Fifty Shades of Crimson: Robert Fripp and King Crimson

by Pete Tomsett

Features interviews with Bill Bruford, Peter Giles, Gordon Haskell, Judy Dyble and more . . . In 1969 five young Englishmen calling themselves King Crimson altered the course of rock music, and despite a revolving-door lineup, the band has continued to innovate and inspire for more than fifty years. Fifty Shades of Crimson tells the story of this legendary band and of the unique English guitarist Robert Fripp it revolves around. With a deep passion for the music, author Pete Tomsett celebrates the achievements of Fripp and the array of incredible talent that has passed through Crimson, while not shying away from the many behind-the-scenes difficulties. Getting signed after supporting The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park, Crimson shot to fame with their debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King, becoming one of the most influential bands of that era and triggering the rise of prog rock. While going through countless personnel, including Greg Lake, Bill Bruford and John Wetton, rejecting Elton John and Bryan Ferry along the way, they have put out many highly acclaimed albums and to this day maintain a big international following. In their early years Fripp's band reached the same commercial heights as the likes of David Bowie and Pink Floyd. However, as an intellectual who despised the practices of the music business, Fripp preferred innovation over chasing big sales. In 1974 he withdrew from mainstream music, becoming involved with the Fourth Way philosophy, but was eventually tempted back and reformed Crimson to much acclaim in the eighties. As well as also having collaborations with Brian Eno, Andy Summers and others, Fripp has created new forms of instrumental music, run his own idiosyncratic guitar courses and set up an ethical record company. Both genius and 'a special sort of awkward', Fripp has never been afraid to take his music where no one has gone before, and Crimson have been a powerful influence on everyone from Genesis and Yes to Roxy Music and Radiohead, creating a legacy that will live on for decades more!

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction

424 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2021

Reviews

[Barry Hammond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though many people may not realize it because their output was spread out over such a period of time and with so many breaks and hiatus throughout, the band King Crimson was a major influence and source of much music from 1969 right through until today. Not only was guitarist and leader Robert Fripp a major influence with his solo and duet pairings with Brian Eno and others, session work with David Bowie, production of bands like The Roches and his Guitar Craft classes but most of the other musicians in the band went on to other pairings and combinations that spawned their own infuential groups. Bassist and vocalist Greg Lake went on to form Emmerson, Lake and Palmer, and other members went on to start or play in other infuential bands like Genesis, Foreigner, Camel, Bad Company, Uriah Heep, Roxy Music, UK and Asia. Many members became renowned session players or leaders in their own right, not least Adrian Belew, Tony Levin and Bill Bruford. Author Pete Tomsett follows the history of Fripp and the others in this well-researched volume which documents all the various threads and connections. Anyone with an interest in popular music will find it a fascinating read. - BH.

[Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent chronological biography of one of the most influential Progressive Rock bands of our times, King Crimson. This book follows the life of Crimson’s main character, Guitarist Robert Fripp, from the musician’s early days, to the establishment of KC in 1968 through 2019. The book stops there, but the band hasn’t, yet.

Visited are the 33 various musicians throughout the band’s lifetime and the many and varied line-ups that produced the 13 studio and/or live albums from their discography. Many of the original and ex-member’s careers are also followed in this great book.

If you want to read an almost complete historical documentation of this band and it’s varied members, Pete Tomsett has laid it all out here for you.

CT

[Robert Rabinowitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a big King Crimson fan and I enjoyed this a lot. There was a lot I didn't know and I appreciated the insight into the various interrelations between the band members and the other bands they came from or moved onto. Being a real music nerd I also appreciated the in depth look into the recordings of the studio albums. While I know Robert Fripp had played on a number of other artist's records I discovered there were even more that I hadn't known about.

[Jeremy Walton · Rating 4 out of 5]

KC and the sunshine band
I got this as a birthday present last year from my daughter, being a big fan of this band. It's a wide-ranging, more or less complete history of the band, including details of side projects and - more comprehensively - the bands that members went onto work with following their departure from KC, together with one-off appearances with other artists. These range from Charlie Drake - whose 1975 single "You Never Know" featured the astonishing line-up of Robert Fripp, Peter Gabriel, Sandy Denny, Percy Jones, Keith Tippett and Phil Collins [p135] - through Paul Simon and Pink Floyd (Tony Levin played on "One-Trick Pony" and "A Momentary Lapse Of Reason" respectively) to The Rembrandts, which included Pat Mastelotto when they recorded "I'll Be There For You", the theme from "Friends" (though I believe the author is mistaken in identifying Mastelotto as the drummer who gets bonked on the head by Courtney Cox in the video for the song [p261], since I don't think he really looks like him).

This sort of detail makes a book like this, and the author even gets to grips with a number of items in the enormous discography of Robert Fripp (who's contributed to more than 700 official releases) whilst also focussing on how "Exposure", his fascinating debut solo album, came into being. He's very good on the core history of the band, noting how McDonald and Sinfield were the primary architects of their extraordinary first album and that, when McDonald and Giles said they were going to leave less than a year after its release, Fripp offered to resign from the band instead (it's also suggested that, when Fripp announced the demise of the group following the recording of "Red" in 1974, it was partly to spite McDonald, who had just enthusiastically rejoined the band).

