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.

Steve Vai once found himself sitting in Eddie Van Halen’s home studio, surrounded by shelves of tapes the guitarist had recorded on his own — a private archive that may soon be heard by the public.

The material, Vai recalls, was extraordinary.

“I was up at Edward’s house once, in his studio,” Vai tells us via Zoom. “He invited me. He had a room filled with tapes, and he was pulling them out and we were listening. He would just sit and record and play.

“And I’m listening to this stuff and, I’ll tell you, nobody plays like they do when they’re sitting in their room alone. It was a whole library of tapes, and it was such great stuff.”

The experience prompted Vai to ask Van Halen a question he’d long wondered about.

“I said, ‘Why don’t you make a solo record?’” Vai recalls. “But he always felt that Van Halen was his solo records.”

Now Vai is among those eager to hear what may emerge from Van Halen’s vaults, which his brother Alex Van Halen is currently reviewing with help from Steve Lukather.

“So I’m sure there’s a lot there to play with, and it’ll be great,” Vai says. “And I’m really glad Alex is working with Luke. More than anybody I knew through the years, Luke and Edward were like this.” Vai crosses his fingers. “So that’s the best guy to help with this.”

Alex Van Halen has acknowledged that he and Lukather are going through recordings his brother left behind after his death in 2020 at age 65. No details have been shared about what may be released or when.

Vai, of course, has plenty on his plate to keep him occupied until the Van Halen material becomes available for public consumption. He’s currently on the road with the SatchVai Band, his new endeavor with longtime friend — and former guitar teacher — Joe Satriani. They’ve released three songs so far and have completed a full album, though no release date has been announced. The tour wraps May 30 in Virginia.

Five weeks later, Vai will be in Europe with Beat, the all-star quartet featuring co-guitarist Adrian Belew, bass guitarist Tony Levin and drummer Danny Carey of Tool, performing music from the early-’80s era of King Crimson.

The group launched in 2024, and Vai says its popularity has surpassed all expectations.

“I took the gig because I loved the music, and I’m just attracted to virtually impossible challenges — and Robert Fripp guitar parts, that’s a virtually impossible challenge,” says Vai, who has received both Fripp’s blessing and valuable input along the way.

“The big surprise I discovered when we got out there was this: It’s not the musicians who are the attraction, although there’s some of that. It’s the music. It’s the way the music is supported by those fans. They are fiercely supportive. The music was the boss, and that music is beloved. So the turnout was a surprise and a delight.”

Vai and company have already taken Beat around North America, South America and Japan. The upcoming European run will wrap July 27. A Beat Live album from the tour’s early legs was released in September.

“We’re hoping some more Beat stuff will happen after that,” Vai says — which, of course, raises the prospect of the band creating music of its own, an idea that leaves the guitarist somewhat ambivalent.

“Well, that’s an interesting question that comes up,” Vai acknowledges. “It comes up in my mind and everybody’s. And of course it can happen. We could sit and start writing things.

“But I’m not quite sure how I feel about that, because in Beat I feel like a dutiful soldier. That’s my role. I’m here to do my best to deliver Robert Fripp’s notes to the fans who love this music. Of course there are some of my notes in there, but they’re not my songs, and they’re not my musical DNA.

“So I’m trying to figure out: If I start writing for this, how does that square with King Crimson music — and then what is Beat? I don’t know yet, but it’s something to think about, and maybe there’s an answer in there someplace.”

Vai adds that after focusing on SatchVai and Beat, he’ll be eager to return to his own work. On his docket are an acoustic-and-vocal album and, he says, “three or four” albums drawn from sessions with the Metropole Orchestra in the Netherlands and the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra in Finland. He also has a piece to compose that will be performed during the summer of 2027 in The Hague, and he’ll host a Creamsicle Sunset cruise on the Rhine River around the same time.

"There are so many great guitar players I've been blessed to work with," Narada Michael Walden tells us from his home in San Rafael, California.

Dude is not kidding.

Walden is, of course, best known as a hit-making and Grammy Award–winning producer for the likes of Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Starship and others. But his first big gig was drumming in the Mahavishnu Orchestra, playing with John McLaughlin and company over the course of three albums between 1974 and ’76.

Walden moved on to play with Tommy Bolin on Teaser and on tour; with Jeff Beck on Wired; on Allan Holdsworth's first solo album, Velvet Darkness; on three songs for Robert Fripp's Exposure, and with Carlos Santana.

A Michigan native who's released a dozen albums of his own, Walden was even in Journey for a minute, playing with the group at Lollapalooza in 2021 and co-producing its latest album, Freedom, in 2022.

That's a formidable track record of legends to play behind, and Walden has love for every one of them — which he expressed broadly on this trip down memory lane.

John McLaughlin

“I was living in Pasadena in '71 when they dropped that album The Inner Mounting Flame. I just happened to be in a record shop and had just enough money to buy it, and when I heard McLaughlin and Billy Cobham going, it was something like I'd never heard before, so precise, just killer. It just blew my mind. I would woodshed on that record and get introduced to that sound, practice my drums and just soak it in.

“When I moved to Connecticut I was able to go to a show. I knew John was into prayer and meditation life; his guru was Sri Chinmoy. After the show I was fortunate enough to meet a disciple, and he walked me around the back of the stage, where I met McLaughlin.

“I said, ‘I’m Michael Walden, and I want to be like you. I’ve never seen anything like that.’ He said, ‘It's largely to do with my prayer life, my meditation life. I’m going to see the guru at six in the morning back in Queens. Give me your number. I'll give you a phone call.’

“A week later, I'm living out in the middle of the woods in Canaan, Conn., and it's John on the phone. He said, ‘I want you to go to meditation and meet the guru in Norwalk, Conn.’ It changed my life. He wanted me to come down for weekly meditations, and I did.

“John would call me every now and then to meet him at this restaurant in Queens where I played on his guitar case, in 7. He realized I could hang with him a little bit. We played again at another meditation in the Village. The third time we jammed at my band's barn in Canaan, with Billy McCoy on piano and Ralphe Armstrong on bass.

“John scared the hell out of me. He looked at me with a stone face, playing so incredibly — but it was a stone face. I had to close my eyes to not get thrown by him and just keep up with him.

“Not long after that he said, ‘I want you to join my band.’ It happened over time; I think it's because I became a disciple and got in the same groove, meditation-wise and prayer-wise. And musically we hit it off because I was a real fan of his. I always wanted to be Jimi Hendrix's drummer, but Mahavishnu became my Hendrix. When I joined the band, it was a dream come true.

“I'm very indebted to Mahavishnu for opening the door to get me in. I didn't know how to make it; it's the hardest thing in the world to know how to make it. He opened that door. It was like he anointed me; without that I'm not even here. I went out to do great stuff in my life because of Vishnu.

“People don't understand that the love for music is so high. What McLaughlin taught me was to listen. And I learned to watch his body; his body would just rock when he got high. I saw him get out there and just become the music. It was so inspiring.”

Robert Fripp

“Robert Fripp came on my scene around '77, '78, when I was still in New York before I moved to California. I played a little club, McHale's, that all the musicians played in New York, a little bar up towards Harlem. Some heavy cats would be in there. I was in there playing one night and right by my bass drum was this little English-type gentleman with glasses on who reminded me of Robert Fripp. And it was him, with my bass drum right in his face!

“He said, ‘Would you come play on a recording with me?’ I said, ‘I’d be honored,’ ’cause I was really inspired by King Crimson when I was in high school; it was part of my DNA. So I went to the session the next day with myself and the great Tony Levin on bass, and Robert showed me a song called ‘Breathless.’ I just tore it up with everybody. It was just a little trio — electric guitar, bass and drums.

“[Fripp] was very grounded and very staid and kinda quiet. But when he'd say something it was like dropping a bomb. There's a section in ‘Breathless’ that goes into this odd meter and you had to really keep counting it — it'd go even meter, odd meter, even meter, odd meter, and you had to keep counting. I wanted to get over it so I could be free in it, but I wanted to make sure I didn't mess it up for him ’cause my love for him was so deep. I wanted to make sure I did good for him.”

Carlos Santana

“I met him in '73, in Mahavishnu's living room, when I went to his house the first time. Out of the kitchen, into the living room, walks the superstar Carlos Santana. When I was at Western Michigan University for three semesters, all the black kids from Detroit, when they wanted to get high and do their exams and study, Carlos Santana's first album [the Santana band’”s 1969 debut] would be on their stereos. That was their music of choice — funky and Latin and get-high music.

“So Carlos was a damn superstar, and here he is in John's house saying hi to me. I was just flabbergasted by meeting these great champions together; it wasn't long before they did the Love Devotion Surrender album.

“Carlos has always been the kind of guy that would talk about God all the time. You never meet anyone like that; a lot of people talk about God, but Carlos would talk about God all the time — ‘I’m just so grateful to be alive. I'm so grateful to have God in my heart…’

“That's his name: Devadip — the eye, the lamp, the light of God. That’s how he lives, and that's how he plays. He's crying. Those long notes, I equate it to holding lightning; he could hold lightning in his hand like Jimi would do, those long, crying notes. He'd be crying for God. He's very sensitive that way.

“And he wants you to cry with him. He doesn't want no bullshit. He doesn't want cute and clever. He wants the snot out of your nose. He wants your sweat out of your brow. If you can bleed, he wants you to bleed. He's one of those kinds of cats.”

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.

David Bowie’s iconic track “‘Heroes’” has enjoyed a resurgence since its appearance in the final episode of Stranger Things on December 31. Rolling Stone reports that, according to entertainment data company Luminate, the classic track has enjoyed a 500 percent bump on streaming services since it was heard over the show’s end credits.

The title track from Bowie’s 1977 album, “‘Heroes’” is an anthemic work built on a simple, repeating five-chord structure. While Bowie’s impassioned vocals are the song’s focus, much of its soaring power comes from the sustaining electric guitar tones created by Robert Fripp, then with King Crimson, who guested on the album as lead guitarist.

Like most of the album’s songs, “‘Heroes’” was composed on the spot in the studio, with Bowie and his collaborator, Brian Eno, working together to develop the material. It was Bowie and Eno’s second album together following Low, earlier that year.

Producer Tony Visconti says the backing track — consisting of Carlos Alomar on electric guitar, George Murray on bass, Dennis Davis on drums and Bowie on piano — sat for about a week before they returned to it. Eno added some synthesizer lines, and Bowie overdubbed brass and string sounds using a Chamberlin tape sample-playing keyboard and an ARP Solina, respectively.

It was Eno who suggested they have Fripp perform on the track. He and Fripp had previously worked together on a pair of albums — 1973’s (No Pussyfooting) and 1975’s Evening Star — on which the guitarist used Eno’s tape delay system with a feedback loop to create a droning wash of sustained and evolving guitar tones. Fripp would dub the system Frippertronics and go on to use it throughout the 1970s.

Fripp’s schedule left him just one weekend free. He came to Berlin carrying his electric guitar and no amplifier.

“He recorded his guitar in the studio,” Visconti said. “We had to play the track very very loud because he was relying on the feedback from the studio monitors. So it was deafening working with him.”

While Fripp’s guitar has the droning sound associated with an EBow, Visconti explains that the guitarist was “playing” the feedback from the monitors.

“Fripp had a technique in those days where he measured the distance between the guitar and the speaker where each note would feed back,” the producer recalled in an article for Mixdown magazine.

“For instance, an A would feed back maybe at about four feet from the speaker, whereas a G would feed back maybe three and a half feet from it. He had a strip that they would place on the floor, and when he was playing the note F sharp he would stand on the strip’s F sharp point and F sharp would feed back better.

“He really worked this out to a fine science, and we were playing this at a terrific level in the studio, too.”

After Fripp recorded one track in this fashion, Visconti and Bowie felt it lacked something.

“And Fripp recorded a second time without hearing the first one,” Visconti explained. “It was a little bit more cohesive, but still quite wasn’t right, and he said, ‘Let me do it again. Just give me another track. I’ll do it again.’ And we silenced the first two tracks and he did a third pass, which was really great. He nailed it.

“And then I had the bright idea: I said, ‘Look let me just hear what it sounds like with the other two tracks. You never know.’

“We played it, all three tracks together, and you know, I must reiterate Fripp did not hear the other two tracks when he was doing the third one so he had no way of being in sync. But he was strangely in sync. And all his little out-of-tune wiggles suddenly worked with the other previously recorded guitars.

