Robert Fripp's Diary

Last week as an alternative

So, I telephoned the A&R person and explained this, emphasising that the group should not feel insulted or rejected. A&R suggested one particular song, of the six submitted, which they hoped I might be able to play on: it was "Eighties retro". Discreetly, I replied that I didn't look on myself as an Eighties retro guitarist. Tangible embarrasment at the other end of the telephone.

In sessions of recent years, I am asked (with varying degrees of subtlety) to play the same solo which I played (generally with Eno or Bowie, and occasionally King Crimson) years and years ago. Eno & Bowie remain the only two characters that have never been phased by my more radical guitaring. And, essentially and necessarily, both of them brought an energetic factor with them into the sessions: they contributed energy which is distinctly and recognisably catalysing. It is an absurdity to expect / ask Fripp ( or anyone) to contribute a defining and originating solo to a session:

1. Which is an echo of a solo from years before;
2. While holding an expectation of what the playing is - should - might sound like.
3. Without providing the catalysing / dynamic energy which is fuel to the flying musician;
4. Without providing a recording studio which is of a comparable standard to the playing expected / anticipated.

All my powerful solos came into the world within particular conditions of time, place and persons. The potential for them to emerge, given a sufficient capacity in the player, was a given. But a particular player is only one of the factors in a recording session (or any other musical situation).

Eno & Bowie both have superb taste; both have a background in fine arts; both seek innovation, novelty, encourage imagination. Give me a young artist with their talents, a good studio, and let me rip.

The difficulty with having a growing resume: one is increasingly approached with history in mind. In contemporary interviews I am asked the same questions which I was asked 10, 15, 20, 25 years ago. Those answers are on file. Today, I am able to answer questions which only a long and maturing experience may begin to address. How sad to demean this capacity and resource by asking functional questions of long ago! My position with regard to interviews is straightforward: if I am asked to present my resume, this is not an interview for me. The upcoming 30th. Anniversary of King Crimson is likely to present a long series of possible interviews that won't happen.

The Virgin Records standard contract (the one I tore up and placed on the table in front of Virgin's World Boss with the words "please accept this as my response to your formal proposal") has a clause which commits the artist to undertaking all interviews which Virgin provides. The wordage is something like interviews "may not be unreasonably refused". Why do I feel that any refusal, on the grounds of "but this is mad!", might be judged unreasonable?

Press Departments work (mainly) on the assumption that all publicity is good publicity: this cliche is untrue, a deceit, and an excuse for careless behaviour. There is a price to be paid for young artists (of any age) facing hositility, cynicism, intentional nastiness, projected negativity and jealousy in their interviewers. This is not the immediate concern of the Press Officer: they don't do the interviews. There is a price to be paid for dealing with uncritical adulation, flattery and puffing. There is a price to be paid for doing eight major interviews a day for three consecutive days, with three interviews on the fourth morning; all with photographers; all asking the same questions. This is not the immediate concern of the Press Officer: they don't do the interviews; they are not in the photos.

The artist pays the price, immediately. In the mid-term, there are enough young artists foolishly eager "to be signed", prepared to compromise their career, music, integrity and way of living, that a Press Officer has an endless supply of microphone fodder. This is sent out to the front line and embrace the praxis of a liberal education in the profession of music.

In time, everyone pays.

Knowledge is only part of learning, and often knowledge gets in the way of acquiring a quality and intensity of learning which informs our every gesture. Because we "know" something in our cerebellum, this moist grey instrument driven by glucose and outputting around 25 watts, we delude ourselves that we have a knowing of some practical value. Our education, our learning process, is easily undermined if we entertain this fallacy.

For example, I have recently been approached to provide "personal lessons" or "Fripp exercises for young guitarists" by several guitar magazines. The request is, actually, to provide exercises for the hands. My own concerns address the "how" and "why" of practising the exercises (any exercises) rather than the specific "what" of the exercise. And the "what" is itself fundamental and determining.

