly unique tone.

While he is most synonymous with playing Fender Stratocasters – when he isn’t setting fire to them – his signature Parker Fly guitar has thus far proved a vital companion during the BEAT tour. A new rig rundown with Premier Guitar has explored its origins and why he’s become so fond of the intriguing-looking six-string.

The guitar was first designed by luthier Ken Parker and Larry Fishman, today better known for his futuristic active pickups, in 1993. After some initial teething problems, he couldn’t be happier with how it plays.

“I felt like Ken Parker had taken 20 years to eliminate all the things that normally happen with electric guitars,” Belew believes. “All the problems you have, the tuning, the neck, the frets wearing out, just everything that normally can go wrong with a Fender or Gibson. He figured it all out.”

Strangely, it took Belew years of touring with his model to identify what tweaks were needed to take the guitar from great to perfect for his strange experimentations.

“I called Ken Parker and I said, ‘You know, I've really been wanting to use your guitar. I love it so much, but I need a synthesizer guitar. Is there anyone [or] any way we could do something about [that]?’ I need a MIDI guitar, is what I said.

“He said, ‘Well, that's funny, because when we first brought it out, it was supposed to be a MIDI guitar. It was built to be that.’”

Despite its launch as a product a step away from the original template, it won over some notable players including Grand Funk Railroad’s Mark Farner, thanks to its light weight and versatile piezo pickups.

It took Parker and Fishman four years to bring the Fly to fruition, so there was a little reluctance from them when Belew asked them to revive their plans for MIDI integration. Eventually, he got his way.

“I said, ‘I just want the most modern things we can have now.’ So I was only changing the sound parts, not the guitar,” Belew continues.

Belew got his signature model 13 years ago, and adorned it with a fair raft of gizmos. Its whammy-stocked tremolo could be pushed and pulled, with the synth and guitar lovechild bestowed with a 13-pin out for MIDI/synth connectivity, and Line 6 Variax components.

This includes a 25-point knob on the body of the guitar for delivering 25 types of guitar sounds, ranging from 12-strings and acoustics to a sitar or a Telecaster. Gadgets have always proved to be inspiring for the guitarist.

“I love technology,” he tells Premier Guitar. "It always excites me to find something I could never do before and inspires me to write new music. Right back when I first started making animal noises and I made a rhinoceros-snorting sort of sound, I thought, ‘You've got to have a song to put that in, otherwise it's just a goofy gimmick.’”

That would become the premise for his 1982 solo album, Lone Rhino, and he'd continue that experimentalism with his Parker Fly some years later.

The signature guitar also featured three pickups: DiMarzio and Sustainiac humbuckers, and a Fishman piezo.

The result is a guitar that perfectly matches Belew’s needs and playing style.

“I swear this guitar never goes out of tune,” he says. “[It] plays beautifully. I play better with the [signature] Parker Fly. I can't explain it better than that.”

The 65-date BEAT tour started on September 12, with the band performing a 19-song set of King Crimson’s best ‘80s material – and one song from its ‘70s canon.

Regarded as one of the most inventive guitarists in rock, Adrian Belew has worked with a host of stellar musicians including Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Talking Heads and King Crimson.

Having toured and recorded with Zappa (Belew appears on his 1979 Sheik Yerbouti album) he was recruited by Bowie for his epic Isolar II – The 1978 World Tour, a.k.a. The Low/Heroes World Tour.  

Consequently, Belew is credited as lead guitarist on Bowie’s 1978 live album, Stage.

Released in 1979, Lodger is the only Bowie studio album featuring Belew. Following 1977's Low and “Heroes” LPs, it is the final instalment in Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy recorded in collaboration with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti.

In 1990, Belew returned to the Bowie fold as musical director for the Sound+Vision Tour.

In this fascinating interview, the King Crimson virtuoso recalls how Bowie’s encouragement “to try wild and unusual things” assisted his development as a guitar player.

Brian Eno had an unusual idea for your parts on Lodger, where you didn’t get a chance to hear a song before you played on it, and he took elements of what you played and rearranged them into new composite guitar parts on the album. Do you think, with hindsight, that if you’d had the chance to hear the songs first, you could have come up with something you might have preferred, or thought was better?