“It seemed to tune up. It got a quality that none of us anticipated. It was this dreamy, wailing quality, almost crying sound in the background. And we were just flabbergasted.”

Visconti dissects the song track by track in the video below.

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.

In 1972, Robert Fripp coaxed sounds out of a guitar that no one had imagined possible: an endlessly sustaining drone that shimmered, throbbed, and buzzed with electricity. The tones seemed alive, slowly shifting and mutating into layers of ambient texture that were at once hypnotic, mysterious, and unpredictable. Over this evolving bed of sound — sometimes ominous, sometimes serene — Fripp would solo, weaving melodies that pushed the music into uncharted dimensions.

He called the source of this sound Frippertronics, and it made its debut on (No Pussyfooting), his first of three collaborative albums with Brian Eno. The system, in fact, wasn’t his. Eno had created it using two Revox A77 reel-to-reel recorders arranged to create a tape delay system with a feedback loop. As Fripp played, his Gibson Les Paul electric guitar would be recorded, and delay would be added by the second tape machine, which fed the signal back to the first tape deck, creating an endless loop onto which new sounds could be added infinitely.

The idea wasn’t entirely new — early electronic music pioneers Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros had experimented with similar tape setups years earlier — but Eno put it in Fripp’s hands on September 8, 1972, in Eno’s London home studio. That first night yielded “The Heavenly Music Corporation,” a 21-minute immersion that filled side one of (No Pussyfooting), released the following year.

This initial session was the pair's first and arguably most extraordinary collaboration, and it contains some of the guitarist's most inspired and transcendent playing. Fripp would go on to fine tune the system and adopt it for both studio and live performances. His girlfriend Joanna Walton dubbed it Frippertronics for a 1977 performance in New York City. Two years later, it received its first wide exposure in an remarkable performance on the TV show Midnight Special.

Fripp addressed the recording of (No Pussyfooting) in a 1982 issue of Musician magazine, in which he interviewed guitarist John McLaughlin about his life and work. At one point, McLaughlin turned the tables to question Fripp about his own music, and Fripp remarked that he thought his guest might enjoy (No Pussyfooting).

“It’s all improvised, I mean, it's purely improvised,” he said. “I had just met with the fellow [Eno] and had gone and spent the evening with him with a glass of wine and coffee — this was in 1972 — and he had a system of recording with two Revoxes.

"He didn't explain it to me and I didn't know what it would sound like, but I plugged in and played. It was simply, 'There you are — do it.'

“I had never heard the guitar quite sound like this," Fripp continued, "yet it provided me with the technical facility for getting a sound which I had been hearing on the inside for about five years, but had never managed to get.”

Asked by McLaughlin how he felt working within that domain, Fripp didn’t beat around the bush.

“Liberated is the word,” he said. “I had a lot of difficulty working with other musicians, because I’m not a forceful player, and I have a lot of difficulty with enthusiastic drummers thundering around. So just to be able to develop at my own speed, without any useful suggestions…really was liberating.”

(No Pussyfooting) was a revelation for listeners, and there were many in its day..The album sold more than 100,000 copies — astonishing for such a radical, improvised work. It remains as fresh and vibrant today as it did more than half a century ago.

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.

For many guitarists, Eric Clapton, even in his youngest, rawest form, was a revelation to the electric guitar.

Clapton was barely out of his teens by the time one super fan had spray-painted “Clapton is God” on a London wall in the mid-’60s. He was a member of both the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers during that period, two bands which inadvertently earned a reputation for being production lines of guitar greats, and the hype around this particular hotshot almost single-handedly forged the cult of the guitar hero.

Andy Summers, though, was less overwrought by his talents, saying his heart and his tastes lay elsewhere.

Though Summers' earliest playing experiences were with British rhythm and blues group Zoot Money's Big Roll Band, he came from a very different school from Clapton. He would eventually ditch the U.K. scene to study classical guitar in Los Angeles. Despite later becoming a hit-maker in the Police, what turned him on, musically speaking, never changed.

So, while Clapton’s reputation reached fever pitch, Summers was deaf to the noise. He was focused on a rather different kind of guitar playing.

“When I was 14, my ears were trained by listening for hours on end to American jazz guitar players and trying to understand their solos and their lines, and that’s what I developed,” he told Let It Rock in late 2021.

“Then the blues scene developed in London, and people like Clapton came out of the woodwork, and the American blues singers took off. But my heart was in jazz — I liked Thelonious Monk, not Howlin’ Wolf!

“Blues is very simple to me, and it was not that interesting when everybody copied Eric back in those days. It’s too simple to play because it’s based on a five-note scale, and I had come way past that.”

Summers also says his songwriting partnership with bass player Sting, who was as musically well-traveled as he was, allowed the Police to find a sweet spot between pop and progression.

“We both had a lot of harmonic knowledge that was a sort of exterior to pop music per se,” he says. “You can tell that was different by the way we played songs like ‘Roxanne’ which started off as bossa nova, and it’s got more interesting chords, or ‘Walking on the Moon’ where the opening chord is not something you do in a pop group. It was a perfect blend of musical sensibilities put into another framework.”

Yet, despite the pair’s stylistic collaging, he did have his reservations. After five years filling the charts with hits like “Message in a Bottle” and “Roxanne”, Summers showed his true colors by striking an unlikely partnership with Robert Fripp.

He believed his talents were stagnating and that he was “musically hemmed” in by the group’s pop-minded approach. Despite not being a fan of King Crimson, he knew tuning into Fripp’s oddball, leftfield, and highly polyrhythmic playing would be the perfect antidote.

His record label, A&M, worried it was commercial suicide. Summers fought his corner.

“A&M, who the Police were selling trillions of records for, didn't want me to do it at all,” Summers reveals. “But they didn't want to piss me off, because I had too much power at that point.

“Robert and I were both famous players in our respective groups, so I thought there'd be a lot of interest in it. Then it went into the Top 60 in the charts. It was a real sort of 'fuck you' to the record company.”

More artful than accessible, the instrumental album wasn’t exactly going to dominate dance clubs, but it gave Summers musical freedom, and he cherished those moments.

“Robert and I had no idea what we were going to play,” he said. “We just sat with our guitars and various bits of equipment and started to discover what could be made between us. It allowed you to move into a whole other sphere.”

Andy Summers was at the height of his powers and fame when he took a sharp, unexpected sidestep to collaborate with King Crimson maverick Robert Fripp in the early ‘80s — and that was exactly the point.

By his admission, he felt he was stagnating, his talents “musically hemmed” in by a band that had proven a production line for simple, catchy hit singles. He wanted a fresh, far more experimental challenge. So the two records they would write together, he tells Prog, were “the ultimate 'fuck you' to the record company,” when they proved an improbable success.

Summer says he wasn’t even a fan of King Crimson’s musical, but he felt he and Fripp — who both hail from similar circles in Southern England — had a “cosmic connection.”

Indeed, Fripp’s polyrhythmic guitar playing were perfectly counterbalanced by Summers’ more tasteful interjections. Their debut release, 1982’s all-instrumental I Advance Masked, spent 11 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart.

Yet A&M, the Police’s label, thought such a release would do the band’s reputation more harm than good.

“A&M, who the Police were selling trillions of records for, didn't want me to do it at all,” Summers says. “But they didn't want to piss me off, because I had too much power at that point.

"Robert and I were both famous players in our respective groups, so I thought there'd be a lot of interest in it. Then it went into the Top 60 in the charts. It was a real sort of 'fuck you' to the record company.”

The guitarists had just two weeks in the studio together, due to Fripp's obligations on King Crimson's Three of a Perfect Pair album. But Fripp says the window of opportunity came at the ideal moment in his career.

“Working within King Crimson, my musical focus became increasingly defined and specialized,” he explains to Prog. “So what made Summers and Fripp work is that Andy was more able to move to me than I was to him.”

Summers, however, didn’t feel the project was about blending into one another’s foliage. He liked the idea of polarity.

“Robert and I are very disparate players," he says. "He ain't gonna play the blues with you. He's really good at playing these polyrhythmic lines. I'd never heard anybody else play quite like that. So I regarded his multi-rhythmic lines as the bones of the skeleton, and my function was to put on the flesh. We were figuring it out as we went along.

“Robert and I had no idea what we were going to play,” he continues. “We just sat with our guitars and various bits of equipment and started to discover what could be made between us.”

Although used sparingly, their mutual adoration for embracing strange things was epitomized by the record's employment of the Roland guitar synthesizer. Summers had already experimented with one on "Don't Stand So Close to Me," from the Police album Zenyatta Mondatta, while Fripp and Adrian Belew had brought the hot new technology into Crimson's world.

“It allowed you to move into a whole other sphere," Summers adds. "And I took the Police pedalboard into the studio with Robert, so instead of having two straight electric guitars going into two Fender Twin amps, we were able to bring more sonic color to the situation.”

Earlier this month, Robert Fripp revealed he had suffered a heart attack in April and received emergency treatment, but is on the road to recovery. He turned 70 last week.

Meanwhile, footage of Summers teaching John Mayer how to play the Police's most challenging song has emerged online, while the guitarist has spoken about another expectation-defying release and how Police bass guitar player Sting went to extreme measures to stop it in its tracks.

Electric guitar virtuoso and King Crimson founder Robert Fripp has revealed that he suffered a heart attack last month.

The news came via a video with his wife, Toyah Willcox, released on her YouTube channel. While the couple typically use the channel to release videos in which they create lively covers of classic rock tunes, they were more somber with their clip about Fripp’s health scare.

At the video's outset, Fripp avoids talking directly about the health event until Willcox prods him to.

"My darling husband is skirting around the subject matter here," she says. "He had a heart attack two weeks ago."

Fripp was preparing to fly to Italy for a performance in Bergamo last month when he experienced what he believed was acid reflux.

"I'd been suffering what I considered to be acid reflux for a couple weeks before, following my return from 'Cruise to the Edge' with David Singleton,” Fripp says. “And I had this in 2019, and I thought, All right. A little acid reflux. Deal with this.

"But on the Saturday morning I flew, it felt a little bit more."

Prior to his morning flight, Fripp emailed the event’s organizers to request a doctor be on hand when he arrived. Considering that he was experiencing chest pains, the organizers thought it best for him to visit Bergamo Hospital, Italy’s leading cardiac care facility.

Once there, the guitarist was examined and admitted to intensive care, where he was diagnosed with a trifurcated artery. Staff inserted a pair of stents in his heart during two operations.

'When the doctor showed me the diagrams on the computer, she said, 'Your heart, globally, is good. But you have these concerns,’” Fripp explains.

The guitarist — who, despite his serious demeanor, is known for his trenchant sense of humor — shared a funny anecdote from the experience.

“Well, here's the interesting bit: I was in A&E [Accident and Emergency] not quite knowing what was going on, other than I knew they were going to do something. And an orderly came along and shaved my balls!"

“The dear man, I really didn't wish his job on him at that point,” Fripp says.

“Now this is the thing: So you're concerned with my heart, fine. What are you doing shaving my balls?"

The guitarist was reportedly in fine condition after surgery and was able to direct the show in Bergamo less than a week after the operations. The event was a concert by Fripp’s Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists, a group of players who perform live improvisations.

“It was stunning,” Tripp said, recalling the show. “The audience were prepped with orchestral manoeuvres and it really was a magical event for me.”

The guitarist is expected to spend the next six to eight weeks resting.

Fripp’s music has been enjoying a resurgence over the past year. In 2024, his 1980s output with King Crimson got a revival when former Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew and bassist Tony Levin teamed up with Steve Vai and drummer Danny Carey to re-create the group’s music live onstage.

The concerts were challenging, even for virtuosos like Belew and Vai, with the latter recalling how Fripp shared some advice to help him through the song “Frame by Frame.”

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.”

It’s safe to assume guitar players with legendary levels of stock can play any guitars they want. And yet, as they made their names as trailblazing players, Prince, Robert Fripp and Metallica’s Kirk Hammett all did so with off-brand copies of Gibson and Fender classics.

Prince’s Hohner-made Mad Cat Tele copy is certainly the most famous of the bunch, sitting proudly in the extravagant guitarist’s vast collection of personality-matching instruments.

From his array of Cloud guitars to his Vox-HDC-77, Prince owned and played many six-strings that have caught guitarists' eye, but few rarely got used as much as his knockoff Tele.

The guitar most notably featured during hisRock and Roll Hall of Fame performance in 2004, where he showed why Rolling Stone should have put him on its list of 100 Greatest Guitar Players Of All Time the year before.

