Louder AAA
In 1984, Robert Fripp dissolved the then-current lineup of King Crimson after three albums. Discipline, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair might have been well-received, but the ever-restless Fripp felt that the quartet – completed by Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford, and Tony Levin – had fulfilled its original artistic purpose.
Besides, he wasn't happy, later telling Prog magazine that recording of the third album had been "the most awful record-making experience of my life, and one I would never choose to repeat."
The following year, Fripp released the 20-minute Network EP. He undertook a tour of UK record shops, including a stop at Rough Trade in West London, where he discussed – among other things – his recordings with Police guitarist Andy Summers, the abandoned album he worked on with Brian Eno and Scott Walker, and his sporting exploits. And, most peculiarly, he was the focus of a documentary made by BBC South.
Robert Fripp: New York – Wimborne, which has recently resurfaced online, was broadcast on September 3, 1985. The film, presented by late BBC DJ Anne Nightingale as a BBC2 Late Night in Concert film, follows Fripp as he attends a variety of events, including a marketing conference at Polydor Records in London, where he presents Three Of A Perfect Pair to the assembled marketeers.
"It's time that King Crimson extended itself," Fripp tells them. "We would like a new audience, so that we can get away from the expectations of our reliable audience. New music, new audience. This is what you can do for us."
The film also spends some leisurely time with Fripp in his hometown, Wimborne in Dorset, a place he describes as the "centre of the universe". It's where Fripp was given his first guitar, a cheap Manguin Frere acoustic, in 1957. It's where he made his first public appearance, playing second violin in the Kathleen Gartell Corfe Mullen School of Music Junior Orchestra, in 1959. And it's where, in 1961, he formed his first band, The Ravens.
In the Wimborne footage, Fripp visits a family gravestone, enjoys afternoon tea with his mother, and watches neighbourhood band Sports Day rehearse in their front room. He also offers advice to a young band called Social Science during a record signing at Square Records, a store that's been trading on Wimborne High Street since 1974.
"If you want to be successful in music in England, you have to live in London," says Fripp. "I'm very sorry to say that you cannot do it from Wimborne. You have to go and live in London for seven years. Resign yourself to it. They are not going to come to you. Even trips on the river or tea at the Yew Tree Cafe will not seduce the industry to come here."
Asked if Social Science should send demo tapes to record companies, Fripp doesn't hold back.
"It'll do nothing at all," he advises. "10,000 tapes a week arrive. Don't send a tape. Take a tape. Put a face on the name. You'll still be rejected 99 times out of 100, but nevertheless, go there with it. And it'll take time."
It's not known if Social Science moved to the capital, but it appears that they never released anything, so it must be assumed they failed to heed the great man's advice. And so Robert Fripp remains Wimborne's greatest musical export, although stoner metal pioneers Electric Wizard and folk-rock icon Al Stewart might beg to differ.
"We used to take the bus together when he was 15, and I actually took 10 guitar lessons from him," Stewart told Prog in 2021. "He taught me all these jazz chords that I never used again in my life."
