“One musician speaking in a number of dialects”
MOST mornings, you’ll find Robert Fripp in his garden. “Every day I can walk out of the door and see the season change,” he says. “It is the first time in the life of a touring musician that I’ve been able to do that.”
For Fripp, lockdown has presented a number of unique opportunities. It’s not just his daily perambulations round the grounds of his home in Worcestershire – or the home movies he’s made with his wife Toyah Willcox, “one of which I’m in a tutu at the end of our garden dancing to Swan Lake. And in another one I am in a bee costume with my wife, also in a bee costume, running through our garden.” Critically, though, the enforced postponement of King Crimson’s North American tour has allowed Fripp to take stock of his considerable archive of music.
“A constant in-between, a liminal space. This, for 51 years”
“The life of the touring player isn’t so much what you do, like pack your bag, get in the car or bus and go, it becomes a state of mind,” he explains, sitting behind his desk in his wood-panelled office, dressed impeccably in a grey three-piece suit. “So my computer bag is currently open and ready to go, even though I’m not really going to need that for another year and two weeks. My life is a complete mess of contingency and preparation. You don’t quite unpack because next week you’re going to pack. So it’s a constant in-between, a liminal space. This, for 51 years. But for the first time I am at the desk in an ongoing way with a measure of continuity. I can actually plug in my hard drive and know that tomorrow it’s still here.”
Fripp, who recently turned 74 (“I’m in the endangered species category”) is currently overseeing a new weekly series called Music For Quiet Moments.
