Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

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Beat Instrumental JUNE 1979 - by Giovanni Dadamo

ROBERT FRIPP

- the young person's guide by Giovanni Dadamo

Beat Guv'nor Tom Stock said it like he meant it: "He's one of the great guitarists. There isn't a week gone by without letters asking about him and where he is and what he's doing. He may not be a household name exactly, but Robert Fripp's influenced thousands of young players. I wish, "he added not a little ruefully, "I only had the time to talk to him myself."

Cover story. Big Splash. Fripp From A to Z. "For Monday?" Five days. As usual, this was going to have to be one of those reach for the sky but don't be too down if you don't catch the sun assignments. Sometimes a handful of good air can be almost as good. It's an attitude Robert Fripp probably would be quite supportive of, as I'd discover quite soon.

Mr. Fripp, as everyone and his Aunt Edie must know by now, was in London during the closing days of April. Simultaneously available with this appearance was a little gem name of Exposure, the long-anticipated first Fripp solo LP and - as me and many more'll gladly testify, it was well worth the wait.

Tom Stock had asked for an exhaustive piece. Research began as close to point A as possible. No, not with Bob himself, that would be a couple of days hence. Meanwhile I began to probe the roots of the man's career with the invaluable assistance of something entitled The Young Person's Guide To King Crimson, the two-record Crimson compilation assembled by the man himself back in '75. I set the first disc on the deck, snuggled into a lumpy armchair and listened.

Not just with ears but eyes too. Guide, you see, comes complete with Guide-book, a twelve-inch square, twenty-page King Crimson dossier that tells the Crimson story from start to finish. Mr. Fripp compiled the item himself, of course, and related the group's erratic, often brilliant saga in the form of a series of diary entries starting off on June 1, 1968 - release date of the word on Giles Giles Et Fripp, the ill-fated ensemble that would be the springboard to Crimson itself. From then on the story tells itself in newspaper clippings, gig and record reviews, extracts from interviews, plain entries of fact ('July 17: Recording with King Crimson Producing', this following directly on from earlier entries about a series of recordings with outside production help that had, by July 16, come to naught: 'Recording: Dissolution with Tony Clark and abandonment of all tapes'). More fascinating still, are Fripp's own little notes and comments, extracts from his private 'Journal' and so on.

The plan was a quick refresher course. As on previous occasions, I found myself starting on June 1, 1968 and being drawn through a barrage of good and bad events, all the way along the years, through countless line-up changes, four massive American tours, nine albums, through to Fripp's final announcement that King Crimson has "ceased to exist" just - impeccable timing - as the group's eighth and penultimate LP, Red hit the shops. The book doesn't end there, however. Bravely, Fripp leaves nothing out, not even the by now typically across the board reviews that met the posthumously-issued USA LP or the final announcement that Fripp was working on this last compilation itself, delivered in typically venomous fashion in a pop weekly gossip column.

King Crimson were the British rock'n'roll event of 1976, a breath -taking live band who sounded like no-one who'd ever come before them. In less than a year they went from an enthusiastic whisper on the street to certified Next Big Thing, a position solidified by a cracker first LP. They were something to get excited about. They were reaching for the sun.

No-one catches that golf -ball. Crimson faltered, rallied, shed first one skin then another. Crew -men were lost at sea. Some jumped and one or two, perhaps, were even nudged a little. Horizons were aimed for and some turned out to be mirages after 311. But Crimson could never be totally discounted, even when times got weird. It became apparent that Crimson was Robert Fripp's gig first and foremost. In the end he was the only original left but the hunger for new musical maps never seemed to falter, just as Fripp's Gibson never said anything twice and never spoke without having something worth communicating.

There are ten King Crimson records and some are brilliant and some aren't but every one has something worth hearing at least ten times. Like always, it's better to hear than rely on hearsay. They're still around and deserve to be. A part, as they say, of our musical heritage. And as for the day-to-day facts and fantasies, as I've already intimated at least once, Fripp's Guide booklet does an admirable job of telling it from his point of view.

