Robert Fripp & David Singleton answer burning questions at The Vogel in Red Bank on the 27th September 2022. The audience questioned Robert on his relationship to drums and the various drummers through the many incarnations of King Crimson.
Audience
In 1981 King Crimson did a short tour of colleges. And if you remember this event, then you'll be able to answer this question: at one point, I remember reading that you didn't want Bill Bruford to hit cymbals because it used the frequencies that the guitar used. I can't remember the exact song, but he was all over the cymbals playing from one side of the kit to the other. He was smiling and having a wonderful time, and for a moment you stopped playing. You look over at him. Finally, he turns his head, looks at you, and I don't know how to describe it, other than he barked at you, he laughed, you laughed, and went back to playing. Everybody looked like they were having a great time, but I figured you were trying to get him to stop hitting the cymbals. And for 40 years I've wondered, is that what was going on?
RF
Bill and I irritated the shit out of each other for 25 years. Would you like me to go further?
Audience
I would love it.
RF
In 1981, the Discipline Quartet presented an opportunity to do things in a different way. Now, this is very difficult with exceptionally good professional musicians. A very, very good professional musician knows what they're doing. They have to. But an even better musician plays what they don't know what they're doing. And very successful musicians really create that situation for themselves. So, within King Crimson in 1981, it fell to me to make suggestions. Now, there is a subtlety in terms of creating music in a group. Everyone, even if they play nothing, is contributing simply by breathing the air around each other. Something has already changed. As I say, this is subtlety. I'm not asking you to believe me. I'm asking you, please, to trust your own experience of things. So, it would be hard to say in our initial rehearsals for Robert to present this as a compositional strategy. Nevertheless, it was so. And part of this was also to present Bill with a series of injunctions which would inhibit how he would automatically and conventionally undertake his role of drummer. One of these injunctions had to do with cymbals like, don't hit them.
But since this could go on endlessly, what I will do is refer you to three diary entries. I believe in Musician, Player and Listener Magazine, where I go into this in some detail. But thank you for your question, sir. This is perhaps some of the flavour of what was going on.
David, you are very familiar with that band. What would you say?
DS
Well, it has a different character. That is what is remarkable about each of the King Crimsons, is that they have a different character. I noticed Bill is drumming differently more on the Discipline album. Certainly, on the Discipline album, there is a different vocabulary, which is why people get so excited about it. You hear a lot of people say, oh, I heard Discipline, and everything changed, they recognize that there was something different in the vocabulary. I will point out in the world where Bill irritates the shit out of Robert, and vice versa, that Robert often tells the story of how King Crimson was getting larger and larger in 1974, and that it was mad and that it was going to ruin the band. So, the band broke up. And Bill likes to tell me the same story in the opposite direction. That they were on the verge, they were getting larger, they were going to be as large as Pink Floyd. It was about to happen. And then Robert broke up the band.
RF
So, you would have to look at the question why? There is a commonplace error of thought that the more successful the band is, the more choices it gets to make. At a certain point, what large success means is that management takes a closer interest. I'll hesitate there. Everyone takes an interest in your fears and increasingly power possessors will manipulate the musicians. I remember, for example, the very first time an American manager pulled out cocaine in order to wield control over King Crimson musicians, for example. There is the other point that when a musician begins to be popular or successful, there are great dangers involved in that they might believe that the music has something to do with them. In other words, it's very easy for a successful musician to believe they're playing the music. If the music is really of quality, then the music is playing the musician. Now, when you take these preposterous notions and growing ego fuelled by cocaine, there are problems. How to keep the band on course? Well, one way is to take the band out of the course. This is not conventionally considered to be a winning strategy, but it depends on the aim we hold for the group. Within King Crimson the first principle for me is the music comes first. Is this reasonable? The music comes first? Yes. Not every member of King Crimson would agree with you. Second principle, when you're working within a group, the group comes first. That is, the interest of the group overall takes precedence over our personal interests. Yes. Not every member of King Crimson would agree with you. Now, if you have a band of four members and two of them don't accept what you have just agreed with, what do you do? "get rid of them", you say. No, there is another strategy. You seek to engage them in a different way. And what would that strategy be? Well, take music on the road and something within the sanctity of the musical event, something comes in from the outside which makes the impossible possible. For a while. Then what happens is you have a band business meeting, and the band will break up. Hey, listen, 53 years of this. We could be here all night with dismal pitiful examples of how I suffer.