The Mad Cat deviated from the typical Telecaster template in many ways. It sported an ash body with a flamed maple top, and a walnut strip in the middle, a hardtail bridge more often seen on a Stratocaster and a leopard-print pickguard.

Hohner made just over 500 Mad Cats during the '70s. Prince allegedly acquired one late in that decade from a gas station for a measly $30.

He eventually made many modifications to it, installing Fender Vintage Noiseless pickups and later replacing them with Kinman Traditional pickups. A wireless receiver was built into the body of the guitar for the Purple Rain tour, a mod that his Purple Sadowsky Tele also received at the same time.

And then there's Robert Fripp, who opted for Japan-built Tokai and Fernandes copies of Les Paul. He's rarely seen without his Goldtop Fernandes, which sports a Seymour Duncan bridge pickup, a Roland synth pickup in the bridge position, and a Fernandes Sustainer at the neck, alongside a whammy-friendly tremolo system. All of it points to why Gibson’s recipe wasn’t satisfying his needs.

Like his former King Crimson bandmate Adrian Belew, Fripp eventually made guitar synths a key part of his sound, a trend that continues through to his Tokai LP-type, which boasts a similar set up, with the Roland GR-1 synth system.

“Why? Because it does two or three things that nothing else does,” he tells Guitar World. “The GR-1 has a fretless bass sound that is breathtaking, which I would use to have fun with Tony Levin. Tony would be doing some upright slides, I might slip in some fretless. Tony would look up wondering where the bass sound was coming from.

“It’s also stunning in terms of low-end for soundscapes, and it also has a piano sound, which I haven’t really used since 2003, but which was astonishing. I used it a lot in all the ProjeKcts.”

It does perhaps seem a little unfair to include Kirk Hammett in this trio of big brand dodgers considering his recent work with Gibson and the fact he is the current owner of Pete Green’s iconic “Greeny” Les Paul. However, before he had oodles of cash to throw at vintage gear, he’d shaped Metallica’s sound on a Fernandes FST-13 Stratocaster copy.

His FST-13, nicknamed Edna, was most notable during the band’s Ride the Lightning days, just a year after their bumpy start to touring life. The same guitar later appeared on the cover of Metallica’s $5.98 E.P.: Garage Days Re-Revisited.

Hammett may have made the jump to Gibson since, but he helped put Fernandes — which sadly filed for bankruptcy last year — on the radar of metal guitar players across the world in the early ‘80s.

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.

The rise of grunge in the early 1990s killed the popularity of guitar virtuosity and technical wankery. Even so, it didn’t stop Joe Satriani from launching his annual G3 tour in 1996 with Steve Vai and Eric Johnson. Over the next decade, the shredfest became celebrated for presenting ever-changing lineups that featured some of the day’s most technically proficient players, like John Petrucci, Yngwie Malmsteen and Robert Fripp.

But as Satriani tells Classic Rock, accommodating the players’ varying musical styles and idiosyncratic requests could be a chore at times. Take Fripp, who insisted on being an unlisted show opener and performing out of sight as attendees entered the venue during G3’s 2004 run.

“You have two extremes,” Satriani tells Classic Rock. “Like, Robert Fripp, who said, ‘No lights on me, I want to sit down and I want to be behind everybody.’ So it was sort of an ‘un-demand’, y’know?”

And then there’s Fripp’s polar opposite, the irrepressible Yngwie Malmsteen, who appeared on the 2003 tour, where he, Satch and Vai jammed on Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing."

“I mean, if you invite him, you have to just say, 'I know what I’m inviting,' ” Satch concedes. “To Yngwie’s credit, he always plays so great and always puts on the Yngwie Malmsteen show.

“The only problem that I would have is that sometimes he wouldn’t pay attention to other things happening onstage when his bit was done, because he’s just not used to not being the focus of the show. I’d say, ‘When Steve [Vai] is soloing, don’t throw your guitar up in the air right next to him, because he’s got his eyes closed. I don’t want him to get hit in the head.’”

Satch says launching G3 proved problematic simply because no one had ever done something like it before. Some guitarists’ managers saw it as a competition rather than a celebratory jaunt.

“The vibe back then was to keep the gunslinger guitar players away from each other,” he explains. “The record companies, the management — everyone was like, ‘Don’t stand next to that guy, because he’s your competitor.’

“So we had nice little arguments with them, saying, ‘This is different.’ This was something I felt the audience really wanted to see, because I wanted to see it. When I was 14, if I had a chance to see Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck together on the same stage, I’d think that was the greatest thing ever. I wouldn’t be thinking like a promoter, I’d be thinking like a fan.“

Considering that grunge essentially killed the whammy-bar wrangling, double-tapping guitar acrobatics that G3 would go on to celebrate, Satch he has no animosity. “I didn’t pay any attention to that, I guess,” he says, noting that his 1992 album, The Extremist, “came out as my love letter to the classic rock era, so it was a throwback record anyway. But when I emerged from the studio I realized, ‘Oh, it’s all Nirvana and Soundgarden.’ ”

And while many technically proficient guitarists love to slag Kurt Cobain’s rudimentary axe-handling skills, Satriani has nothing but praise for the way Nirvana’s frontman used his talents in service of his songs.

“He was a great guitar player,” Satch says. “You go back and look at Nirvana clips, and you realize this guy is playing everything he’s supposed to play. He’s not looking at what he’s playing, so obviously he really knows the instrument. And he’s playing with one of the greatest drummers of all time [Dave Grohl], so that wouldn’t have worked if he was not a good guitarist.”

Satch's appreciation for Cobain shouldn't come as a surprise to those who know him. After all, he, Vai and Guthrie Govan picked Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" as one of their show-closing jams on the 2016 G3 tour.

Satriani is coming off a busy year that saw him revive G3 with Vai and Johnson for a limited run of shows, perform Van Halen–era songs with Sammy Hagar on his Best of all Worlds tour, and tour with Vai. The new year looks like it will be just as busy. Last month he and Vai announced they’ll hit the road in June as the SatchVai Band for the Surfing with the Hydra tour. The road stint will be the first time in their nearly 50-year musical careers that the two electric guitar virtuosos have performed as band members. Their tour begins June 13, 2025 in Europe, with more dates to be announced.

In addition, Satch and Vai have been writing new music together, which means a SatchVai Band album can’t be far behind. Stay tuned.

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.

Ah, the minor pentatonic scale – most likely the first scale you learned to play. Even if it wasn’t, those five notes are probably so ingrained in your head and fingers by now that they might as well be members of your family.

For rock guitarists in particular, this is a good thing, since the minor pentatonic is arguably the fundamental rock scale, an essential component of riffing and soloing in every strain and subgenre of the music for decades.

But just as certain people in your actual family can sometimes be terrible bores, so the five members of the minor pentatonic can become tiresome, always following the same patterns and never seeming to change their mood.

Fortunately, a solution is at hand. You can alter the way you approach the minor pentatonic.

First: Remind yourself that each minor pentatonic scale has five different “box” positions on the guitar. It’s common for players to lean on one or two (usually the ones that fall in line with the most typical barre voicings of the tonic chord, rooted on either the E or A string) and get stuck in a rut.

Second: Break out of scalar routine: skip strings, arpeggiate – whatever it takes to get away from playing the notes in the order everyone expects.

Third: Change up your left- and right-hand attack with bends, slides, pick rakes and so on.

The following examples – each using a different box position of A minor pentatonic and nodding to the style of a different guitarist – will help you in all three areas.

Figure 1 starts out with a pull-off lick made famous by Jimmy Page during Led Zeppelin’s late '60s salad days, but the slides that close out each measure take us somewhere considerably funkier. 

Although the fretted notes all belong to the 2nd-position form of A minor pentatonic, the open strings make this figure a hybrid in terms of hand placement. 

If you like, you can stay more within the standard box by fretting the G and D (on the 4th and 5th strings, respectively) instead of letting them ring open, but you’ve got no such choice with the open E unless you detune your bottom string.

Experiment with how you finger the sliding notes. Playing them with your second finger will put you right back in position at the end of measure 1. 

For this lick, you’ll get the most appropriate tone out of a Telecaster or similar electric guitar loaded with single-coil pickups and plugged into a small combo. Keep the overdrive subtle.

The first bar of Figure 2, inspired by Noel Gallagher’s guitar solo on the Oasis track “Live Forever,” breaks a descending 5th-position pentatonic line into two six-note phrases followed by a four-note closing statement. 

Each section of the line traces around a core note (first A, then E, then C), which creates a cascading effect. The central conceit here is that the guitar part briefly implies a 6/8 time signature over the rhythm section’s steady 4/4. This kind of rhythmic superimposition is a great way to break out of that old minor-pentatonic deadlock.

It’s purely a matter of personal taste which notes you pick here and which you hammer on and pull off. Try it your own way.

Tone-wise, use the same setup as in the last figure, but crank the gain.

With Figure 3, we move up the neck into 7th position and enter the realm of string skipping. 

Intervallic leaps are the norm here, since nearly every note is played on a string that’s not adjacent to the one on which the previous note was played. The result is an angular riff reminiscent of Robert Fripp’s work with King Crimson in the early '80s. Note how the first four notes of bar 2 spell out an A7sus4 arpeggio.

There’s no way to play this properly without a finger stretch. The easiest approach is to play the 4th-string, 10th-fret C notes with your third finger. 

Tone-wise, any type of electric guitar will suit this one. The tone is clean, and you might want to try stomping on a chorus pedal. If you’ve got a Roland JC-120 amp, all the better.

Figure 4 takes us to 9th position with a blues-rock passage out of the Peter Green playbook. 

Hammer-ons and pull-offs organized around a repeated rhythmic motif (two 16th notes tied to an eighth note) generate formidable momentum, leading up to the payoff in the last bar – a quarter-note bend and a nasty downward run punctuated with serious vibrato. For further reference, check out Fleetwood Mac’s Then Play On.

The fingering in the final measure is a little tricky. You’ll need to move your second finger from the 2nd string to the 4th string double quick.

This one falls squarely in the Les Paul zone, but any humbucker-equipped ax will do the trick. It requires some dirt, but should still sound smooth. The neck pickup is recommended.

Eric Clapton’s early tenure in John Mayall’s Blues Breakers produced many a lick like Figure 5. Another arpeggio, this one an A minor shape in 12th position, precedes a dramatic pick rake and whole-step bend. The notes are simple – it’s all in how you play them.

The two notes at the beginning of measure 2 are ghost notes. Rake across them quickly with your pick as you head for the 12th-fret E.

Tone-wise, this is the same as the last figure, but use extra grit, enough to make you feel the sizzle between the notes while still hearing each distinctly.

Growing up in classic rock’s golden years shouldn’t negate the possibility that you enjoy music made today. I may have an extensive vinyl collection of favorites dating back to my childhood, but I stream music everyday and constantly discover great songs by inspiring artists across the genres.

Yet, there are some who believe the modern music scene is a wasteland.

If you think that, you probably aren’t listening. But if one thing has suffered in the past two decades, it is the long-player. There are fewer epic albums being made today, and there is less reason to invest one’s time and ears in 40 minutes or more of an artist’s music.

Of course, I say this with the benefit – and certainly blessing – of having grown up at a time when the album was king.

Take 1973. A half century ago, we experienced one of the greatest years in rock and roll. It was a year that saw debuts from potent acts like Queen, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aerosmith, and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, as well as from guitar heroes like Tony Rice and Lindsey Buckingham, making his nod with Buckingham Nicks.

From my youthful vantage point, 1973 was lived as 52 weeks of breathless Saturday trips to the record store, where we were tempted by such epic albums as Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and the Who’s Quadrophenia, not to mention prog monsters like Yes’s live three-album set Yessongs, Manfred Mann Earth Band’s Solar Fire, Todd Rundgren’s A Wizard/A True Star, Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Brain Salad Surgery and, the behemoth of them all, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon.

In 1973, we saw the last flashes of glam rock with Bowie’s Aladdin Sane and Pin-Ups, Rick Derringer’s All American Boy, Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies and the debut from the New York Dolls.

But it was a great year for art rock, with Fripp and Eno’s experimental tour de force (No Pussyfooting), John Cale’s orchestral pop masterpiece Paris 1919, Lou Reed’s dramatic Berlin, Camel’s brilliant self-titled debut, and a pair of landmark Roxy Music albums: For Your Pleasure and Stranded.