I definitely think I could have come up with different things if I’d had the time to learn the songs and really work on them.

I do quite like the way that they turned out though because it was very unusual. In a way, it started me down that road of people thinking that that was how I played. So I did. [laughs]

When you heard the finished tracks played back to you, did you think it sounded like they might be a bit tricky to play?

I figured I could do it. [laughs] The funny thing is that they did something similar with [Robert] Fripp’s work on "Heroes" on a couple of songs, but when I joined the band, nobody told me that.

I managed to figure out a way to play those parts which the band thought were impossible to play. [laughs]

I have a theory that Eno wasn’t particularly a fan of the guitar, so he sought to undermine guitarists by taking them completely out of their comfort zones.

I don’t know if that’s his motivation, but he does think completely outside the box about things.

He does like to come up with ways to trick you into doing things that you wouldn’t ordinarily do. I like that though.

Why didn’t you do any further studio albums with David?

It was really a matter of circumstances and scheduling. I was trying to get my own record deal and then I had the offer to join Talking Heads on their world tour which took up a year anyway.

King Crimson came after that, so there really was no time to do much else. We reunited for the Sound+Vision Tour in 1990 which was a major undertaking. It was a world tour with the intention to play the massive catalog of hits for the last time.

He made me the musical director of what turned out to be a very small band, so we used a lot of samplers on that tour. We had to cover all kinds of orchestrations and line-ups, so it was a huge task. We did 108 shows which was a fantastic experience.

How long would you spend in rehearsal for a tour of that magnitude?

A lot of time was pre-rehearsal with me and Rick Fox, the keyboard player, where we had to work out how to cover all the bases on the songs with a four-piece band.

Once we actually started rehearsing, that’s when David would join in. He’d maybe suggest key changes or different arrangements for some songs but mostly he was kind of standing outside looking in and cheering us on.

He let me have my way, which I think is what he wanted – someone trustworthy to make it happen.

Did working with David change the way that you played and approached music?

I think, especially in 1978 and 1979, those tours were extremely important for my development as a player.

Prior to playing with David, I was playing with Frank Zappa, and in Frank’s band, you didn’t need to be creative – you needed to just play his music consistently correctly.

David was quite the opposite. He wanted someone to throw lots of color at the canvas and he just turned me loose. He told me that he just wanted me to go wild on the guitar.

That gave me the impetus to do exactly that, and I carried that over into Talking Heads and King Crimson.

I think David’s encouragement to try wild and unusual things really helped me to do the things that I did on the guitar.

Order David Bowie's Lodger here.

So many guitarists of the late ’70s and ’80s were using the Roland stereo chorus in the studio that it’s sometimes difficult to parse if the sound was coming from an amp (such as the JC-120), a pedal (like the CE-1, CE-2 or CE-3 Chorus Ensemble) or a Dimension D rack unit.

Regardless, “that sound” is all over countless classic recordings from the era.

When used in the studio, the JC-120 provided a meatier rendition of the tone that players had previously achieved by DI’ing their tracks.

As noted by Steve Levine, producer for Culture Club, China Crisis and others, “In the right hands it’s quite a tone palette, you can do a lot with it. It does bridge the gap between being a regular amplifier and a kind of DI’d monster.”

Billy Duffy of the Cult and other projects derived the clean, chorused element of his signature tone from a JC-120, often used in combination with a Marshall JCM800 or other tube amp.

Although the Cult hit “She Sells Sanctuary” has a heavy feel that helped lodge it as a classic rocker amid the British New Wave boom of the mid ’80s, the guitar tone on the song is clear and clean, and slathered with JC-120 chorus.

“The signature sound of the first two Cult albums was the Gretsch and a Roland JC-120,” Duffy explains on BillyDuffy.Com. “The Roland is great for the early, chimey stuff, because of that chorus sound – which I can really only get out of the combos. Some guys get a great sound with just one amp, but I’ve never been able to do it.”