So, at that point, does someone else have a burning question?
And the microphone is over there, please.
Is this question about drummers, madam.
Audience
Yes it is. As a drummer of 15 years, I really enjoyed the interplay between the kit and the percussionist. Great examples are Jamie Muir and Bill Bruford. They were fantastic. But when you get into three drummers, as I’ve seen for the last three or four years, for a drummer this isn’t fun. I always thought that Gavin looked a little pissed off because he could not really take control of what was going on. Do you think having three drummers on stage was a success? And why, if so.
RF
May I invite David, please, for his outside the band view of things first and then I'll come in
DS
Outside of the band, the three-drummer idea was astonishingly successful. And that is not only my view, but also possibly the view of every person that has ever reviewed that band. You read any review of that band and I challenge you to show me that somewhere in the first three sentences they will not mention the fact that there were three drummers, and that they were astonishing. Where else do you read a review of a rock band and the drummers are mentioned in the first few lines?
Audience
My question is, how do they play together?
DS
So, that is because of the choice of the three drummers. And more particularly, because of the choice of Gavin Harrison. Who, when there were written parts, wrote the three parts in general. But as an external person sitting outside, it was frankly, an astonishing band. I remember attending the shows and thinking I could invite anyone here and though they might not like the music they would be astonished. I have been to some jazz shows, for example, where I wasn’t sure if I liked the music, but it was still astonishing. I might not go home and think, I want to play that music but in the presence of the show, it was astonishing. And this is King Crimson. I defy anyone to go to a show by that band and not have their jaw drop. And I think a large amount of that was because of the presence of the three drummers. That's my view.
RF
A wider context moving into an answer, madam. Michael Giles in 1969 was an astonishing drummer. Utterly astonishing. Off stage, he was difficult. On stage, he never played badly, ever. He never, ever played badly. Utterly astonishing. And he was complete although he wasn't a jazz drummer, he could persuade you that he was. He was a rock drummer, and he would convince you of that too, but utterly other. And when he would hit a cymbal, it would be a considered and intentional stroke, and the sound of the cymbal was just right. So, Giles could play a simple ballad, I Talk To The Wind or Rock Out on Schizoid Man, which at the time was unheard of what Giles could do. To quote singer of Steppenwolf, right, who was walking at the back of the Marquee on May the 16th, 1969, my 23rd birthday, walking at the back. They sound like a fucking orchestra overheard by Giles. I cannot exaggerate how good he was, but he did a lifetime's work in about 18 months. And after that, there was never one drummer sufficient for me who could do what Giles could do. So, the next major step was, can two drummers do this?
Bill was not enough on his own. Jamie Muer wasn't quite enough on his own. But together, Jamie was the master, Bill was the apprentice, and Jamie gave him a very hard time. Bill had a very hard time. And it's a tribute to Bill's quality as a person that he actually went through it. But Jamie had a very deep spiritual experience at the beginning of 1973, not long after we completed recording Larks Tongue's album, he had an out of the body experience and went off to follow his muse in a Tibetan monastery in Scotland for the next seven years. So that left Bill on his own and it was on the way, Bill was an expert drummer, but not quite a master drummer. But nevertheless, lots of good things happened. But whereas Jamie, if he hit something it was with intention or Giles with Bill, bill would hit things huge amounts of enthusiasm and energy, and the energy was sufficient. So, then that was 1974, and then we had an interregnum for seven years. Then we came back with Bill and the hybrid kit, electric and acoustic, and that kind of went so far, but it still wasn't enough for me.
So, the next outing, the double trio, there were two drummers, essentially Pat, to hold things down, rock things out and be reliable in tempo. So, Bill, whose timing was a little prodigal, would be anchored. That was the thinking. Then the first time the three-drummer idea appeared was in 2007, in rehearsing for the unsatisfactory outing of that King Crimson, where Gavin joined the band. And it was Gavin and Pat and I said to Adrian Belew, would you like to do three drum parts? And Adrian said no. So that was that. But the idea remained. And then in was it July 2013.