That was all but the tip of that year’s multi-genre, stylistically freewheeling musical iceberg.

For any album to stand out among this pack, it would have to be pretty freaking great. Which is the least you can say about Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, a compilation of eight wildly inventive songs that together serve as a cross-section of that year’s dizzying musical styles, including prog, reggae, glam, folk, funk and art-rock.

It was the first Zeppelin album I bought and the first – perhaps only – album they made that kept their bombast in check, served up an ear-catching range of styles and delivered with economical arrangements.

As Jimmy Page said: “You can hear the fun we were having.”

Indeed, we can, to this day. Here’s to singing in the sunshine and laughing in the rain.

If you’re like me, you may have thought about your melodic leads and improvisations at one time or another and said, “I’m sick of playing what everyone expects to hear in my solos. Always the same scales, the same arpeggios… I need to take some chances!”

It’s easier said than done, however. So how does one take real melodic chances without sounding like your guitar is falling down a flight of stairs?

The key to achieving this seemingly elusive objective is to use harmonic-melodic substitutions, or superimpositions. This means either performing a line based on an arpeggio that differs from the chord over which you’re playing, or employing a scale that operates outside of a given key.

I touched upon this concept previously in this lesson but offered only a hint of the possibilities. Each example’s superimposed arpeggios stayed within the bounds of the original key.

But there’s nothing keeping you from superimposing arpeggios that venture outside of the given key.

In jazz circles, this approach is referred to as “playing outside the changes,” or “playing out,” for short.

This concept was pioneered back in the 1950s and ’60s by innovative jazz legends John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and others. Jazz and rock guitarists such as John Scofield, Bill Frisell, Robert Fripp, Frank Zappa, Robben Ford, Julian Lage, Mike Stern, Jim Campilongo and Wayne Krantz have also brilliantly explored this territory in their lead work.

To players unfamiliar with the practice, playing out can be a mystifying concept, seemingly based around the prospect of playing “random” notes that have nothing to do with the original key. But, I assure you, there is nothing random about this approach.

In this lesson, I’ll walk you through some of the mad methods of harmonic-melodic superimposition, with a focus on arpeggio substitutions, first by laying out the simplest approaches and then gradually exploring more complex and harmonically sophisticated methods.

The commentary on the examples will be primarily related to music theory – why we’re playing the notes, as opposed to how they’re played – so be sure to observe all the pick-stroke and fret-hand fingering indications in the notation, which should hopefully provide all the hands-on guidance you’ll need.

Let’s dive in!

BAR-LINE SHIFTING

The simplest approach to superimposition involves what’s called “shifting the bar line.” This means playing over the original chord changes without truly superimposing any new arpeggios over them, but rather extending the arpeggio patterns that match the chords.

This is done by either anticipating the next chord – melodically implying it before the chord change – or prolonging the previous chord’s arpeggio, so that the arpeggio of the previous chord or the next lays over the current chord in the accompaniment.

Ex. 1 presents a melodic line played over a repeating iidim-V-I progression in the key of C (Dm7b5 - G7 - Cmaj7), with each chord falling on the first beat of the bar (on “one”).

Instead of lining up each melodic arpeggio to change on beat one, along with the accompaniment, we’re either extending the arpeggio into the next chord (what’s called suspension) or starting to play the arpeggio of the next chord early, before it appears in the accompaniment (anticipation).

Although we’re not actually introducing anything different here, we’re emphasizing the tensions of each chord, meaning the scale tones that fall between the root, third, fifth and seventh, played an octave higher, which are the ninth, 11th and 13th.

For example, in bar 1 we play a Dm7b5 arpeggio (D F Ab C) over the that same chord.

In bar 2, however, we keep playing that arpeggio, prolonging it as the chord changes to G7 (G B D F) in the accompaniment.

While both chords share the notes D and F as common tones, in bar 2 you’re superimposing the notes Ab and C from Dm7b5 over G7, with those two notes now being heard over a G root note as the b9 and 11, respectively.

This melodic superimposition creates a decidedly jazzier and more dramatic G7b9(11) sound (G B D F Ab C).

As you study the remainder of this example, and all those that follow, notice that each anticipation and prolongation is indicated by a second, lower row of chord names, which identify the arpeggios played, with horizontal lines and brackets showing the extent of their duration.

THE HALF-STEP APPROACH

Here is where we start truly playing “outside,” or “out.”

When we talk about the concept of half-step approaches, we generally think about it in terms of a single tone that sits a half step above or below a chord tone and resolves to it within the course of one beat or less.

Because the resolution happens so quickly, even if the approach tone is out of key, it never truly sounds “out.” Instead, the half-step approach merely emphasizes the chord tone you’re targeting by resolving to it in short order, more like a grace-note articulation of the chord tone rather than a true disruption of the key.

To take our first steps outside of the key, we’re going to apply this approach not only to a single chord tone but to entire sequences of notes. We’ll accomplish this by playing an arpeggio that sits a half step above or below the accompanying chord, taking a chromatic approach but delaying the resolution to the “correct” key.

This allows for more notes outside of the key to sit between chord tones before resolving. By giving these outside tones some melodic structure – in this case an arpeggio instead of a single note – the eventual resolution to the accompanying chord is still perceived by the listener as if you were resolving a single note, albeit with a more interesting and jazzy approach, one that temporarily gives the listener a sense of unease that increases with each outside tone you play before finally resolving.

Ex. 2 demonstrates this melodic device applied to a simple two-chord progression, Am7 to D7, that’s based on the A Dorian mode (A B C D E F# G A).

Over the Am7 chord in bar 1, we superimpose a four-note G# m7 arpeggio (G# B D# F# ) on beat three, which represents a chromatic half-step shift downward from our “one” chord, then resolve it back up to Am on beat four.

Similarly, in bar 3 we superimpose an Eb7 arpeggio (Eb G Bb Db) over the underlying D7 chord (D F# A C), which represents a chromatic half-step shift upward. This move also creates dramatic tension that likewise resolves, or releases, satisfyingly on beat three, as we shift back down to the correct key and play a line built from a D7 arpeggio.

THE TRITONE SUBSTITUTION

Normally, when we think of chord substitutions we think in terms of changing the chord progression itself, or reharmonizing the accompaniment. But the same concept and approach can work effectively without altering the chord accompaniment at all, but rather by implying different changes over it melodically, via different, superimposed arpeggios.

The tritone substitution is among the most common substitutions, which also means it makes for a great superimposition as well.

Any dominant seven chord – a major triad (1 3 5) with a minor, or “flat,” seventh (b7) added – can be replaced by, or superimposed with, a dominant seven chord that sits three whole steps, or a tritone, above or below.

This works because the 3 and b7, commonly referred to in jazz harmony as the guide tones, are common to both chords, with their roles reversed – the 3 becomes the b7, relative to the new root note, and the b7 becomes the 3

Ex. 3 presents an adventurous melodic line played over a straightforward diatonic (scale- or key-based) chord progression in the key of C: Em7 - A7 - Dm7 - G7 - Cmaj7, or iii - VI - ii - V - I. If we were to replace each dominant seven chord with a tritone substitution, it would look like this: Em7 - Eb7 - Dm7 - Db7 - Cmaj7.

Note the chromatic root motion added to this modified chord progression, compared to the original, which moves very angularly in fourths/fifths.

Instead of replacing the chords, however, our example melodically superimposes these tritone substitutions over the existing progression.

The result is a lead that veers forcefully between tension and resolution with each alternating bar, creating a musically compelling feeling of forward motion.

PIVOT TONES

Another musically cool and effective technique for superimposing arpeggios from outside the prevailing key is to take a single note from a given chord and overlay a completely different arpeggio that shares that one note, or common tone, which is often referred to as the pivot-tone substitution.

Played over the same diatonic progression as the previous example, Ex. 4 keeps the tritone superimpositions over the A7 and G7 chords (Eb7 and Db7, respectively) and adds new superimpositions from pivot tones on top of the remaining chords.

Over Em7 (E G B D) in bar 1, we use the note B as our pivot tone and superimpose a B7 arpeggio (B D# F# A).

Conversely, over the Dm7 chord, we’ll superimpose an Fm7b5 arpeggio (F Ab Cb Eb), using the shared F note as our pivot tone.

In both cases, the superimposed melodically implied chords create a significant amount of tension that is only resolved when you finally land on the pivot tone.

Ex. 5 takes this idea even further. Here, over the Am7 - D7 progression found in Ex. 2, we split each bar and superimpose two arpeggios over each chord.

In Bar 1, over Am7, we first superimpose Ebm7b5 (Eb Gb A Db) using the A note as our pivot tone.

Then, on beat three, we switch to an Ab7b9 (Ab C Eb G Bb), with the shared C note serving as our pivot tone.

Moving into bar 2, we superimpose Am7b9# 11 (A C E G Bb D#) over the D7 chord (D F# A C), using both A and C as pivot tones.

On beat four, we switch to an E7 arpeggio (E G# B D) before resolving back to the root of Am to finish.

When exploring this and more advanced superimposing techniques on your own, put your best foot forward by starting your lick either on the pivot tone itself or on a chord tone from the accompanying chord, and then shift into the non-pivot tones of the superimposition.

The purpose of this is to give your melodic line a solid tonal foundation to build on. The tension that comes from playing out will be far more effective if you start from a more balanced sound that an accompanying chord tone will give you.

COLTRANE CHANGES

Tenor and soprano sax legend John Coltrane, one of the most innovative musicians of the 20th century, pioneered the use of multitonic systems in jazz.

’Trane most famously utilized his three-tonic system in his iconic compositions “Giant Steps” and “Countdown.” The chord progressions to these tunes would later come to be widely known as Coltrane changes.

Instead of operating in one key, as one normally would, multitonic systems operate in either three or four equidistant keys at the same time.

In a three-tonic system, the three keys are two whole steps, or a major third, apart from one another, whereas a four-tonic system uses four keys a step and a half, or a minor third, away from one another.

Ex. 6 takes the progression from Examples 3 and 4 and superimposes a three-tonic system over it, as implied by its arpeggio-based melody.

The parent key here is C major (C D E F G A B), while the remaining two tonics of the three-tonic system descending from C are Ab major (Ab Bb C Db Eb F G) and E major (E F# G# A B C# D# ).

After arpeggiating the accompanying chord Em7 (E G B D) in the first half of bar 1 – starting off in the key of C – we then arpeggiate Eb7 (Eb G Bb Db), which is the V7 chord of Ab.

From there we resolve the Eb7 to Abmaj7 (Ab C Eb G) and continue arpeggiating each V7 - Imaj7 cadence of the three tonics, continuing in descending order (Eb7 to Abmaj7, B7 to Emaj7, G7 to Cmaj7) with each implied Imaj7 resolving on the downbeat of the next bar.

On the last two beats of bar 4, we throw in one last Eb7 and B7 arpeggio, which are the V7 chords of the keys of Ab and E major, respectively, before ending on the original tonic chord, Cmaj7.

This creates an incredibly tense lead line that nevertheless resolves back to the original key, C.

With all of the keys being equidistant from one another, they create a sound that may be described as a whole-tone-like tonality – the whole-tone scale being a six-note scale wherein each successive note is a whole step above the previous one – only far more complex. It may take you some time to develop an ear for what works and what doesn’t.

But whether you’re looking simply to dip your toes outside the key or want to embark on your own jazz odyssey (not to be confused with the Spinal Tap song), these tools will act as a perfect roadmap for playing out with perfection.

Just remember, patience is key, and don’t be afraid to take chances when employing these techniques in your own leads. Be adventurous. Besides, what’s the use in sounding like everyone else?

***The following originally appeared in the June 2011 issue of Guitar Player***

Certain guitar solos are infused with magic. They may or may or may not be technically challenging, flashy, or otherwise virtuoso, but they have that special something that sets them apart from what came before, and they typically alert guitarists everywhere that their world has forever changed. 

What’s more, those magic solos tend to inspire legions of guitarists to attempt to unlock their technical and tonal mysteries, and permeate the six-string community’s collective unconscious, re-emerging later as direct and indirect influences on individual players’ styles. Somewhat paradoxically, however, there is no consensus on which solos have achieved this iconic status.

When we began working on this story, we came up with a lengthy list of solos to include. Our first task was to set up some guidelines. We decided to limit the list to electric rock solos, along with blues and jazz-rock fusion solos that influenced rock. We also set a limit of one solo per artist.