Johnny Marr’s use of chorus with the Smiths was generally pretty subtle, but also an essential ingredient of his sound on many classic tracks.

“The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” and “I Don’t Owe You Anything” from the Smiths’ self-titled debut album reveal a nuanced chorus tone that might have been JC-120, CE-1 or Boss CE-2, while the swirl is a little thicker on songs like “The Headmaster Ritual” and “I Want the One I Can’t Have” from the 1985 follow-up, Meat Is Murder.

Marr turned to that sound again for his latest solo album, 2022’s Fever Dreams, where we hear it prominently on “Receiver,” “Ariel” and other tracks, shining through what is otherwise a denser mix than heard on early Smiths records.

“For this album, I also dug out my old Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus amp,” he told Rod Brakes in Total Guitar magazine. “Transistor amps have a sonic presence that puts the sound right in your face. It’s sort of an Ennio Morricone sound.”

While Andy Summers’ seminal swirl on early Police hit “Message in a Bottle” is purported to be a combination of pedals, he is also a long-time devotee of the JC-120, and often had one in his touring rig with the band.

“The Roland JC-120 has been a staple in my collection of amplifiers for as long as I can remember,” he told Roland.com, “probably from the day it came out! I have used it on many recordings for its distinctive clarity of sound and always-superior chorus. If I am playing away from home and amps have to be supplied, my first choice is always the JC-120. It is a no-fail amp in just about every situation.”

While it might sound counter-intuitive, heavy metal icons Metallica have often turned to the JC-120 for the clean tones tracked by guitarists James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett.

Several songs on 1988’s …And Justice for All feature the amp, likely heard most prominently on “To Live Is to Die,” but also apparent in the mellower passages of “One” and the intro to the title track.

It’s no surprise, however, that a creative sonic sculptor like Adrian Belew might have fallen in love with the JC-120’s sound, as he did from the very first listen. “I first heard a JC-120 at a casual party in L.A. in 1977,” he told Roland. com. “Someone was playing some chords and noodling around – not very well in fact – but the sound mesmerized me.

“I had never heard an amp sound so pristine and beautiful. There was a shimmering clarity to every note. Then the player turned on the actual stereo chorusing. Wow! What an incredible sound. I nearly fell off my chair! I sat there speechless until I finally asked if I could play through it. Within the first two notes I played, I was madly in love with the JC-120.

“To me, the stereo chorusing and vibrato were the single most beautiful guitar sounds I’d ever heard an amp produce. I was in L.A. at the time rehearsing with Frank Zappa, my first big break in the music business. I told Frank about the amp, and the next day one showed up for us to investigate.

“Frank liked it enough to advance me the money to buy my first JC-120. I still have it ensconced in my studio. I still love it and still record with it.”

Belew’s first prominent use of the JC-120 appeared on the 1978 Zappa classic Sheik Yerbouti, but he also plastered the amp – with and without chorus and vibrato effects – on several tracks of David Bowie’s 1979 album, Lodger, the seminal Talking Heads super-group affair Remain in Light from 1980 and King Crimson’s 1981 smash, Discipline, which reveals that crystal-clear shimmer on Belew’s tour de force “Elephant Talk,” “Frame by Frame,” “Thela Hun Ginjeet,” “The Sheltering Sky” and others.

Visit the Roland website for more information on Jazz Chorus amps.

Click here for info on Boss chorus pedals.

The recording of the Talking Heads’ epochal 1980 album Remain in Light marked a dramatic difference from how the band had previously operated.

On prior long-players, singer-guitarist David Byrne, guitarist-keyboardist Jerry Harrison, bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Franz began album sessions with fully or mostly finished songs.

This time, the quartet, with producer Brian Eno, spent weeks in Compass Point in the Bahamas creating loops out of improvisations without knowing what the arrangements would ultimately become.

“It presented challenges for David when he wrote melodies and lyrics,” Harrison says, “because there weren’t many chord changes to help him go somewhere. It really was a new way for us to record. And for any band, I think.”