Why three drummers? Well, why a double trio? How do you form a band? How do you put people together? Well, down the end of the garden of some chums in Lambeth, my wife and I, visiting two chums and having a glass of prosecco, I ask myself the question, if King Crimson were performing tomorrow, what would it be? So what you do, you hold the question, and you look at it and then there it was, it lit up. There it is. Three drummers at the front and the conventional front line at the back. And in that first click, Tony Levin was kind of in between the two. But what we do when we translate, if you like creative insights into the world of actuality and stuff, you can't have Tony Levin standing between the front and the back rising. So, Tony went on to the back. That was the accommodation and practicality. Gavin is a master drummer. Jeremy and Pat are expert drummers. Bill Bruford is an expert drummer. He calls himself this. Gavin Harrison is a master drummer. What are the characteristics of a master player? They can lead or solo, they can support or accompany, and they can do nothing or be tacit.
You will see Gavin in extended periods doing absolutely nothing. He is being present doing nothing. Bill Bruford was incapable of this. Bill had to be in constant motion. There is only one occasion where Bill played nothing, and that was in an improvisation released on the Starless And Bible Black Album Trio, recorded at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in November 1973. That is the only occasion I can give numerous examples of when I pleaded with Bill not to hit things, and I failed. Gavin can sit there for ten minutes and play nothing extended, or he can solo and lead and arrange and write parts for three drummers. Or he can support a singer in a very simple ballad. And the sound of his kit is astonishing. Gavin is a master drummer. He is breath-taking. He also has a pedagogical background and his book on rhythmic offsets. Bill Bruford consulted in the original drum parts for him and Pat Mastelotto, while. Recording Thrak in Real World. So, Gavin has been part of Crimson's DNA since 1994. He's astonishing. So, is the three drummer outings successful? In my view, yes. Were there times when it wasn't completely successful? Well, there must have been.
Did they irritate each other from time to time? I think very likely. But there were two three drummer configurations, one with Bill Rieflin and the other with Jeremy Stacy. Jeremy Stacy is fundamentally a jazz player. Bill Rieflin is fundamentally a rock player, but he has a musical sensibility which is rare in a musician, whatever instrument they play, and I miss Bill. So, you have two three drummer configurations. They were both successful, in my view. Inevitably, they couldn't have been successful all the time, but they convinced me and I loved sitting behind them. I loved sitting behind them, see what they were doing. Pat Mastelotto loves hitting things more than any drummer I have ever known, including Bill Bruford. He has so much fun.
Audience
We never got to see Jamie & Bill play in the States. I have heard some bootlegs, but how were those gigs for you? As you say, Jamie was teaching Bill. Was it five or six gigs' you played in Europe?
RF
And a few in England. Jamie was something like a shaman. He was a force of nature. He was a true improviser. Remarkably cultivated and sophisticated man, whose background was essentially in the free improv world with Derek Bailey in London, which, in terms of free improv at the time, that kind of set the standard. And Jamie, when we began doing live appearances, we didn't discuss what clothes we should wear. And he came on with furs. What did he look like David?
DS
There's a video you can find with the blood capsules and the furs.
RF
Yes, and he had shakers, and he would climb and run up to the large side cabinets, the side of the stage, and shake his shakers at them. Then he would run to the other side and shake his shakers. As I said, he was a shaman. And he had these chains that he whirled around his head. Pat Mastelloto sampled these and would go pish and you would have the sound of whirring chains and other things. But with Jamie, it was analog. And there was one particular performance where Jamie's wonderful whistling sound of this chain goes around his head and what he would then do is let go of the chain, bite on his blood capsule and collapse onto his drums with his sticks. Perfectly in time, while we would see in the audience, people were pointing at this man bleeding. What has he done? However, on one particular occasion with the chains whizzing around, I heard a whistling sound, and I leant forward to hear what it was as the chain whizzed by exactly in the space my head had just been, it whizzed by and landed stage left, as Jamie was then, bleeding imperfectly in time.