At that point, there were still many more than 40 solos on the list, so we had to make some hard choices. To start, guitarists who were hugely influential overall, but couldn’t be tied to an ultra-influential solo – such as Tony Iommi and George Harrison – were cut. 

We then had to narrow down our selections to just one for each artist, which was difficult for someone like Eric Clapton, whose entries at that point included “Crossroads,” his cover of Freddie King’s “Hideaway” on the Blues Breakers album, and his historic wah workout on “White Room.” Once the smoke cleared, however, we had reached consensus. 

The solos are organized chronologically – including those that fall within the same year – because we thought it would be instructive to see how they relate to each other historically. 

We hope that you like we came up with and perhaps even discover an overlooked gem or two for yourself...

1. Elmore James “Dust My Broom” (1951)

Jimi Hendrix originally called himself Jimmy James and Maurice James in homage to Elmore, and every bluesman since the ‘50s – particularly slide players – owes something to the King of the Slide Guitar. 

Played in an open-D tuning (D, A, D, F#, A, D, low to high), probably on a Kay flattop or Harmony Sovereign with a D’Armond pickup, the slide hook on this tune, and the solo based on it, reappear countless times throughout blues and rock music.

2. Les Paul “How High the Moon” (1951)

The super-syncopated, slap-back soaked runs, chukka-chukka doublestops with bluesy bends, plucky cascading figures, and idiosyncratic ornamentations in Paul’s two solos helped propel this standard up the charts, and further established Paul as the most creative electric guitar player of his generation. 

It was recorded with his “old Epiphone” – a.k.a. “the Clunker” and “the Breadwinner” – with custom-wound hot pickups and other major modifications.

3. Scotty Moore “That’s Alright, Mama” (1954)

Armed with his Gibson ES-295 through a ‘52 Fender Deluxe, Scotty Moore, bassist Bill Black, and their bud Elvis, had no idea what a firestorm they were about to create with this early single. 

Moore’s simple, to the- point style covered the drummer-less bases quite easily with a fat tone and swinging musicality, giving this rather hillbilly ensemble some dangerous sonic heft.

His break on “That’s Alright, Mama” inspired everyone from George Harrison to Keith Richards to Jimmy Page, as well as Danny Gatton, who never missed an opportunity to throw a Moore homage in the middle of one of his famed rockabilly rave ups. 

Moore’s barking double-stops and approximation of a tic-tac bass line on “Mama” are as hooky as it gets, making this solo one of the most important ever.

4. Eddie Cochran “Sittin’ in the Balcony” (1957)

Slinging a 1955 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins Hollow Body 'G'-branded guitar with a Gibson P-90 in the neck slot, Cochran, with his iconic presence and echo-drenched tones, hugely impacted early rockers – such as Lennon and McCartney, who bonded over Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock” upon meeting in 1957 – and innumerable players thereafter, particularly Brian Setzer. 

The twangy solo on Cochran’s first hit, “Sittin’ In the Balcony,” crackles with the influence of his heroes Chet Atkins, Joe Maphis, and Johnny Smith.

5. Chuck Berry “Johnny B. Goode” (1958)

While some people might not consider this song’s intro a “solo,” it might be the most important rock guitar part ever recorded. 

The doublestops essentially usher in the post-Elvis rock era, and the tone and balls of this iconic part would echo in the playing of George Harrison, Keith Richards, Eddie Van Halen, and Angus Young... and that's just one tenth of one percent of the players who have copped these licks. 

Listen to it again. You’ll see.

6. Hank Marvin “Apache” (1960)

A primary influence on nearly every British guitarist of a certain age, Marvin created a dreamy, echo-y sound on this #1 U.K. hit that was achieved by playing his Stratocaster – the first in England – through a Meazzi Echomatic tape delay and a Vox AC30 tube amp. 

Marvin mostly used the bridge pickup, but picked near the neck, and palmed the vibrato arm to impart his trademark twang.

7. Freddie King “Hideaway” (1960)

Freddie (a.k.a. Freddy) King cobbled “Hideaway” out of parts lifted from tunes by Hound Dog Taylor, Jimmy McCracklin, Robert Lockwood Jr., and even Henry Mancini. 

Between the breaks where he recycled bits of “The Walk” and “Peter Gunn,” King played stinging solos that he plucked on a P-90 equipped Les Paul using a plastic thumbpick and metal fingerpick. 

Eric Clapton did his own version of the tune on John Mayall’s 1966 album, Blues Breakers, and the success of “Hideaway” made it a launch pad for a number of other King instrumentals that would further his notoriety as one of the top blues guitarists of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

8. James Burton “Hello Mary Lou” (1961)

Having turned pro as a teenager on the Louisiana Hayride, Burton was a seasoned vet by the time he became the lead player in Ricky Nelson’s band, which was featured regularly on the TV show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. 

Burton was a great rock and roll player, as evidenced by his Chuck Berry-style solo on “Believe What I Say,” but he also inspired legions of pickers with his explosively twangy lead break on “Hello Mary Lou.” 

Burton’s playing on Merle Haggard’s early ‘60s hits like “Mama Tried” and “Swingin’ Doors,” inspired the late, great Roy Nichols, who said, “I learned a lot from Burton, and I copied some of his licks, but I couldn’t copy him to a ‘T’.”

9. Jeff Beck “Over Under Sideways Down” (1966)

Along with the Rolling Stones, no band inspired more hard-edged guitar-wielding maniacs than the Yardbirds. Beck’s playing on their classic garage rock anthem is, like much of his playing at this time, inspired by the groovy sounds of the sitar. 

Equal parts spacey modal madness and meth-infused pentatonic fury, it still ranks as some of Beck’s most inspired playing, and that says a lot. 

And not only was Beck’s otherworldly playing inspirational to a generation of guitarists, but his punky stage demeanor and nasty sonic streak (a ‘54 Fender Esquire into a Tone Bender fuzz and AC30), served notice to everyone that a new sheriff was in town, and he was kicking ass.

10. Albert King “Born Under a Bad Sign” (1967)

If Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix lift your licks lock, stock, and barrel, your influence has been spread very far and very wide. In fact, one can make the case that Albert King was the most influential King, just by virtue of the not-so-subtle tributes by his admirers. 

King Albert’s authoritative bends and economical phrasing are required study for anyone who wants to play blues-rock guitar. On this cut, the Velvet Bulldozer lives up to his nickname, making his Gibson Flying V moan, scream, and move mountains with sweeping bends and a stinging tone that delivers all of the nuances in his playing. 

It also proves that, even though SRV and Clapton could “do” Albert, they were never really even close. 

11. Eric Clapton “Crossroads” (1968)

This one is a giant among giants. Little did Slowhand know, after he walked off the Winterland stage in San Francisco, he had created a template setting the standard for expressive, lyrical, howling blues-rock guitar. 

Armed with a ‘64 Gibson ES-335 and a couple of non-master volume 100-watt Marshall stacks, Clapton’s first break is a textbook example of how to build a solo’s intensity, while the second manages to kick it up one more notch for maximum climax. 

Not a duff note in the bunch, impeccably phrased, and with a vibrato that’s as classy as they come, Clapton could have never played another note and he’d still be one of the most influential players ever. 

12. Jimi Hendrix “All Along the Watchtower” (1968)

One can only guess what sort of “light bulb” moment Jimi experienced when he first heard this tune from Bob Dylan’s 1967 album John Wesley Harding. Maybe it was the biblical references in the lyrics, or the great melody – or perhaps just the wide-open space for improvising afforded by the four-chord progression. 

Whatever it was, the version that appeared on Hendrix’ Electric Ladyland album gave rise to one of Jimi’s most memorable solo outings. Playing soulfully and inventively using a wah and fuzz, Hendrix reinvented “All Along the Watchtower” to such a degree that it’s sometimes easy to forget who actually wrote the tune!

13. Peter Green “Black Magic Woman” (1968)

B.B. King once said of Green, “He has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.” After establishing himself as a masterful blues stylist in John Mayall’s band, Green quickly evolved both as a player and a songwriter with Fleetwood Mac. 

On his D minor tour-de-force “Black Magic Woman,” Green pulls off an incredibly captivating melody, and his beautiful phrasing and soulful bending on a Les Paul with “magnetically out of phase” pickups was pure gold. 

Carlos Santana made the song a huge hit on Abraxas, and Green was also influential on Irish blues rocker Gary Moore, who would own – and eventually sell – Green’s famous Gibson. 

14. Robert Fripp “21st Century Schizoid Man” (1969)

Fripp’s serpentine solo on this alarmingly virtuosic track combines a supersaturated sustained tone with atypical intervallic movement, non-bluesy bends and trills, and note choices and phrasing that had more in common with Coltrane than Clapton. 

Playing a three-pickup ‘59 Les Paul Custom through a Marshall stack and probably either a Burns Buzzaround or a Colorsound Tone Bender, he recorded the seminal progressive rock solo.

15. Jimmy Page “Heartbreaker” (1969)

Selecting the most influential Page solo led to a heated debate. 

But the squawking tone of a ‘58 Les Paul into a Marshall SLP 1969 Super Lead, maniacal cluster picking, wicked hammer-ons and pull-offs, and behind-the-nut G-string bending in the first solo on “Heartbreaker” – not to mention the smoking second solo – explain why everyone from Brian May to Steve Vai to Steve Morse have hailed it as a definitive guitar solo.

16. B.B. King “The Thrill is Gone” (1969)

With a tone sweeter and thicker than molasses, B.B. King graced this song with one of his most emotive blues solos of all time. King knew what the tune called for in context of the highly produced album Completely Well (his first with strings), and it wasn’t about showboating. 

Far from it, judging by the way he grooves so succulently behind the beat. Besides being a big hit for B.B., “The Thrill is Gone” showed guitarists the power of playing slow and cool. 

In an era when Johnny Winter was introducing blues-rock shredding, B.B. King’s huge vibrato and deep soul defined what “playing from the heart” was all about. 

17. Leslie West “Mississippi Queen” (1970)

Leslie West’s massive and massively influential tone on Climbing! – which included “Mississippi Queen” – was created by playing through a Sunn Coliseum P.A. head and four 4x12 speaker cabinets. 

“The head had four microphone inputs and a master volume control, huge transformers and gigantic KT88 tubes, and the cabinets were loaded with Eminence speakers, which never hurt your ears, even with the treble all the way up,” West told GP in 2010. 

He was playing Gibson Les Paul Juniors at the time, and used a single-cutaway 1956 Jr. with a single P-90, strung with La Bella Electric Guitar strings (with a .010 banjo string for the high E and the other strings moved down one to create a light-gauge set) on the track. 

The song reached #21 on the Billboard charts, assuring that West’s signature sound was heard across the country and around the world.

18. Duane Allman “Statesboro Blues” (1971)

By 1970 Duane Allman and Dickey Betts had forged one of the most iconic guitar sounds of all time with their harmonized melodies on songs like “Revival” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” 

But as far as slide players went, few at the time got more acclaim than Duane himself, after the 1971 release of The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East. Duane’s slick phrasing and fat, singing tone on the opening track of the double live album was inspired by hearing Taj Mahal’s rendition of the song with Jesse Ed Davis on slide. 

Sonny Landreth, who remembers seeing the Allman Brothers at the time, recalls: “That huge tone that Duane got when he played slide on a Les Paul through a Marshall was a real game changer. I don’t remember anyone else who had a sound like that back then.”

19. John McLaughlin “Meeting of the Spirits” (1971)

Although he had already done revolutionary work with Tony Williams’ Lifetime, Miles Davis, and as a solo artist, McLaughlin’s combination of molten Gibson-through-cranked-Marshall distortion, impossibly fast and complex yet ultra-precise picking, and unique phrasing on The Inner Mounting Flame shattered all existing concepts of “electric guitarist” and lit the fuse of fusion.

20. Ritchie Blackmore “Highway Star” (1972)

Actually a harmonized pair of solos, the tasty bends, rapid-fire triplets, and whammy manipulations on this Strat-into-a-Marshall-amp (via a reel-to-reel tape recorder preamp) solo make it one of Blackmore’s most memorable.

The Deep Purple guitarist’s influence on legions of rock and metal shedders from Morse to Malmsteen to Mustaine is undisputable.

21. Billy Gibbons “La Grange” (1973) 

Gibbons made his mark on this classic shuffle with two solos. 