When the Heads returned to New York City to finish the album, they reached out to a new friend, guitarist Adrian Belew, and asked him to play on the tracks. “All of my parts were done in one day,” Belew recalls.

“They basically said, ‘Go into the studio and wait around till you think there should be a guitar solo.’ I played and I could see everybody all excited in the control room. So I thought, What the heck? I’ll play a second one. All in all, it turned out quite well.”

Over the past four decades, Remain in Light has been hailed as not only the Talking Heads’ definitive musical statement but also a groundbreaker in terms of its fusion of African polyrhythms, funk, art rock and new wave.

It’s been nearly 25 years since Harrison played live on stage with Belew, when the guitarist was part of the Talking Heads’ expanded 1980-’81 Remain in Light live lineup.

But on September 29, the two musicians reunited for the Remain in Light celebration concert at the Wiltern in Los Angeles, where they performed music from the album and discussed the Talking Heads’ legacy.

Joining Harrison and Belew were members of the Brooklyn-based funk band Turkuaz, along with Julie Slick on bass and Yahuba Garcia-Torres on percussion.

“Jerry and I would run into each other over the years, and we would talk about how great the Remain in Light tour was,” says Belew.

“Finally, we talked about it enough ’til we said, ‘That’s it, we’ve got to do this.’ Jerry was producing Turkuaz and found them to be the perfect band for this. Otherwise, it might not have happened.”

When you hatched the idea for this show, did you consider Chris and Tina?

JERRY HARRISON: I talked to them about it, but they just couldn’t do it. They get offers to do Tom Tom Club shows, and there were some other conflicts.

Besides, once we had started going with Turkuaz, we realized half of that band wouldn’t work. And the great thing about Turkuaz is that they already did a number of Talking Heads songs in their set. We were one of their big inspirations.

Let’s talk about the recording of Remain in Light. Jerry, you play both guitar and keyboards. What specifically did you play on those original tracks?

HARRISON: Because these weren’t initially songs in the traditional sense, I would play a part for four or five minutes, and then the next person would go out and do something. The record was basically composed by using mute buttons on the console.

At what point was the decision made to bring Adrian in?

ADRIAN BELEW: I’d met Talking Heads on the Fear of Music tour. You guys played three shows in Illinois. I went to all of them.

I was just jumping around backstage when you were about to do your encore, and you guys said, “Come on out with us and play ‘Psycho Killer.’” I said I didn’t know the chords, and you guys said, “That’s okay. Just come out at the end and freak out like you do.”

HARRISON: Which you did. And then, when we got back from recording at Compass Point, I remember going to a club in New York, and I saw you there.

BELEW: Yes. I remember we were in a stairwell, and you were with David, and you both asked me to come play on the record. I had to tell my band they would be hanging out in New York an extra day.

But yeah, I went to Sigma Sound and jumped right in. I was super excited by the music. I was like, Wow, this is great. I can’t wait to play on this!

Let’s talk about some songs. “Born Under Punches” has a bonkers solo.

HARRISON: That’s David. He’s using a Lexicon Prime Time delay and working the hold button. You could record little bits and mess with how fast it played back. It was done piece by piece. But Adrian could pull it off live.

BELEW: Well, I didn’t do it exactly like the record, but I did similar things while playing it live. I used a similar effect on one of my songs, “Three of a Perfect Pair,” with a synthesizer guitar. You push this button and trap a tiny portion of the sound, and then you manipulate it.

You do play the solo on “The Great Curve” though.

BELEW: Oh, yeah. That’s me.

HARRISON: I consider that to be one of Adrian’s finest solos on any record.

Were you using a Roland guitar synth?

BELEW: Oh, no. I didn’t have one yet. I got one soon after, when the Talking Heads toured Japan. I came back from that tour with a GR300. I think I was the first person in America who owned one. Then we formed the new King Crimson, and Robert [Fripp] got his own guitar synth, and away we went.

But on “The Great Curve,” I’m using my battered old Strat through a Roland Jazz Chorus 120. I had three or four pedals. I think it was a Big Muff and an equalizer that I used to boost the midrange.

