In the recent issue of Mojo Magazine (Feb 2013), Robert Fripp gave a rare, and possibly his last interview with their writer Mike Barnes. In quite a lengthy and typically matter of fact discussion about his his many years in music Fripp declared that he had retired from public performance and had no intention of releasing any more studio recordings.
The reason for his complete retraction is to have time to fight the ongoing battles with the record company's that owe him royalties, in particular with Universal Music.
This was first realised it seems back in 2007.
"At that point, Universal owed me more money than I would earn in two or three years on the road. I figured I had to end life as as a working player to deal with Universal. Creativity is of the heavens; Universal Music and the industry is subterranean. Appalling. But the industry knows this and they know that if an artist is going to engage directly with a record company on its own terms, their life as an artist is over, and mine was."
And that people is the reality of one of the countries most respected and inspirational musicians. A truly grim state of affairs after the man has been 40 years in music and produced some of the most cutting edge guitar playing of his generation, from the mercurial intensity of King Crimson's music, he went on to producing the blistering guitar sound on the David Bowie, 'Heroes' and 'Scary Monster's' albums, with Brian Eno on one of the first electronic ambient albums 'Pussyfootin' and further Fripp and Eno collaborations, also with Peter Hammll, Peter Gabriel, even Blondie, further reformations of King Crimson notably with Adrien Belew, and the most recent live recordings with Theo Travis (see post).
To think this may be the last time anyone ever hears Robert Fripp and his Frippertronic guitar is just a complete disgrace.
So thank you Universal Music for completely screwing up this man's deserved earnings and retiring one of the most important musicians in the UK. Culturally speaking it doesn't get any lower than this.
Let it be a sober warning to anyone who is starting out in music. Keep your music independent.
The last words on matters are from Fripp, "In strange and uncertain times, such as we're living through, sometimes a reasonable person might despair. But hope is unreasonable and love is greater than this. May we trust the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse. There, that's it".
Robert Fripp's own record label DGM can be found here.
Mojo magazine's web site is here.
Top picture of Robert with his modern day Frippertronic system in his studio.
Below clip is him demonstrating the early years of his Frippertronic guitar system back in 1979. Superb.
