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"THE IDEA THAT I HAD OF KING CRIMSON WAS ONE CAN BE A ROCK MUSICIAN BUT MANTAINING A LEVEL OF INTELLIGENCE."

Robert Fripp - 1969

Robert Fripp (born 16 May 1946) is a guitarist, composer and a record producer best known for being the guitarist for, and only constant member of, the progressive rock band King Crimson. His work, spanning four decades, encompasses a variety of musical styles. Fripp was ranked 42nd on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" (published August 2003). In 2010, Fripp was ranked #47 on Gibson.com’s Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.

His earliest professional work began in 1967, when he responded to an ad looking for a singing organist for a band being formed by bassist Peter Giles and drummer Michael Giles, despite being neither a singer nor an organist. Though unsuccessful as a live act, Giles, Giles and Fripp did manage to release two singles, as well as an album, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp.

Fripp and Sylvian in good humored

Following the band's breakup, Fripp, along with drummer Michael Giles, made plans for the formation of King Crimson in 1968, with Greg Lake, Peter Sinfield and Ian McDonald. Their first album, In the Court of the Crimson King, was released in late 1969 to great success, and is now known as one of the most influential albums in the history of progressive rock. Because of musical differences with Giles and McDonald, King Crimson broke up shortly after the release of the first album, to be re-formed again several times over the years. Initially Fripp offered to leave the group; however, Giles and McDonald announced that they were going to leave regardless, and so Fripp remained instead in order to keep Crimson going. He has remained the only consistent member of the band since. Crimson went through a number of line-ups before Fripp disbanded the group for the first time in 1974.

During King Crimson's less active periods, Fripp has pursued a number of side-projects. He worked with Keith Tippett (and others who appeared on King Crimson records) on projects far from rock music, producing Centipede's Septober Energy in 1971 and Ovary Lodge in 1973. During this period he also worked with Van der Graaf Generator, playing on the 1970 album H to He, Who Am the Only One, and in 1971, on Pawn Hearts. Collaborating with Brian Eno, he recorded (No Pussyfooting) in 1972, and Evening Star in 1974. These two albums featured experimentation with several novel musical techniques, including a tape delay system utilising dual reel to reel Revox tape machines that would come to play a central role in Fripp's later work. This system came to be known as "Frippertronics". Also in 1974, Fripp performed the blistering guitar solo on "Baby's on Fire," perhaps the best-known track on Eno's debut solo album Here Come the Warm Jets. In 1975, Fripp and Eno played several live shows in Europe, and Fripp also contributed melodic and soaring guitar solos throughout Eno's groundbreaking Another Green World album.

1981 saw the formation of King Crimson's fourth incarnation, along with Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford, and Tony Levin. The group was conceptualised under the name Discipline, but it came to Fripp's attention that the members thought the name King Crimson was more appropriate. For Fripp, King Crimson had always been a way of doing things, rather than a particular group of musicians, and the group felt that their music captured that methodology. After releasing three albums (Discipline, Beat, Three of a Perfect Pair), this new King Crimson broke up in 1984.

In 1977, Fripp received a phone call from Eno, who was working on David Bowie's album Heroes. Fripp agreed to play guitar for the album, a move that initiated a series of collaborations with other musicians. Fripp soon contributed his musical and production talents to Peter Gabriel's second album, and collaborated with Daryl Hall on Sacred Songs. During this period, Fripp began working on solo material, with contributions from poet/lyricist Joanna Walton and several other musicians, including Eno, Gabriel, and Hall, as well as Peter Hammill, Jerry Marotta, Phil Collins, Tony Levin and Terre Roche. This material eventually became his first solo album, Exposure, released in 1979, followed by the Frippertronics tour in the same year. While living in New York, Fripp contributed to albums and live performances by Blondie and Talking Heads (Fear of Music), and produced The Roches' first album, which featured several of Fripp's characteristic guitar solos. A second set of creative sessions with David Bowie produced distinctive guitar parts on Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980).