Also, my Stratocaster had a Strat-o-Blaster that really upped the output. I had an Electric Mistress, too, so when it starts doing all the crazy, weird sounds, that’s just me stepping on that and introducing it into the chain.

What’s going on in “The Overload”? The whole song is a sustained series of growling guitar atmospherics.

BELEW: That sounds like something I would do. It was so improvised. I remember when we were putting the live set together, we said, “This one won’t work so well because we’re trying to keep everything so upbeat.”

Adrian, beyond your solos, did you play any rhythm parts on the record?

BELEW: I don’t think so. I didn’t do anything on “Once in a Lifetime.” I think I played on “Crosseyed and Painless,” and I did some solo stuff on “Listening Wind.”

I used the Electric Mistress and bent the sound up and down while working a delay and the volume control on my guitar to make certain notes drift up and down. It’s a very interesting sound.

Adrian, seeing as your parts took one day to record, were you surprised when you listened to the final album?

BELEW: Oh, of course! You know, I considered myself a sideman at the time, so I had no idea how the record would turn out. Same thing with Lodger by David Bowie – I was very surprised at how he used my guitar.

Both of those things, of course, are connected to Brian Eno. He had his own taste and liked to use what I did. He was a big supporter.

The album was seen as being revolutionary. How do you two rate it within the band’s body of work?

HARRISON: Of course, I love them all, but I would say I take Fear of Music and Remain in Light, if I had to pick two.

Fear of Music is the culmination of the four-piece, and Remain in Light is the switch to when we thought about having an expanded format, and all of the influences that had begun with “I Zimbra” on Fear of Music came in. So I don’t quite go to one album; I go to those two.

BELEW: I agree with Jerry about those two. I’ve been fortunate to do a few albums in my career that have been called groundbreaking – Discipline, Graceland, The Downwards Spiral – and I put Remain in Light high up in there. I loved making it. I loved playing it live, and it’s still a record that stands up today, very, very well.

Browse the Talking Heads catalog here.

King Crimson fans are in for a treat this weekend with a special streamed screening of the band’s highly anticipated documentary In the Court of the Crimson King, King Crimson at 50.

Directed by Toby Amies (The Man Whose Mind Exploded) the film explores the “acute suffering” and transcendent glory experienced by current and former members of King Crimson, allowing the audience an intimate and sometimes uncomfortable insight into the musicians’ experience as they confront life and death head-on in the world’s most demanding rock band.

In the Court of the Crimson King is not only a film about a group that has been creatively active for 50 years, it’s also a film about music, why it matters, and the painful sacrifices artists have to make in order to create work that changes people’s lives (but with jokes.)

In keeping with King Crimson’s independent approach to the music and entertainment business they have sidestepped traditional broadcast platforms in order to bring the film direct to their fans without further delay or compromise.

The whole event and movie will be available live worldwide on the nugs.net platform (and through Video On Demand for a 24-hour period thereafter to allow for fans in different time zones around the world.)

CLICK HERE FOR FURTHER DETAILS.

All those joining the livestream qualify for a free “attendee” laminate available with associated merchandise.

A standard 2-disc BluRay/DVD release and a limited edition 8-disc boxed set will follow on November 11 and December 2, respectively.

The standard edition includes the full documentary film, an early edited version of the film, the final performance of the classic "Starless" from the band’s final ever concert in Tokyo, Japan in December 2021, and four trailers/shorts.

The limited edition 8-disc boxed set edition contains 2 Blu-Rays, 2 DVDs and 4 CDs.

Pre-order the standard edition here.

Pre-order the boxed set here.

Some 50 years ago, a reworked King Crimson lineup appeared on German national television to perform a rendition of their epic prog rock instrumental, “Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part One.”

Hosted by Beat-Club, a popular music show that ran from 1965 to 1972 and featured some of the best guitar players of the era – including Chuck Berry, Rory Gallagher and Frank Zappa – the King Crimson V3 band comprised ex-Yes drummer Bill Bruford, bassist/vocalist John Wetton, percussionist Jamie Muir, violinist/keyboardist/flautist David Cross and (last, but not least) guitarist Robert Fripp.

