Robert Fripp

Robert Fripp (born 16 May 1946) is an English musician, composer, record producer, and author, best known as the guitarist, founder and only constant member of the progressive rock band King Crimson. He has worked extensively as a session musician and collaborator, notably with David Bowie, Blondie, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Peter Hammill, Daryl Hall, the Roches, Talking Heads, and David Sylvian. He also composed the startup sound of Windows Vista, in collaboration with Tucker Martine and Steve Ball. His discography includes contributions to more than 700 official releases.

His compositions often feature unusual asymmetric rhythms, influenced by classical and folk traditions. His innovations include a tape delay system known as "Frippertronics" (superseded in the 1990s by a more sophisticated digital system called "Soundscapes") and New Standard Tuning.

Robert Fripp was born in Wimborne Minster, a town in Dorset, England, the second child of a working-class family. His mother Edith (née Greene; 1914–1993) was from a Welsh mining family; Fripp considers himself to be half Welsh. Her earnings from working at the Bournemouth Records Office allowed his father, Arthur Henry Fripp (1910–1985) to start a business as an estate agent. In 1957, at age eleven, Fripp received a guitar for Christmas from his parents and recalled, "Almost immediately I knew that this guitar was going to be my life". He then took guitar lessons from Kathleen Gartell and Don Strike; Elvis Presley's guitarist Scotty Moore inspired Fripp to play rock and roll, moving on to traditional jazz at thirteen and modern jazz at fifteen. Fripp has cited jazz musicians Charlie Parker and Charles Mingus as musical influences during this time.

In 1961, the fifteen-year-old Fripp joined his first band, the Ravens, which also included Gordon Haskell on bass. After they split in the following year, Fripp concentrated on his O-level studies and joined his father's firm as a junior negotiator. At this point, he intended to study estate management and, eventually, take over his father's business. However, at seventeen, Fripp decided to become a professional musician. He became the guitarist in the jazz outfit The Douglas Ward Trio, playing in the Chewton Glen hotel in New Milton, followed by a stint in the rock and roll band The League of Gentlemen, which included two former Ravens members. For a time, he gave guitar lessons to a local Wimborne friend, Al Stewart, who went on to achieve fame as a singer-songwriter. Much later, when Fripp was asked if any of his guitar students had found success, he replied, "Only one of them ever made it, and that was Al Stewart, and he did it by ignoring everything I ever tried to teach him.”

In 1965, Fripp left the group to attend Bournemouth College, where he studied economics, economic history, and political history for his A-levels. In February 1965, Fripp went to see the Duke Ellington Orchestra, an experience which moved him deeply. He subsequently spent three further years playing light jazz in the Majestic Dance Orchestra at Bournemouth's Majestic Hotel (replacing Andy Summers, who had left for London with Zoot Money). During this time, Fripp met musicians that he would collaborate with in his career, including John Wetton, Richard Palmer-James, and Greg Lake. At age 21, going back home from college late at night, Fripp tuned on to Radio Luxembourg, where he heard the last moments of the Beatles' "A Day in the Life". "Galvanized" by the experience, he went on to listen to the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Béla Bartók's string quartets, Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony, Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. Many years later, Fripp would recall that "although all the dialects are different, the voice was the same… I knew I couldn't say no". As a band leader, Fripp pointed out that Miles Davis and Duke Ellington inspired him to seek "constant change".

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.