The first, done on a ‘55 Strat, enters screaming with that classic rear pickup Fender bite, before Gibbons flips to the front pickup for a swinging double-stop workout and some liquid pentatonic runs delivered with his impeccable sense of time and swing. 

But it’s the track’s second solo that the guitarist is most famous for, and the one that every hard rock player would study, due to Gibbons’ insane pinch harmonics. With his “Pearly Gates” ‘59 Les Paul, the Reverend squawks, grunts, and chokes out so many pinch harmonics that it would be laughable if it wasn’t so damm bad ass. 

22. Brian May “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975) 

Brian May’s touch, tone, and orchestral instincts have proven impossible to imitate, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying. 

His majestic lines on this classic are quintessential May, with precise picking, impeccable phrasing, and a bold, loud sound. 

The solo’s placement in the mix was influential, informing how bands such as Boston and Styx featured their solos. You’ve got to assume Dr. May’s harmonized lines at the end of the song got Tom Scholz’s attention as well.

23. Larry Carlton “Kid Charlemagne” (1976)

Carlton was already a session legend known for his smooth-as-silk lines that were reminiscent of Wes, Pass, and Trane when he cut this Steely track. 

But when Mr. 335 combined a rock dude’s tone with a jazzer’s harmonic sensibilities, he created the standard by which every jazz rocker would be judged. 

Ask Steve Lukather, Robben Ford, or Mike Stern what impact this solo had on them. 

Alright then.

24. Carlos Santana “Europa (Earth’s Cry, Heaven’s Smile)” (1976)

Santana masterfully caresses the tune’s main melody with his trademark singing sustain and thick tone, never quite giving up the goods until the outro solo where he lets it all hang out in an outpouring of soulful yet wicked playing. 

He displays a fluid, tactile control at all times, and his tone is more open-sounding and less compressed than in recent years. 

And when he kicks the wah on, look out – he ratchets up the intensity tenfold, just when you think it can’t go any higher. Simply put, “Europa” is a study in pace, melodicism, and space – as well as good, old fashion burning!

25. Al Di Meola “Race with Devil on Spanish Highway” (1977)

Sure, there were people who could play fast before Di Meola, but nobody had made it such a central part of their deal before Big Al came along. 

Di Meola’s picking ability coupled with his sick, self-described “mutola” technique raised the bar for audacious shred and players interested in pushing the limits of picking. 

Far from being a pattern-minded monotone shredder, Di Meola’s Latin influences and his compositional sense have always made his displays of virtuosity supremely musical. 

And for all of the shred haters, Di Meola proved that the emotional impact of many notes is just as valid as a few well-placed ones. 

26. Eddie Van Halen “Eruption” (1978)

What can you say about this cadenza from hell? Cut in 1978, this has to be one of the most influential pieces of guitar playing ever. 

EVH took a Strat with a humbucker, an MXR Phase 90, and a plexi Marshall, and then played some supercharged Clapton licks that boggled just about every 6-stringer’s mind in the world. 

It was Van Halen’s two-handed tapping that truly grabbed everyone’s attention, however, and made this the most recognizable solo of the next two decades. “Eruption” made an impact on millions of rock dudes and seemingly every kid who set foot inside a Guitar Center.

27. Allan Holdsworth “In the Dead of Night” (1978)

As Bill Bruford put it, this solo was, “94 seconds of liquid passion married to a blinding technical facility that was to go down in the annals of rock guitar history. 

"All the hallmarks of his brilliant playing were there in this solo: poise, pace, melody, the Slonimsky interval jumps, the whammy bar, and all over a killer groove.”

28. Mark Knopfler “Sultans of Swing” (1978) 

When Mark Knopfler released this fingerpicked two-pickup masterpiece, he showed guitarists that you don’t need distortion or a plectrum to rock. 

With a Strat on the bridge and middle pickups, a Fender Twin Reverb and a Roland JC-120, Knopfler played two deft, bouncy solos that referenced Chet Atkins with snappy popped notes, crying bends, and clever arpeggios. 

Along the way he influenced just about every clean tone for the next 20 years. When people talk about an “out of phase” Strat tone, they’re talking about this tune.

29. Michael Schenker “Rock Bottom” (1979)

The 1970s was a great time for live records, with classics from Frampton, Lizzy, and Ted Nugent, but one of the sweetest solos to grace a double LP came from UFO’s Michael Schenker. 

The extended break on this tune has everything great about Schenker: melody, dynamics, tone for days, and burning. 

This lead would fascinate rockers all over the world, including George Lynch, Vinnie Moore, Akira Takahashi, and Kirk Hammett.

30. David Gilmour “Comfortably Numb” (1979)

Few solos can match the vibe of Gilmour’s work on this iconic piece. 

Playing a ‘79 black Stratocaster with a ‘62 neck and DiMarzios through Hiwatts and Yamaha RA-200 rotating speaker cabinets, Gilmour transformed what are essentially blues licks into a signature statement that affected the molecules in myriad musical minds. 

This is arguably his crowning achievement as a soloist.

31. Angus Young “You Shook Me All Night Long” (1980)

It serves to reason that a song that is all about getting it on should have a solo that is sexy, right? 

Damn straight. 

Young’s turn on this global hit finds him harnessing his kinetic blues tendencies into a steamy, attitude-laden solo that is actually kind of funky. 

His tasteful major pentatonic flavorings as well as his gorgeous tone – thanks to a wound up old Marshall and a Gibson SG – are the icing on the cake of his impeccable groove, intonation, and phrasing.

32. Randy Rhoads “Crazy Train” (1980)

After Van Halen, it wasn’t easy for an L.A. rocker to make a mark, but Randall Rhoads did so in a big way on his debut with Ozzy. 

Rhoads took what he had gleaned from Mick Ronson, Gary Moore, and Bach, and synthesized it into this metal tour de force. 

He wasn’t the first guy to blend classical music and rock, but he was absolutely the gateway drug for players like Zakk Wylde and Tom Morello.

33. Stevie Ray Vaughan “Pride and Joy” (1983)

The second cut on SRV’s debut album, Texas Flood, “Pride and Joy” blasted onto the airwaves courtesy of a great melody, catchy lyrics, and a gamechanging solo in which Vaughan threw down a barrage of killer licks with a gargantuan tone from his Fender/Dumble rig. 

SRV’s deft songwriting and his Albert King/Hendrix-influenced style succeeded in making what was fundamentally a classic “tay-hass” shuffle into a huge AOR hit that every classic rocker is expected to cover in perpetuity. 

Bottom line is, after SRV came along, anyone who thought they could play blues with fire and passion got a schoolin’ the size of Texas.

34. Yngwie Malmsteen “Black Star” (1984)

Mike Varney’s rep as a finder of great guitarists was already solid when he wrote about a kid from Sweden with a funny name in 1983. 

Many players’ first exposure to Malmsteen was on this shred fest. With his blinding speed, dazzling classical arpeggios, gorgeous Strat-into-Marshall tone, and larger than life vibrato, he didn’t raise the bar for rock technique – he obliterated it. 

Yngwie changed the game forever with this one, just ask any rocker who has swept an arpeggio since then.

35. George Lynch “The Hunter” (1985)

Dokken's George Lynch has inspired countless rock and metal players for nearly 30 years with his perfect blend of structured melodicism and off-the-rails fury – all in the space of a 16-bar solo. 

This solo is a perfect example, as he eases into it with memorable, understated melodic motifs that are helped along with some thick-ass tone and sick vibrato. 

Halfway through, however, Lynch begins to turn up the jets. Alternate picking, sweep picking, and legato playing become one within a single winding phrase, giving him a sound and style that are difficult to ape. 

However, Lynch did show the way for shred-obsessed guitarists on how to structure a meaningful statement in the middle of a tune and leave an everlasting mark. In fact, his solos are the only thing that don’t sound dated about Dokken.

36. Kirk Hammett “Master of Puppets” (1986)

Kirk Hammett’s influences include his teacher Joe Satriani, Michael Schenker, and Thin Lizzy. And nowhere are those influences more prominent than on this tune. 

Hammett’s whammy bar work and speed picking would inspire countless kids to notch their mids, cram their theory, and play blazing solos over chugging grooves.

37. Joe Satriani “Always with Me, Always with You” (1987)

Satriani is obviously known as a master technician, but it’s his melodic side that has left the biggest imprint on guitardom. 

This sweet ballad showcases Satch’s singing tone, skillful ornamentation, and ability to blend the tasty with the jaw dropping. 

The reach of this solo is apparent in hundreds of instrumental guitar records, country ballads, movie soundtracks, and car commercials.

38. Kurt Cobain “Come As You Are” (1991)

Although he took about as many solos and Johnny Ramone, the late Nirvana guitar anti-hero played a memorable one in this song from 1991. 

Presumably using a Boss DS-1 for dirt and an Electro-Harmonix Small Clone chorus for the warbly modulation, Cobain simply quoted the vocal melody in a snotty, vibey way, and the kids went crazy. 

Suddenly, young players – many with a sanctimonious disdain for ‘80s-style wanking – were taking a break from strumming through songs and trying their hands at playing single-note lines.

39. Zakk Wylde “No More Tears” (1991)

Logic dictates that Zakk Wylde was doomed to failure when he got the gig with Ozzy. 

A blond kid with a Les Paul? Really? 

But then people got a taste of his huge tone, squealing harmonics, and rapid-fire pentatonics and a new star was born. 

On this tune Zakk channeled Rhoads, Billy Gibbons, and Frank Marino into a solo that was emblematic of the new generation of metalheads.

40. Dimebag Darrell “The Great Southern Trendkill” (1996)

The post-Van Halen, post-Randy Rhoads world was in dire need of a champion when Darrell Abbott came on the scene. 

He took the styles of those guys, mixed in some Ace Frehley, some Lynyrd Skynyrd, and a heapin’ helpin’ of moonshine and created the ass-kicking solo here. 

Dime made it cool to love Holdsworth, EVH, and Billy Gibbons all in the same song.

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.

By the mid-1990s, Joe Satriani had things pretty much sewn up career-wise. Four of his six studio albums had gone either Gold or Platinum, and his touring dance card was filled for much of any given year.

But despite his spectacular success, something had started to feel a little...off. He wasn’t having the kind of fun he had imagined years before, when he was a budding guitarist dreaming about rock stardom.

“I thought there would be more camaraderie among other players than what I was experiencing,” he says. “As a teenager, I had this idea of what things would be like if I ever hit it big. There would be parties, and I’d get to hang out with my guitar friends. We’d jam and talk about music all night long – that kind of thing.

“Instead, the opposite was true: I was isolated. I would go on tour and play the same set, and then I’d go back to my hotel room and be on my own. I’d have 100 shows in front of me, and then I’d have to make another record and do it all over again.”

Satriani wanted to shake things up, but he didn’t quite know how. And then it hit him: He would create a new kind of show, one that celebrated the communal spirit of electric guitar playing that he craved.

“Nobody was really doing anything of the kind,” he says. “You had blues and reggae festivals. You’d see disco revivals and things like that. Lollapalooza had just started up. But there was nothing really that spoke to guitarists.”

It’s no coincidence that, at that time, interest in guitar was entering a slump from which it would take years to recover.

Starting in the late 1980s, rap and hip-hop had grown in popularity, and were the dominant forms of popular music as the century careened toward its conclusion. Youngsters had become more interested in the power of two turntables and a microphone than in the trenchant blast of a Les Paul cranked through a Marshall stack.

It was still too early to see the lean years that would come, when guitar heroes’ relevance would dim, but Satch’s desire for a guitarist-led event would prove timely.

“I wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with my friends and peers,” he recalls. “And so I thought, Well, nobody else is doing it, so I’ll do it.”

Satriani met with his management team and laid out his grand vision of a traveling show featuring himself and two other guitarists (hence the “G3” moniker), with each player performing an hour-long set followed by a three-way jam.

Once his managers were sold on the idea, the hard part began: convincing booking agents and concert promoters of the package’s validity. “We were breaking the rules that everybody had been taught over the years,” Satriani explains.

“Promoters around the world, and especially in the U.S., like to keep guitarists’ itineraries separated, for business reasons. They don’t want to dilute the market. But I always thought this format would be energizing, because it went against the trends. I always knew it could work.”

Since its first run in 1996, G3 has become the longest-running guitar-centric tour of its kind. All in all, Satriani has taken the show on 18 treks across the U.S., Europe, South America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Along with Satch himself, the tour has featured guitarists such as John Petrucci, Robert Fripp, Steve Morse, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Steve Lukather, Yngwie Malmsteen, Michael Schenker, Uli Jon Roth, Paul Gilbert, Al Di Meola, Adrian Legg, Phil Collen and the Aristocrats.