Although “Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part One” appeared as the opener on the band’s 1973 studio album Larks' Tongues in Aspic (of which “Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part Two” was the closer) the genesis of the idea goes back to 1971 when Fripp was chasing an edgier electric guitar sound.

“Musically, I was moving toward…is grungier the word?” said the prog rock legend in a recent interview with Guitarist.

“A grungier more metallic approach to guitar, which was certainly beginning from 1971, where “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic” was beginning to fly by, and “Larks’, Part Two.”

With a free improv approach and drawing on a broad palette of sounds ranging from modern classical to heavy metal, this spectacular array of musicians is an entirely unique sight (and sound) to behold.

“Larks’ Tongues in Aspic”: It was written for John Wetton and Bill Bruford in the rhythm section to come forward,” recalled the guitarist, emphasizing that it was not intended as a generic piece of music to be played by anyone else.

“I presented the defining “Larks’” rhythm and chords at Covent Garden, and it wasn’t heard; it went nowhere.

“Then I played it at Richmond Athletic Club, and Bill and John leapt straight in. They had it, it clicked, it worked.”

Browse the King Crimson catalog here.

Interviews with Robert Fripp are notoriously rare, although a dive into the Guitar Player archives reveals some fantastic conversations with the King Crimson guitarist.

A veteran of the guitar world, Fripp has inspired countless guitarists throughout the decades with his matchless technique, inventive use of gear, and daringly creative approach to making music.

Those moments of insight he has given during past interviews are well worth revisiting from time to time.

The following pearls of wisdom originally appeared in the January 1986 issue of Guitar Player…

1) The Intangible

“Some people make music their god. I don't. But music is a very remarkable opportunity. It's a tangible way of dealing with the intangible.”

2) The Musician

“It would be truer to say that the music creates the musician, rather than the musician creates the music.”

3) What is Music?

“Music is a quality organized in sound. Not all of us have experience in forms of organization or producing music or singing, but we all have access to the quality of music, the spirit of music.”

4) Bands

“The very best band does not reflect any of the individuals, because a band has a life of its own. It has its own identity.”

5) Listening

“Very few guitarists listen to themselves or anyone else.”

6) Performing

“I'm not particularly romantic about artists. A good personality, even a strong personality, is important to the performer. But it's a question of being in a relationship with it.”

7) Identity

“Robert Fripp consists of a collection of impressions and experiences over a period of years that seem to have some coherence, but the level of coherence is very, very fragile.”

8) Staying Grounded

“If one's head is in the clouds, then one's feet need to be firmly placed in the earth. When I came to live in New York in 1977, I had three rules: ride on public transportation, do my own laundry, and do my own grocery shopping.”

9) Music First

“If one can respect the person one's working with, and the music is good, then one can put up with quite a lot. But, if the music isn't nourishing, then life becomes difficult.”

10) The Music Industry

“I divide the music industry into three divisions. The first is the area with mass and popular culture; the second is where one is a craftsman who can earn an honorable living; and the third is the area of research and development.”

Browse the Robert Fripp catalog here.

Guitarists’ fascination with digital loopers over the past decade has its roots in the 1970s ambient work of King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp and ambient pioneer Brian Eno, who had an idea for a music system that, he said, “once set in motion will create music for you.”

Eno’s concept was itself recycled from avant-grade composer Terry Riley’s Time Lag Accumulator, a tape delay/feedback system that used two Revox reel-to-reel-tape recorders.

The tape supply reel was placed on the first deck, in Record mode, and the take-up reel on the second, in Playback mode, with the tape threaded between the two machines and the output of the second deck fed back to the input of the first.

The result was both a delay of several seconds, depending on the distance between the two tape machines, and a buildup of sound from the feedback loop that, together, created a dense ambient drone of the just-past and the now-present performance – an aural pentimento.

Enter Fripp, whom Eno invited to his studio for collaborative experimentation in 1972. Fripp plugged his electric guitar into the system and started to play, with little introduction to the system or rehearsal.