"I'm a short and tidy person," said Robert Fripp in a King's Road office at noon on Friday April 27, 1979. In point of fact, he's no Nils Lofgren. But it's the second half of this statement that rings truest with Robert Fripp.

Exposure comes complete with a little grey folder. Inside are a number of sheets of an informative nature, plus Robert Fripp postcard, this fulfilling both a decorative and functional (if you can afford the stamp, that is) role.

The sheet that counts is Robert Fripp's discography. First come the 'oldies' bearing his own name: The Cheerful Insanity Of Giles, Giles & Fripp, the Crimson years, two collaborations with Brian Eno, No Pussyfooting and Evening Star. Exposure next, of course. Thence to Production credits: eight to date, kicking off with a trio of albums featuring various manifestations of Keith Tippett, Matching Mole's Little Red Record, Spontaneous Combustion's version of Sabre Dance and, more recently, the excellent Peter Gabriel II (the record which converted this long-time non-Gabriel consumer, not a little, I suspect, due to Fripp's involvement). Two others: a solo LP by Daryl Hall (the blond one) entitled Sacred Songs, recorded over eighteen months past and unlikely ever to see the light of day ("Unscheduled" according to the RCA fat-cats: Fripp suggests you drop the label a stiff letter/petition - it could just work). Most recent is an LP with three American ladies called The Roches, one of whom - Terre - can be heard on Exposure; an acoustic group which Fripp insisted on keeping that way in the studio, against heavy record company pressure. It's just come out Stateside and is, Fripp beams, receiving very hot reviews.

There's been extensive guest appearances too, both on several of the above-named, and on discs by everyone from Blondie (Fade Away And Radiate), Van Der Graaf/Peter Hamill (another Exposure guest, along with Hall and Gabriel) and, but of course, the lead guitar on Bowie's "Heroes". And that's by no means that, even omitting a number of items mentioned in the Exposure booklet (Would you believe a Charlie Drake '45? It's true, Fripp's later career displays the kind of gargantuan appetite for work, work, work matched only by that of stalwart sidekick Brian Eno. Fripp is still set to star opposite Debbie Harry in the new Alphaville (a kind of French 1984) movie, now iced until late Winter. Meanwhile he already has his next LP in the can, and its follow-up all worked out.

Fripp in the flesh made his first manifestation at the Polydor offices on the day following receipt of this assignment. Mr. Fripp would, Polydor Boy Wonder Chris Bohn announced, be giving a preview of his next LP, Frippatronics early that evening and would I care to come? I would, and so would some thirty other bods, the bunch of us crammed into this second floor executive office.

Black suit, shirt, socks and Gibson cover the better part of Fripp's frame. As always, he sits. He has a pedal board before him and a couple of tape machines by his side. What is about to happen, he announces, leaves a lot to chance. It could be very good or, just as easily, go horribly wrong. Fripp is prepared for either eventuality. For him, Fripp explains, this is just a rehearsal for Music For Restaurants which event will occur on the following evening at a Notting Hill pizza parlour. We should feel free to move around, fetch drinks, sandwiches etc.

"Would you like to pick a note?" asks Fripp. The gent seated opposite him asks for 'E'. Fripp begins to pluck 'E's. In a matter of seconds his first note has been through the tape system and set up a swelling, repetitive rhythm. Fripp throws in other notes, variations, snatches of melody. Within minutes there's a symphonic swell of sound filling the room. It's called Frippatronics and can be delicately beautiful one moment, turbulently hard the next. It's entrancing and at the same time isn't in any way aggressive. Another piece follows, again kicked off by someone in the audience. Same only different. Towards the end Fripp leans over to the line of recording tape poised between the two recorders and gently taps it with an index finger. The tune distorts slightly and the distortion part is repeated on the tape. Another way of making music. At the end Fripp's eyes take a long slow scan across the room, covering every face.

The atmosphere remains relaxed. Fripp talks to anyone who wants conversation. The three kids from The Cure rush up and pelt him with questions. Fripp explains, carefully and patiently.

