Robert Fripp’s Quotes in Guitar Column

This came up in my Google Alerts for my brother Robert Fripp on Guitar Column.

Robert Fripp, more famously known as the guitarist of King Crimson, is a musical iconoclast. His philosophical approach to guitar playing and guitar education gives us much needed food for thought, far removed from the humdrum of just pickin’ and grinnin’..

“Music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls on unlikely characters to give it voice”
“Most people involved in music have experienced, at least once, what happens when music comes alive. It’s as if one is living for the first time”
“By developing a relationship with music, it becomes available to the musician all the time… like a friend”
“It would be truer to say that the music creates the musician, than the musician creates the music”
“I continue to develop my attention to be relaxed, to be in a place where music can more freely play the human instrument”
“The discipline of being a musician and the discipline of being a human being are exactly the same. There is no contradiction”
“I’m primarily a Gibson Les Paul player. A Strat is an entirely different instrument. It requires a different vocabulary, a different approach — a different way of living actually”
“Almost anyone can get a good sound out of an electric guitar. Not almost anyone can get a good sound out of an acoustic”
“Are we aware of what it means to be inside our left hand? If the little finger keeps pointing at the sky, it’s fairly obvious we have no relationship with our left hand”
“We should only put the fingers on the strings, and we never take them off — we release them. To take the fingers off is a separate command. The difference is very subtle”
“Within an orchestral context I severely doubt if members of the orchestra can hear each other. So it becomes critically important to follow the conductor.”
“How awful that the only person expressing himself is the composer, with the conductor as the chief of police and the musicians as sequencers”
“A good personality, even a strong personality is important to the performer. The personality, in a sense, is an organ through which we live our lives. But to attach any more importance to it than to another organ is silly”
“This may sound strange but for someone to flatter me doesn’t touch me, because it’s unreal”
“When I came to live in New York I had three rules: ride on public transport, do my own laundry, and do my own grocery shopping. I’m nervous about one’s life becoming distant by limousines and first-class travel”
“I have heard of some players that alter their tunings regularly in order to keep themselves fresh”

Robert Fripp speaking engagements

Robert Fripp spoken word CDs