Fripp was offered a teaching position at the American Society for Continuous Education (ASCE) in Claymont Court, West Virginia in 1984. He had been involved with the ASCE since 1978, eventually serving on its board of directors, and had long been considering the idea of teaching guitar. His course, Guitar Craft, was begun in 1985, an offshoot of which was a performance group, "The League of Crafty Guitarists", which has released several albums. In 1986, he released the first of two collaborations with his wife, Toyah Willcox. The members of the California Guitar Trio are former members of The League of Crafty Guitarists, and Gitbox Rebellion includes several former Guitar Craft students. The California Guitar Trio has also toured with King Crimson.

In February 2009, Fripp recommended that Guitar Craft cease to exist on its 25th anniversary in 2010.

Fripp returned to recording solo in 1994, using an updated version of the Frippertronics technique that creates loops employing digital technology instead of analog tapes. Fripp has released a number of records that he called "Soundscapes", including 1999, Radiophonics, A Blessing of Tears, That Which Passes, November Suite, The Gates of Paradise, Love Cannot Bear and At the End of Time, as well as numerous download-only live recordings. (The sampler Pie Jesu consists of material compiled from A Blessing of Tears and The Gates of Paradise.) On the Soundscapes recordings, the inner workings of the music are not as clearly laid bare as they are on Let the Power Fall, perhaps because of the greater possibilities offered by the new technology..

In late 1994, Fripp re-formed the 1981 lineup of King Crimson for its fifth incarnation, adding Trey Gunn and drummer Pat Mastelotto in a configuration known as the "double trio" (the lineup included two guitars, two bass/Stick players and two drummers). This lineup released the VROOOM EP in 1994, and the Thrak full album in 1995; also in 1994 he supplied guitar textures on the track Flak on The Future Sound of London's album Lifeforms.

From 1997 to 1999, and again in 2006, the band King Crimson "fraKctalised" into five sub-groups known as ProjeKcts.

2000 saw the release of a studio album, The ConstruKction of Light, from a sixth lineup of King Crimson (Fripp, Adrian Belew, Trey Gunn, Pat Mastelotto) with The Power to Believe following in 2003. At the end of the year Gunn decided to leave the band. In March 2004, a seventh lineup had been formulated and practised with Tony Levin returning to replace Trey Gunn, although nothing happened beyond a few studio rehearsals and the band remained inactive again until 2007.

In 2007 Gavin Harrison joined the group to perform as a second drummer, and this new lineup played a short tour in the eastern US in August 2008. As yet there has been no definite word on anything further.

Fripp began playing guitar at the age of eleven. He says he was tone deaf with no sense of rhythm when he started. His comment on dealing with the obstacle is "Music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls on unlikely characters to give it voice."

While being taught guitar basics by his teacher Don Strike (who Fripp described as "a very good player in the thirties style"), he began to develop the technique of crosspicking, which would later become a significant technique taught in Guitar Craft.

In 1985, Fripp began using a tuning he called "New Standard tuning", which would also become the official tuning of Guitar Craft.

Fripp's guitar technique, unlike most rock guitarists of his era, is not blues-based but rather influenced by avant-garde jazz and European classical music, combining rapid alternate picking with motifs employing whole-tone or diminished pitch structures, continuous cross-picked (and polka-influenced) sixteenth-note patterns for long stretches in a form called moto perpetuo (perpetual motion).

Fripp is left-handed, but plays guitar right-handed.

During the early years of King Crimson (1969-1974), Fripp used two Gibson Les Paul from years '57 and '59, the 57' guitar featuring three humbucker pickups (with one volume control on the pickguard controlling the middle pickup). Robert Fripp has got a signature model from Crimson Guitars, called Crimson Guitars Robert Fripp Signature, which features Fernandes Sustainer and MIDI elements, with a Les Paul Model Body, another difference from the Gibson Les Paul is that Fripp´s guitar is built in one piece, not with the set-in neck.