The result was “The Heavenly Music Corporation,” a tape-delay recording from Fripp and Eno’s 1973 debut album, No Pussyfooting.

“There it was,” Fripp declared, “a way for one person to make an awful lot of noise. Wonderful!”

The guitarist would make Eno’s tape delay system a central part of his setup for much of the 1970s, dub it Frippertronics, and use it on collaborations with Daryl Hall and Peter Gabriel, as well as his early 1980s albums God Save the Queen/Under Heavy Manners and Let the Power Fall: An Album of Frippertronics.

Today’s digital delays and loopers make it easy to achieve the dense lingering clouds of delay Fripp crafted with analog tape.

The guitarist himself moved on long ago.

“I’m working with the Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay,” he told Guitar Player in 1986. “It was advertised as a Fripp in the Box,” a copy in the hands of an original.

Buy No Pussyfooting by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno here.

A new documentary on the history of prog-rock titans King Crimson, In the Court of the Crimson King, has been announced.

Directed by Toby Amies, and set to make its world premiere at the 2022 SXSW film festival in Austin, Texas, the film follows the band on their 50th Anniversary tour in 2019.

Far from looking exclusively at the present-day King Crimson though, the documentary also explores the band's past – which is as knotty and complicated as the band's music – via interviews with a number of the group's prominent former members. 

You can watch the movie's trailer below.

First formed in 1968, King Crimson have experienced a number of drastic musical and personnel shifts over the last 50+ years, with the sole constant member being electric guitar player Robert Fripp. On more than one occasion, King Crimson have disbanded, only to reform years later with a dramatically different lineup. 

In the Court of the Crimson King's trailer fully explores this bumpy history, with Fripp at one point quipping “This is the first King Crimson where there’s not at least one member of the band that actively resents my presence, which is astonishing.”

Other members from King Crimson's past – including former drummer Bill Bruford and Adrian Belew, who spent over 10 years in total with the band as a singer and guitarist – also appear in the trailer to offer their perspectives on the group.

Bruford, for one, points to King Crimson as "the dream band viewed from outside," while Belew says, “When I came back from making some of that music, my hair had fallen out.” 

For more info on when and where In the Court of the Crimson King will be screened at the SXSW festival, head on over to sxsw.com.

On this day, in 1977, David Bowie released his “Heroes” single. While the song was not a smash hit at the time, it has since become one of the late, great man’s most beloved tracks. Adding to the magic of this classic ‘Berlin period’ number are its “celestial” electric guitar tracks, courtesy of King Crimson’s Robert Fripp.

Bowie and synth pioneer Brian Eno were already several days into recording the song that would soon be called “Heroes” when Fripp got the call asking him to fly to Germany and join them in the studio. Fripp and Eno had already released two albums together under their collaborative Fripp & Eno moniker, namely (No Pussyfooting) and Evening Star in 1973 and 1975, respectively. 

These experimental, ambient works were a sign of things to come when the pair linked up in the studio again to record the title track of Bowie’s new album.

“I was at home in my apartment in New York, Waterside Plaza, in July 1977 and the telephone went,” recalled Fripp. “It was Brian Eno calling from Berlin. He said, “Hang on, I’m here with David Bowie. I’ll pass you over.” And David Bowie said to me, “Do you think you can play some hairy rock ‘n’ roll guitar?” I said, “Well, I haven’t played guitar for a while. I’m not sure. But if you’re prepared to take the risk, so am I.” Shortly afterwards, a first-class ticket arrived on Lufthansa to Germany.

Though Fripp’s sustained guitar parts may sound as if they were generated using an Ebow, they were in fact the result of some carefully controlled feedback. Using plenty of volume, the guitarist measured various distances from the amplifier denoting points at which certain notes would feed back.

Leaning on Fripp and Eno’s tried and tested method of treating the guitar signal with a synthesizer the team laid down three distinctive-sounding tracks full of shifting tones and pitches. And when layered together that good old studio magic came into play as they fitted together perfectly, giving the song a unique identity all its own.

Buy Heroes here.