But none of it would have happened had G3’s maiden voyage not connected with audiences.

Satriani knew his first package had to pack a wallop, and his dream lineup – a triple-headline bill he shared with his close friend and one-time guitar pupil Steve Vai, along with Texas guitar star Eric Johnson – was a no-brainer.

“I really didn’t have to think about it,” he says. “I wanted to do it with them, and that was all there was to it. I knew we could all shine together onstage.” Vai and Johnson required no arm twisting.

“I said yes immediately,” Vai says. “The second Joe told me about what he wanted to do, I was in. And it superseded other plans I may have had, because the concept felt fresh. Plus, it was something that I thought was needed in the guitar community at the time. The idea was just fantastic.”

Says Johnson, “I felt the same way. It sounded like a novel idea at the time. I remember my manager said, ‘I like this. It sounds really different and cool.’”

Some 25 years on, the first G3 tour and its subsequent editions remain a singular achievement in the world of guitar. Coincidentally, all three of the tour’s founding members are currently releasing albums and planning tours. We thought it was the perfect opportunity to ask them to reminisce about their experiences together and to fantasize what another run might look like.

It was important to me to keep the spirit of guitar music alive no matter what new style of music was becoming popular. I wanted more interaction with great players, and I knew the audience wanted the same. So I took the bull by the horns.

By the late ’90s, it was evident that guitar-based music was losing popularity as rap and hip-hop became the dominant genres. Joe, did you have a premonition that the guitar was in danger of losing some of its relevance when you launched G3 in 1996, just a few years before?

JOE SATRIANI I was more focused on what I felt the fans were craving, and what I too was craving: more fun with the guitar. Having been a performing musician since I was 14 years old, I knew that styles would change and society would simply change channels, so I wasn’t phased by what was happening in the mid-to-late ’90s.

It was important to me to keep the spirit of guitar music alive no matter what new style of music was becoming popular. I wanted more interaction with great players, and I knew the audience wanted the same. So I took the bull by the horns.          

Eric, as everybody knows, Joe and Steve share a long history. When you signed up for G3, did you feel like you had to break the ice with two guys who knew each other so well?

ERIC JOHNSON Well, maybe a little bit, but they were always affable and made me feel comfortable right away. Obviously, Joe and Steve grew up together, and I wasn’t a part of that. But I was totally aware of both of them and their music. I respected them and knew what they were about. I was welcomed very warmly, and that made it very easy to be a part of G3.

Joe and Steve, did you feel like you had to bring Eric into the fold, or were you two like, “Oh, he’ll figure it out”?

SATRIANI I knew it would be fine. I never thought that we had to coach each other. We were all of the same mind: “Isn’t this going to be amazing?” Then at the end of the night, when we start playing together, our attitude was, Let’s just wing it and see what happens! And I can’t tell you how excited I was every night to be destroyed by these two guitar players.

STEVE VAI Come on! [laughs]

SATRIANI It’s true. It was so much fun, because it’s one thing when somebody destroys you onstage like that, and you’re right next to them and you can see how they do it. It’s a life-learning experience. I loved that, and it’s something I’ve always loved about every G3. There’s nothing like it. You can’t replicate it in any other way.

VAI To answer the question you asked about having Eric: Yes, Joe and I have a friendship that goes way back, a very rich, wonderful friendship throughout our lives. We’ve been joined at the hip since I was 12. [laughs]

So to do G3, and to know that Eric was going to do it, too, I was immediately thrilled. Bringing Eric into the fold, it never felt like Joe and I were a group and there was an outsider. We were all very present in the moment. We were three accomplished, mutually respectful players really looking to raise the bar for ourselves and for the guitar.

I know for me, every time I get on a stage with really accomplished, inspired players, it’s impossible not to expand my own potential. Like Joe says, when you’re standing next to these guys, they push you and challenge you. You have to raise your bar because they’re doing it. That’s the feeling you get when it’s your turn. It’s very inspiring, and it’s nice.

Some of my favorite onstage moments were when the three of us were playing together and listening to one another. It’s a very intimate space, and nobody is Joe, Steve or Eric. It’s just this environment of listening and responding.

Joe, during those first G3 tours, did you have a sense that you were keeping the spirit of guitar virtuosity alive at a time when it was in short supply? Did that have an impact on the shows, either in your commitment to keep doing them or in who you brought along on tour?

SATRIANI The G3 stage was the one place where you could play any way you wished. There were no boundaries. You could overdo it, or you could underplay it and be subtle. You could stand still, you could sit like Robert Fripp, or you could bring your own rock and roll circus to the stage.

I encouraged my fellow players to try anything and everything every night. We would support, echo and sometimes challenge each others’ improvisational tangents. Virtuosity on the guitar comes in many forms, and there’s no reason they can’t be celebrated right next to each other.

There have been three other tours with this lineup. When you tour, does it feel like “the band is back together”? Like you’re the Three Amigos.

SATRIANI “The Three Amigos” – I like that. [laughs] I think we should launch another tour once the world opens up a bit. It would be interesting to see where we’ve been musically. We can come back and trade our secrets once again.

JOHNSON Yeah, yeah!

VAI I’m down.

JOHNSON We could wear those Mexican outfits like [Chevy Chase, Martin Short and Steve Martin] did in The Three Amigos. At least for the encore. [laughs]

Joe, when you put together other iterations, did you ever ask Steve or Eric who they wanted to come along as the third guitarist?

SATRIANI Well, it’s a complicated thing putting G3 together, because my responsibility is both creating and selling the package. It starts a year before we want to hit the road. There are a number of scenarios that we have to float to all the different promoters to get a consensus of what they will agree is worthy of the invitation, because you can only play if you’re invited. You don’t just show up.

That means that we come up with Plans A, B, C, D, E, F and G, and then we see what the reaction is. Part of the music business is pretty cruel. It’s numbers and statistics. It’s always been about ticket sales, but back then it was a lot about radio. These days, the social media thing is really a big deal. It’s the first thing promoters do: They see if you’re trending on TikTok or Instagram. They need to determine if they want to take the risk.

That’s how that starts. And, of course, there’s a fine line between sticking to your guns about what you really want to do and listening to the feedback you get from your promoters. There’s no way to know who should be the third guy in Eastern Europe versus Canada, so you’ve got to talk to the promoters to see what they think and what suggestions they might have. Sometimes they’re good ones, and sometimes you’re scratching your head going, “Really?”

It’s difficult. It’s a very long period, and we have to be extremely quiet and discreet about it until we’ve distilled all this advice and feedback. Then we put out the invitations and reach out to the players that have risen to the top of the list, and we have to see what they say. Some players don’t want to play with other guitarists.

I suppose that’s true.

SATRIANI Yeah. I think there are fearless players out there, and then there are people who are still very guarded. I think that’s the defining difference. These gentlemen here are fearless and totally confident, and they just want to make their audience happy. That’s what you want. You don’t want any other baggage coming onstage.

I imagine sometimes choosing the third guitarist feels very easy and natural, but are there instances when you’ve thought, I don’t know how this is going to work?

SATRIANI Well, one of the most interesting characters was Robert Fripp, beyond a doubt. When he joined up, he insisted that he not be listed, and he wanted to play before the show. He said, “Look, don’t turn the lights on. I’m going to sit behind all the amps, and I’m going to play music as people walk into the venue and find their seats. And don’t mention my name.” It’s what he wanted to do.

Sometimes [bassist] Stu Hamm would play with him unannounced. He’d just come out, sit right next to Robert and he’d play along, or some of the other guys would play. It was really quite beautiful. Robert is such a wonderful human being and an incredible musician. We did a couple of other tours together, just me, Steve and Robert playing blues guitar or something. It was hysterical, and he was fearless about that. He was Robert Fripp to the very end.

JOHNSON Well, I was actually thinking of Robert Fripp when Joe mentioned him, because it was like, Wow, that’s different! He was definitely coming from left field, I think. But it was beautiful and cool. People really enjoyed it, too. I thought it sounded great. A lot of people told me, “Hey, have you heard Robert play with the G3 thing?” They thought it was great.

For the encore jams, you three have played “Red House,” “Goin’ Down” and “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama.” How do you guys come up with those songs?

SATRIANI We start emailing each other about what would be a fun song. I think I put it to the guys that we should pick songs that weren’t our own but were somehow connected to us in some way. They would be songs that the audience would recognize and that would celebrate the guitar.

It wasn’t about one of the participants’ new single or something like that. We had to drop all that pretense that we were there to sell our new thing. I think the Zappa song was Steve’s suggestion. He brought that in, and it was great. It turned into one we did over and over again through the years.

VAI Joe would always reach out for suggestions, and there were many, many songs we’d toss out. Some of them would be head-scratchers, but I always relied on Joe to decipher it all, feel through it and pick what the final jam songs would be.

That went for everything – routing, position in the set, where you’re standing onstage. It was always diplomatic, but there’s a practical sensibility that needs to be exercised in all of these things. And that was Joe, because he’s got the tools.

Joe and Steve, you’ve done a number of G3s with John Petrucci as the third guitarist. Eric, I think you played on one tour with John. Is that right?

JOHNSON I did, yeah, in South America. John Petrucci’s amazing. I’m more familiar with him now, and his drummer, Mike Mangini. You know how there are certain groups that you don’t know their whole deal? Even though they’re almost a parallel track as yours, it’s not somebody you really listen to that much, but you still knew they were great.

I wasn’t familiar with John at first, but I was really blown away by him. It was kind of funny, though, because when I first met Mike Mangini, I didn’t know who he was. I asked him, “Are you down here teching for the band?”

VAI I remember that.

JOHNSON Then I heard him play, and I was like, “Oh, my God.” I should say that teching’s no different than playing. I think I embarrassed myself, because I didn’t know who he was. It was a bummer, because I was never able to get to know him; I think I made him feel awkward.

But he was such a fabulous drummer, and John was remarkable. They had a whole different thing going on, with the way they broke up time signatures and stuff. It was just amazing. I got schooled on that during the tour, not unlike the G3s that I did with Joe and Steve. It was like taking lessons every single night.

This is for all of you: How did your G3 experiences impact your feelings about the other two guys here?

SATRIANI Whoa… There have been so many moments when I would stand on the side of the stage watching Steve and Eric play, and then I’d look out at the audience and think, Do they have any idea how amazing this thing is? When are they ever going to see this again?” [Satriani’s cell phone rings] Oh, sorry about that. It’s my agent calling.

JOHNSON He’s saying, “Come on. Book a G3 tour!” [laughs]

SATRIANI And make it snappy! [mutes his phone] Like I said, there were so many moments. For me, in those private moments, standing there and watching them play, it was beyond remarkable. They truly felt the music, and that’s very inspiring. And then to see what they did to the audience, lifting them up, raising their spirits. It just makes you think, We’re doing the right thing.

JOHNSON With Joe, I was really shocked at his precision, virtuosity and sound. Every single night, he would nail everything, unlike somebody else who might be talking. [laughs] Obviously, his records are beautiful, but he plays that stuff live to a T. His touch, his fingering… truly outstanding. He would just nail it all the way.

And then there’s Steve – this organic guitar orchestra. From comedy to sadness, he packs in all these different emotions, and they go way beyond guitar sounds. That blew my mind. It was just such a hemisphere of learning for me.

How about you, Steve?

VAI With Joe and Eric, I already knew of their excellence. You know, I can be a sloppy, visceral performer. I always enjoy what I do, but there’s a little part of me that says, “You can be better. You can be more concise. You can be clearer and cleaner.”

So when I’d get onstage with these guys, that’s what I recognized. Seeing them perform, I saw the presentation of a whole piece of music that was immaculate. No disrespect to any other G3 performer, but if I go back to listen to any G3 record, I go right to Eric’s performance of “Manhattan,” which is flawless.

Every night I would watch him, and beyond being absolutely entertained by a musician at the height of his potential, I would always feel like, Steve, you’ve got to do more of that. He was inspired and performed beautifully from beginning to end.

And, of course, that’s Joe’s middle name. You know how many times I’ve seen him perform? [laughs] Every time he gives you this incredible presentation. What he offers you is beautiful. The song is respected, and it’s mastered completely.

You get as much out of it as the audience.