Restaurant Music goes splendidly. Afterwards the Pizza Express manager is said to offer Fripp a regular spot. The next night Frippatronics fill a record shop basement. After the 'set' Fripp answers questions from the audience and tells the little group of Crimso freaks at the front where to get hold of the best Crimson material.

Within minutes of meeting Fripp it's obvious that a quick run-through of his musical career simply isn't on. Like Eno, the immediate and lasting impression is of coming into contact with a buzzy, hungry mind that savours anything and everything.

Frippatronics, it transpires, belongs to the category Eno's termed 'ambient music' - intelligent Muzak, if you like, that can either be listened to head-on, or, at the opposite extreme, used to give a room colour of the sort wallpaper can't provide, complement a mood, whatever. At the previous evening's restaurant performance, says Fripp, he deliberately avoided disturbing anyone, "anything that might verge on the cacophonous or even mildly disturbing.

"But I think some of it did. It seemed to me at times that people forgot that they were eating and needed to be reminded of the fact. So I'd give them a little jump now and then, just to wake people up." The British visit is only part of a global tour of "offices, restaurants, and record shop basements." It was not an idea that met with immediate approval from his record company, Fripp admits.

"But I think that EG (his management company) gave up on the idea of 'Robert' a long time ago, in terms of having a person who ever really worked within the conventions of the established norm." Having Eno around helped, says Fripp, "to reinforce each other's sometimes 'peculiar' ways of operating."

Will he do any 'orthodox' performances, with a band, say? Songs like You Burn Me Up, I'm A Cigarette, I explain, in answer to Fripp's query as to what an 'orthodox' performance might involve.

Fripp has no current plans of that nature, says Fripp. However, he does know what he'd do if he ever does get the itch to play in a group context again. "Get the musicians together, rehearse for six weeks so that a common music could be discovered between the people involved. Do that, rather than going in with a pre-conceived notion of the music that this band will write.

"And then at the point, when one has decided a rough repertoire, go into a club in a major centre - in New York it would be Max's Kansas City, in London The Marquee perhaps - and play every night. And rather than kill the musicians by travelling, one would kill the musicians by playing! It seems to me a far more sensible way of proceeding - all their energy will then be available for playing. The responsibility then will be on the audience to get to the event."

Impossible? "The business will change," states Fripp with conviction.

"What happens then, of course, is that this get to be the established trend. Once there's a precedent, which is the most difficult, then a number of other people do it and then finally the business adopts this as the way of promoting artists.

"So, in seven years' time - if this works out - Fripp and Eno would have to play Madison Square Gardens. To validate the idea of playing in large spaces. That would be the logical conclusion.

"But in practice, of course, one remains fluid, and never denies oneself the possibility of a different kind of performance. Although," he proviso's, "because of the prevailing 'conventional wisdom', more energy has to go into this other stream at the moment in order to get it working."

What happens if you're playing Frippatronics and feel the urge for the kind of expression you'd get from a rock guitar?

"I always felt, in terms of the so-called 'The Heavy Metal'," commences Fripp, "where one is trying to attack the audience on a visceral level, that often it was far more effective to produce tension by purely musical means - certain dissonances, combined with the volume, could do far more than with a straight forward root fifth ocatave, than the traditional YAG-AG-AG-GA-GA-GA-GA-GEH-GEH-GEH-GEH-GEH!" (Rough transcription of Fripp singing HM attack riff) "Which is so commonplace now that it doesn't create tension, however loud. But if you went to the root fifth flat ninth, it would still be sufficiently acrid and abrasive to have impact."

It's possible, Fripp admits, that Frippatronics performances are "only an excuse to get the people together in the place.

"See, I don't know if Frippatronics is good or bad, from a purely musical point of view. It really seems rather irrelevant that one has to develop a different way of approaching that situation. There is obviously responsibility on the audience, because there's very little doing in the way of tricks to snare the audience."

Is Frippatronics necessarily a solo performance art?

"Because musically it's often so dense that the range covered is akin to a small chamber ensemble. By the time you've had the thirtieth generation coming in, there's quite a thick layer. Which doesn't always provide room for other instruments.