In July 1969, a free outdoor festival was hosted in London’s Hyde Park. This now legendary event – The Stones in the Park – is notable for several reasons. While proceedings were somewhat overshadowed by the death of Brian Jones just three days prior, it was The Rolling Stones’ first public concert in over two years and their first show with newly recruited guitarist Mick Taylor.

It was also the gig that launched supporting act King Crimson onto the international stage.

One of several bands lined up to support the rock ‘n’ roll titans, King Crimson secured their slot having created a stir in London’s live music scene. At this point, the band hadn’t an album to their name, but this high-profile appearance along with subsequent touring helped their debut long-player, In the Court of the Crimson King, become a near instantaneous smash when it was released in October '69.

Speaking about the impact of King Crimson’s The Stones in the Park performance guitarist Robert Fripp recalls, “We were the unknown band of the day… There were many people who had come from Europe and the United States to see The Rolling Stones return to live performance. And they went back and said, ‘There’s a band you must see. A new band; it’s King Crimson.’ So from one point of view this was a move to the international stage.

“The key to the success of King Crimson and these young men was the power of the music. Music lent over and took those young men into its confidence. But they didn’t have a sufficiently developed personal discipline to handle the current. Fuses blew and the band broke up in December in San Francisco, 1969, having been together for 11 months and 1 day… It broke my heart.”

Although the album recording of “21st Century Schizoid Man” features some of prog rock’s finest electric guitar moments, Fripp told GP in 1974, “If you listen to King Crimson's records you realize that the guitar playing has always been one of the smallest things that the band does. One of the reasons for that is I've always been more happy in developing the other musicians; developing them as players. So I guess my function has been more of a general organizer of the situation. However, at the moment I'm more interested in playing guitar, and I find it most frustrating that I can't make the other players in the band take as much interest in my playing as I do in theirs.”

In the same interview, Fripp reveals how he manages to achieve his incredible tone, including some insight into which pedals he was using at that time. “On stage I use three pedals on a pedal board: A volume pedal, fuzz-tone, and wah-wah,” he says. 

“The fuzz-tone and wah-wah are pretty rubbishy. I'm not sure what type of wah-wah it is. The best fuzz-box to use is a Burns Buzzaround which they discontinued making in England about six years ago. I have two of them, but they're not at the moment attached to my pedalboard.”

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During his 50+-year tenure as the mastermind guitarist of prog-rock stalwarts King Crimson, Robert Fripp has authored his fair share of knotty, exceedingly difficult guitar parts.

None of them, however, hold a candle to "Fracture," an 11-minute instrumental from King Crimson's 1974 album, Starless and Bible Black. Featuring a three-minute, “moto perpetuo” (Italian for "perpetual motion") section in which Fripp unleashes a non-stop barrage of notes – cross-picked over two and three strings, no less – at 124-136 bpm, the piece has been described by its own author as “impossible to play.”

That classification hasn't stopped guitarist Anthony Garone, however. For the last 22 years, Garone – after being challenged to learn the piece by his father as a teenager – has worked at getting "Fracture" down, documenting the process in blog posts and his Make Weird Music YouTube channel along the way.

Now, Garone has written a book about the arduous journey, called Failure to Fracture. The book, and Garone's efforts, attracted the attention of Fripp himself, who said of Garone “Anthony has spent 22 years failing to play 'Fracture.' Actually, he’s done a pretty good job. Anthony’s failure is so well-achieved in my book, it’s a success.”

According to Garone, his breakthrough on the piece came after attending a guitar masterclass hosted by Fripp in Mexico in 2015. There, he learned the intricacies of Fripp's right-hand technique from the man himself, and realized that in order to master the song he would have to “relearn how to play guitar, sit, stand, and breathe."

Afterwards, Garone entirely re-trained himself on the guitar, undergoing a practice regimen of playing a single open string for two hours a day across several weeks. From 2016 on, he was finally able to master small sections of "Fracture," before eventually nailing it, and its sequel piece, "FraKctured."

Failure to Fracture is set for a May 18 release. You can preorder it here.