VAI Oh yeah. When I see these guys do what they do, I could be depressed or I could be inspired. And they always inspired me. I knew how they could perform. But what was interesting for me was putting a microscope on myself.

If anything, I’ve always been a bit of a pretentious rock star. [Joe and Eric laugh] It’s true – you guys know it. And that was exorcized out of me a bit. When you work with guys like this – because they’re humble, and they’re excellent – it’s fun and educational to get your ass kicked.

We were friends before, and we’re friends after. What more could you ask for?

Order Joe Satriani/Eric Johnson/Steve Vai: G3 Live In Concert here.

Visit the Joe Satriani website for more info on G3.

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.”

Click here to purchase King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King

For more than five decades, prog rock has been the cradle from which guitar virtuosity has crawled forth.

Here, in their own words, more than 20 pioneering prog-rock guitarists share insights into their craft.

Frank Zappa

“The history of pop music has a habit of telling us who we really are – ’cause if we weren’t that way, we wouldn’t have spent billions of dollars on those records, would we? 

“After careful training by media and merchandising people, the entire population (even guitar players) has been transmuted into a reasonably well-groomed, odor-free, consumer-amoeba which is kept alive only to service manufacturers and lives its life by the motto: ‘Biggest, fastest, loudest is most and best.’”

Listen To: “Watermelon in Easter Hay“

Robert Fripp (King Crimson)

“Originally, the [Frippertronics] system was introduced to me by Brian Eno. I worked with him on it for the piece of music that became No Pussyfooting. I began working on it on my own in June and July 1977, when I was living in New York. Frippertronics as such went public for the first time in February 1978 at the Kitchen [a New York City arts and performance gallery], where I was giving a solo concert. 

“I needed a name for it, so I came up with ‘Frippertronics’ because it was silly. Then it went very, very public in 1979 with a four-month solo tour – two months in Europe and two in America. And it was there, actually in front of people – in record shops, pizza parlors, record offices, small cinemas, museums, all matter of places – that I began to learn to work with it pretty well. 

“I would run the tape back and improvise on top of it. The original form was with two Revox tape recorders, but now I’m working with the Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay. It was advertised as a Fripp in the Box. It’s far smaller, quicker, and easier to set up than two Revoxes, although the sounds one gets are quite different.”

Listen To: Let the Power Fall (Robert Fripp)  

Martin Barre (Jethro Tull)

“I learnt my lesson in 1967. I was in a studio doing a session for Eric Burdon and we were doing the backing track. Jeff Beck wandered in. We were in awe. When we finished the track, he picked up an old amp and guitar in the corner of the studio, plugged in and sounded amazing. 

“And it was Jeff Beck that produced that sound, not a particular amp or pedals. It was purely him. He was totally in control. He could’ve reproduced that anywhere in the world in any circumstances. That’s what I’m always aiming for.”  

Listen To: “Aqualung”

John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu Orchestra)

“Sometimes I can’t actually sit down and write music. I have to wait until I hear something. That’s why I like my iPhone: I get an idea and I can sing it directly into my phone, and it’s archived. 

“It might be just a melody, or it might be an idea I have for a particular chord progression, or it might just be a rhythmical idea. So I actually do so much with my iPhone and my voice. Who knows where I might be? I’m not necessarily going to be home when I get an idea, and if I don’t record it, it’s gone.”  

Listen To: “Birds of Fire”

Jan Akkerman (Focus)

“Focus is for me one of the few groups who know how to catalyze love for music and voice. We get into the theatrics strictly through the music, like with ‘Hocus Pocus.’ I want to reach the people with pure beauty. I want to make pure music.”

Listen To: “Sylvia”

Todd Rundgren (Utopia)

“Mahavishnu Orchestra was a revelation to us, so we started composing long, polymodal polyrhythmic marathons with bits of vocal and occasionally something that sounded like a song…. 

“We were comparing ourselves individually to our various heroes as well as to each other, and I developed a whole new relationship with the guitar. The material was structured in a way that left long passages without vocals and an uninterrupted focus on the instrument. For fleeting moments, I could channel the inner mounting flame.”

Listen To: “The Ikon“

Steve Hackett (Genesis, GTR)

“In Genesis, I was always writing solos. There were a few improvised ones, but there were not that many because there was always such an emphasis on writing with the Genesis team. I think I probably erred more on the side of blues than any of the other guys in the band. 

“I did always have the ability to be able to go into a blues. And I still do. It’s something you can share onstage with somebody else’s band, and I often have, where I don’t know the tune but I just wing it as a blues player. It’s stood me in very good stead.”  

Listen To: “Fifty Miles from the North Pole” 

Mike Oldfield

“When I listen back to Tubular Bells and Hergest Ridge, it sounds like yesterday. For a start, I use all five fingernails on my right hand, not a plectrum, so I get a very pure sound. That’s why people don’t seem to see me as a guitar player. 

“When there’s a video of me, I don’t look like I’m doing very much. I use violin vibrato. I can only think of Robert Fripp, who also uses that. And I often play just one note with a lot of power to start a melody.”

Listen To: “Ommadawn”

Steve Howe (Yes, GTR, Asia)

“I’ve always put [prog-rock] down to a post-psychedelia reinvention of rock music, because it had already got churned up quite a lot in psychedelic times, but I think it got broader then, and orchestral spirits came into it. I think what was great about [Yes, Pink Floyd, Genesis, King Crimson, and Led Zeppelin] was that each one of its members had a different story that they wanted to bring into the group. 

“I wanted to bring my writing into the band – my guitar ideas, my chordal ideas and songs. Bill [Bruford] wasn’t going to play 4/4, you know? He always knew what was appropriate, but he also knew what Bill Bruford would do with it.”  

Listen To: “Siberian Khatru” (Yes)

Steve Hillage (Khang, Gong, System 7)

“I was nine when I got my first guitar – a little acoustic with steel strings. I learned to play with a pick, and by the time I was 12 I’d got quite good. My first electric guitar was a Watkins Rapier, then finally I managed to get a Fender Stratocaster – my first pro guitar – in ’67. I think it was either a ’62 or a ’63. 

“I gradually found my own thing through a long series of experimentations with tape recorders, and later on I started getting into tape echo and various echo boxes. That’s how I really developed my personal sound and style.”  

Listen To: “The Glorious Om Riff” (Steve Hillage)

Alex Lifeson (Rush)

“I feel [my vibrato] is one of the more outstanding characteristics of my playing. I’m heavily influenced by Jimmy Page, and he has a fantastic vibrato. It’s so loose and so emotional. So as vibrato bars got better, I really wanted to create a subtlety in the right hand with the bar that matched my left hand. 

“I would push the left hand a little more, and I would ease off on the right hand. Of course, I did a lot of dive-bomb stuff in the ’80s, but I always wanted to have a very subtle vibrato on the whammy bar. It takes time, but it’s a very emotional thing. And very effective.”

Listen To: “La Villa Strangiato”

Allan Holdsworth

“I’ll just experiment with different voicings. What I usually do is just try to find the kind of voicings of particular chords that I like, and turn them around. I don’t like the sound of conventional guitar voicings. I love listening to jazz guitar – I listened to it a lot when I was younger, because my father introduced me to it. 

“But I very quickly tired of the sound of the chord voicings. I just decided that if I was going to get some chord things together that I might as well play some other voicings, instead of the kind of Jazz Book One or Jazz Book Two or Jazz Book Ten types of chords.” 

Listen To: “Metal Fatigue”

Tosin Abasi (Animals As Leaders)

“I would say the pure definition of progressive is to create new things. So advancing the scope of a genre – or the expression within a genre – is to be progressive. The minute you try to define what you’re doing is when you put limitations on yourself. I’m looking outside metal for my inspiration right now. That’s not to say that I don’t love my influences, because I do. But I want to keep moving.” 

Listen To: “Tempting Time”

Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree)

“This idea of being ‘progressive’ is misleading. I don’t like the word, anyway. I certainly don’t like the word prog. There’s nothing on anyone’s record that you cannot relate back to something from the past. I am aware of that, and I kinda embrace it. 

“What we’re doing is trying to invest that musical vocabulary with enough musical personality that it still sounds fresh. For [Wilson's 2015 solo album Hand.Cannot.Erase.], I would say it’s conceptual rock music, with all the implications that may or may not have.”  

Listen To: “The Raven That Refused to Sing” 

Steve Morse (Dixie Dregs, Kansas, Deep Purple)

“To become a good guitarist, you have to be open to things. When I first played with Al Di Meola, I asked how he sounded so percussive. We switched picks and there was a difference, so I changed from nylon to celluloid for the rest of the tour. 

“I’d love to get to know Jeff Beck and see if he really is pulling it out of nowhere, which is how it seems. It feels like he’s really improvising and making art through his guitar.”  

Listen To: “Tumeni Notes”

Steve Rothery (Marillion)

“I fell in love with Genesis after I heard ‘The Knife’ on Alan Freeman’s Saturday Rock Show. After that, I discovered Camel, Yes, King Crimson.... For me, there’s only good and bad in music. Labels are meaningless. 

"The true meaning of progressive is music without any self-imposed boundaries. It’s having the freedom to work outside the constraints of conventional song structure, almost like a soundtrack-type approach to creating songs.”

Listen To: “Grendel”

Dweezil Zappa

“I love the sound of microtonal instruments. On Via Zammata, I played the oud and a Godin Glissentar. I’m inspired by a variety of Eastern styles, including Indian, Turkish, Arabic, and Bulgarian. 

“I even recorded some music by the Bulgarian Women’s Choir. The tunes I chose have resonated with me since my dad took me to one of their concerts. I orchestrated them for guitar in a way that pays homage to Brian May.”   

Listen To: “Funky 15”

Alan Morse (Spock's Beard)

“When I saw Yes, I felt like they incorporated everything I loved about music into one thing. I saw them play live when I was 12, opening up for Black Sabbath in Los Angeles, and they really changed my mind. I was raised with all this classical music and some jazz, and I loved the power of rock and felt like Yes particularly embodied everything that I loved about music.”  

Listen To: “The Man Behind the Curtain”

Omar Rodríguez-López (The Mars Volta)

“From a fretboard perspective, I work with shapes rather than patterns. I’m useless at running through scales, but I’m good at arranging my thoughts into geometric shapes and creating chords and melodies out of them. Thoughts have shapes, just like tones – they have waveforms. 

“You can translate the shapes of thoughts and emotions through your hands onto the fretboard. With experience, you start relating the shape of your hand on the fretboard to certain geometric shapes that enter your mind when you’re hearing those sounds or having those feelings. You hear people use shapes to describe things all the time, such as, ‘That guy is a square,’ or ‘This sound is really round.’”  

Listen To: “Eriatarka”

Mike Keneally

“I decided a good discipline exercise would be to learn all the guitar parts on all the Gentle Giant albums. It turned out to be very valuable. But even more valuable was the time spent learning from Zappa’s discs. 

“I managed to develop a pretty good memory by playing stuff off of them. One of Frank’s names for me was Evelyn Wood [of speed-reading course fame], because of my unusual amount of comprehension and fast recognition of patterns. I can read music, but I don’t sightread it.”  

Listen To: “Lightnin’ Roy”

Guthrie Govan

“I think the best way to become comfortable with odd time signatures is to not think of them as odd. You just have to develop a natural feel for the contour of the bar in any given time signature, so you can sense when the ‘one’ will return without having to do any literal counting. 

“However daunting the top number in the time signature may appear, there’s generally an underlying framework, so it’s helpful to focus on finding the most prominent pulses within each bar, which are generally separated by smaller, more manageable numbers, like 3 and 4.” 

Listen To: “Sevens”

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.

King Crimson legend Robert Fripp has taken his ever-evolving approach to the guitar in a dizzying amount of fascinatingly off-beat directions over the course of his half-century-plus career. 

But this is a very strange turn, even for him.

In a video posted to the YouTube channel of his wife of 34 years, musician and actress Toyah Wilcox, Fripp – sporting fake tattoos, sitting in a fake prison cell and armed with a Fernandes Custom Gold – has a go at the Black Sabbath classic, "Paranoid." 

Meanwhile, Wilcox shows off her best dance moves behind the cell as Fripp chugs along, giving the whole scene a – in this writer's opinion – Twin Peaks sort of vibe. But hey, it's open to interpretation.

“Happy Sunday lunch from Toyah and Robert!” Fripp says after he's done channeling his inner Iommi.

An unexpected treat from the ever-unpredictable master...