"In the field of Applied Frippatronics, it's not something really which can exist outside of a recording studio. Pure Frippatronics can, but Applied - on Here Comes The Flood where there's twenty-nine separate loops I did at home, edited, spliced, notated and then transferred onto the song in the studio. The middle of I May Not Have Had Enough Of Me But I've Had Enough Of You is Applied Frippatronics, the fluttering of wings in the background there. That takes a lot of work and is specifically designed to allow for other instruments. But it's not a spontaneous situation."

Exposure was, Fripp reveals, once known as Music For Sport, which title now applies to the album's second side. "And there's a number of different ways of presenting that. One is to say that initially I was approached by a friend with a view to providing music for the NBC Wide World Of Sport, which shows on Saturday afternoon television in America. And I sent him a whole number of Frippatronics events, basically water music that would've been appropriate for swimming.

"That's not the only sport to which it refers. There are a number of personal sports that Eno and myself have researched, and we've found this kind of music very fitting."

For example?

"Entertaining at home? Something like that? In fact, it was while entertaining at home that the Frippatronics tapes - which I've had for quite a while - I was simply playing them, and the response of the person who visited me was so strong that I decided to release the album."

Isn't there an endless source of inspiration for the 'ambient' composer? Music For Opening Cans, Music For Headaches, Music For Poodles, Cutting Your Toe-Nails To...?

"Frippatronics carry on, as it were? Yes, it does seem so. Part of this is to help Eno to generate and supply a large catalogue (Music For Catalogues?) of Ambient Music to a 'muzak' firm. There are several firms, aside from Muzak Inc. that supply background music. So instead of going to all the trouble of setting up your own company, one could simply lease out tapes to an existing company. But that would need a fairly large catalogue. So I'm very happy that four months of playing Frippatronics around the world could, at a very conservative estimate, generate enough material for fifty or sixty albums. Assuming one is very, very choosy about the quality of material, it would be difficult to find that you didn't have a dozen superb albums. I just don't have the time to listen back to all the Frippatronics that are done.

"Suddenly one discovers there are just ten seconds that generate a lovely mood. And one could simply cut that segment out, put it on a loop and develop a whole new fresh Frippatronicised situation purely from those ten seconds. You could feed the Frippatronics back into the Frippatronics as a second step. Or transfer it to 24-track and solo over the top of it, or treat it in different ways. The possibilities are quite endless."

'Guitar Mechanics' is yet another item on the production line. A Frippatutor? Robert explains:

'Guitar Mechanics' works in two distinct ways. The first is to develop the musculature of the left hand, then the right hand, and then co-ordination between the two hands. It has to do with the figure exercises and in a sense its arithmetical. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with music, it has only to do with learning to walk in terms of being a guitar-player.

"The second part of it is: since having learned to walk, one needs to walk somewhere, presumably. And then there should be a vocabulary. So, instead of presenting music in two or three general modes or scales, maybe five or six, what I'm doing is to develop a system of modes and extensions of synthetic scales.

"In addition to the normal major scales, of which there are seven modes, you have the harmonic minor - seven scales there; melodic minor - seven scales there.

"Blues scale - seven scales there or, depending on whether it's a septatonic or heptatonic system, you might have eight scales there. Then you have maybe seventeen or eighteen reasonably well-known synthetic scales, some of which are seven and some are eight-note systems. All the modes there. Quite apart from becoming involved in at least four generally accepted pentatonic scales, with modes on those.

"And you find you have something like a hundred and seventy, hundred and eighty scales. Quite apart from all the different ways one can deal and work within scales. Whether, for example, you proceed in thirds or in fourth; whether you examine the harmonic structure and some of the chords within these modified scales. Quite beautiful, you'd never discover them in any other way than by getting into synthetic scale formation.

"So instead of showing a few words, it's a question of: Here is the dictionary. Now pick words for yourself that you like. Or, since we've been using the metaphors of walking and talking: Here's the map of the world. Walk where you like."