Top 22 Robert Fripp Quotes

I’m not really interested in music. Music is just a means of creating a magical state.

However, in modern conceptual frameworks there is a more sophisticated view. I would say that the act of music exists in several worlds simultaneously.

If an apprentice does not hear what a master hears, is then that quality not present in the music? Yes and no. In the world in which the apprentice lives no.

I couldn’t concentrate on music. So I made the choice to give up my career as a musician in the frontline to deal with the business.

Being a professional musician doesn’t mean you spend 12 hours a day playing music. It means you spend up to 12 hours a day taking care of business, dealing with litigation, with the various characters who‘ve stolen your interests, or fending off hostile lawsuits from former members of the band.

To me, Bill‘s musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.

What is necessary is possible, what we want is expensive. What is unnecessary is unlikely.

The spoken form is in fact a very restrained representation of what is possible in the musical language.

And if you are playing in several meters at once, there has to be a – not a rigid – but there definitely has to be a reference to a common pulse in the band.

Then certainly for a musician timing becomes something that is immediately accessible as a concept, because it’s a necessity in ones everyday performance.

A mistake is always forgivable, rarely excusable and always unacceptable.

My life has improved so much since I stopped doing interviews.

The perception of the audience is the interesting part. If the audience doesn’t hear what is going on, is it going on or not?

The quality of artistry is the capacity to assume innocence at will, the quality of experiencing innocence as if for the first time.

Linguistic philosophers continue to argue that probably music is not a language, that is in the philosophical debate. Another point of view is to say that music is a very profound language.

In terms of an identity, an identity reflects an individuality, by definition. And, if there is a quality present, it is recognizable and it can be named. If you can’t name it, it means you don’t recognize it.

Even within the band, if I cannot manage to persuade the members of what I see to be the next course of action, how do you expect the group to deal with the expectations of thousands of people. It is not possible.

There are no mistakes, save one: the failure to learn from a mistake.

Michael Giles the first drummer of King Crimson, never agreed to the name King Crimson. But then, if you’d knew Michael, you would know he didn’t agree to the album cover either. So maybe Michael didn’t agree to the point of definition with many things.

Music can be transformative, utterly transformative. The act of music is utterly transformative.

If you are playing repertoire material, you’re stuck. There’s not huge amounts you can do.

I recommend my students not to be professional unless they really have to be. I tell them, ‘If you love music, sell Hoovers or be a plumber. Do something useful with your life.’