If I present an exercise, the exercise carries with it a particular charge: an investment of time, intent, almost 42 years of personal experience, 39 years of experience from giving guitar lessons, and almost 14 years of Guitar Craft. If this exercise has potency, or the capacity to effect change in the guitarist working with the exercise, how may I respond? Here is a guitarist whose life is changing (to whatever degree) because of this exercise: what responsibility does that confer on me? How may i address that? How do I explain that the exercise can only be undertaken as a matter of conscience? If the charge within the exercise (intentionally) upsets the equilibrium of the player, how may I restore that equilibrium; or allow that equilibrium to be safely disturbed until the lesson has been learnt?

Exercises for the hands address more than the hands: they address the rest of who and what we are as well. But, isn't that obvious to all of us? This places a responsibility upon the author of the exercises which (I sense) is often overlooked. Or maybe that's only in the guitar magazines I read.

Guitar lessons, any lessons, are best conducted in person. If the learning process is sufficiently important to the student they will find their instructor or, if very lucky, their teacher. But finding our teacher is itself part of the learning curve and honours a simple principle: if we can't find them, they are beyond us. So, let's have an easier life or get real!

21.33

The Late Shift. We are all on overload. Hugh's holiday has been put back as the Art Department asks of him acts of heroism: specifically, two album covers which Hugh hadn't anticipated completing this month. I ask Hugh what the concept of "holiday" means. Hugh wonders whether it means going to Peterborough.

David and I are finalising "Sometimes God Smiles"; Chris is Crimsonising in Mexico.

23.14

The playthrough is on its third track. Burning! This follows on from a discussion of David's novel, and the nature of the characters and how their characteristics are evolving.

My (growing, increasing) post today included a letter from a reviewer, apologising for their former reviews of Soundscapes. Previously, he suggests, the reviews approached Soundscapes through the intellect and now he realises this is not possible. I agree.

Part of my evening's work has been to select two soundscapes: a short piece for a charity record (for a Down's Syndrome school in Derbyshire), and an hour of `scaping to accompany Anthony Blake reading Rilke. Returning to music from Soundscape performances last December, there is sufficient distance to aid forgetfulness and therefore discovery. I found myself in front of the same bleeping, droning, whooshing sounds that challenged the congregation of Newlyn Church (also a benefit for a Down's Syndrome organisation) and the second audience in The Bottom Line, New York. How to listen to this strange stuff?

My approach, this particular evening, was to listen (as if) to a piece of sonic sculpture. I suspended my demands of what I "wanted" from the music; or what I wanted it to do, or be, or where to go. And then, there it was: sonic sculpture. It was. It endured in time: to a degree. And to a degree, it moved through time. But, primarily, there it was. Not that it went places, but that it WAS places. And if the listener wished, the places were there to access, glimpse, visit.

Soundscapes remain mysterious to me. I have a considerable respect for them, how there are, where they come from. They continue to defy this aspirant musician should he be foolish enough to direct where they "should" go.

Another part of my evening's work has been to put out carpet plants, and re-feng an area which needs definition and reconnection with the rest of the garden. Three magnolia trees arrived this morning from Wilton House Garden Centre to continue linking the garden to its future. Gardening, like live performance and improvisation, is ephemeral in its nature. A flower blossoms: you see it, or not; you were there, or not. What persists in a garden is its form, its architecture, and even this is easily lost.

When Toyah and I came here (December 18th. 1987) my first aim for the property, and garden, followed the principle: define the space. In gardening terms, this is the establishment of physical boundaries. In our case, the boundaries consist of long runs of yew, some hornbeam on the drove road (yew berries are poisonous for animals) backed by an inner hedge of yew, and holly backed by yew further down the drove. In formal terms, definition leads to clarity, efficiency, intensity. In practical terms, the hedges give the house a measure of privacy; increasingly, they will give the village a royal hedge of beauty, and an object of regard.

The Little Horse has `phoned from London, freshly returned from opening "The Live Bed Show" in Brighton tonight. The actors returned to a proscenium setting from the intimate space of Peterborough, where speaking in ordinary voice was enough to fill the theatre. Intimacy and closeness has its disadvantages in performance: on Wednesday night a loud and involuntary trumpeting from the first row surprised the audience as much as it threatened to corpse the actors; on Friday night one woman eating crisps threatened to drown out the actors.