There are one or two lacunae - for example, the author doesn't identify the title of "Marine 475" on "THRAK" as being derived from the name of a Lloyd's insurance syndicate which suffered heavy losses that were passed onto its investors, including EG, Fripp's management company. And I was surprised to see no reference at all to the work of Sid Smith, whose "In The Court of King Crimson" looks like the definitive history of the band; there's no reference to him in the index, nor to his book in the bibliography (which has space for four books about David Bowie, and two about English Civil War soldier Prince Rupert, who - probably - is the inspiration for a couple of sections in KC's 1971 sidelong track "Lizard").

The writing is pretty good for a book of this type, modulo something about "the general difficulty of expressing profound religious belief in the face of developing scientific knowledge" [p288], which looks too much like a throwaway remark to shed any light on a profoundly complex subject that's beyond the scope of the book. The author also seems to think that exclamation marks are a good way of indicating surprise or emphasis and I found the way in which references were cited (collected together at the end of a - usually lengthy - paragraph) to be unhelpful and misleading. Despite these cavils, I enjoyed reading this book, and would recommend it to other fans of the band (anyone who isn't would be justified in wondering what all the fuss was about).

[Wdmoor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never been a huge King Crimson fan. While their first album blew me away, their second album In the Wake of Poseidon lacked the ferocity and sheer chutzpah of the first and I drifted away. I enjoyed the album Red, but too often over the years King Crimson sounded like machine gears grinding together at high volume. But Robert Fripp has always been an interesting musician. I love his collaborations with Brian Eno and Andy Summers and it was a delight finding out that Fripp and Summers were childhood chums who studied at the same music shop.

These kinds of details are lovingly explored in Fifty Shades of Crimson. A huge number of musicians have passed through King Crimson and many are still active today. KC has 13 studio albums and almost 30 live and compilation albums. Robert Fripp alone has page after page in 50 Shades of Crimson of solo releases and guest appearances with Peter Gabriel, Blondie, Brian Eno, David Bowie, Talking Heads...the list goes on and on.

No one is neutral about Robert Fripp. His fellow musicians either love him or hate him and it makes for lively reading in this very good book. Recommended for lover of prog, English music and general and everything King Crimson

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

A merely decent history of King Crimson, from the boyhood of Robert Fripp (as the only constant member) to the COVID era when the band – by now a purely touring act – was unable to put on concerts. The book had the bad luck of being released just before band members felt that it was time for King Crimson to call it a day.

Tomsett walks us through the constant lineup changes, the process of making the band’s studio albums, and ultimately Crimson’s transition to a legacy touring act. While we do get plenty of biographical detail on Fripp’s life both with the band and during long years when KC was dormant, Tomsett provides little detail on how the music itself came to be created. Moreover, his book takes on the task of also describing the careers of various band members after they left King Crimson, which is of rather minor interest, and objectionable when the account of KC itself feels slight.

There are also some infelicities in the editing and proofreading. Sid Smith’s In the Court of King Crimson offers more detail on the band’s recorded output (including bootlegs) while also feeling rather amateur – what a shame that a band of this calibre still doesn’t seem to have one solidly produced survey of its entire career.

[Davidp · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found the book a bit juvenile at first (and it needs some copyediting in places); but then really got into the overall approach of following up the Crimson "family" over the years, and gained an appreciation of their reinventions and creativity. Here's a playlist of many of the tracks recommended in the book: https://www.deezer.com/playlist/14728...

[Per-Olof · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great companion to the books of Sid Smith and Eric Tamm.

[Víctor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro con la historia de King Crimson contada cronológicamente, no esperes un ángulo demasiado original. Si no eres fan mejor olvídalo… pero en ese sentido cumple con creces.

A mí me gusta más que al autor la formación de los 80. De hecho, pondría Three of a Perfect Pair o Discipline bastante alto en mi lista de favoritos… aunque sin duda los tres mejores álbumes para mí están hechos entre el 69 y el 74: Red (por contundencia rockera, creatividad, casi ausencia de relleno y por tener Starless, la mejor canción de todos los tiempos) In the Court of the Crimson King (por importancia y por su extraña e irrepetible belleza) y Larks Tongues in Aspic (Un pelín por debajo pero también excelente)

Creo que los únicos discos que no me acaban de gustar son Beat (el más flojo de la trilogía ochentera) y Construkction of Light (pocas ideas y producción industrial chatarrera que no convence… mucho mejor el siguiente -y último de todos- Power to Believe)

Por no ponerme a hablar de los álbumes en directo que en ocasiones, a diferencia de lo que suele ocurrir, superan con creces las versiones de estudio. Valgan Absent Lovers, The Night Watch y VROOOM como muestra.

De los vídeos que hace Robert Fripp con su mujer Toyah Willcox en YouTube… no comment. Debe ser humor inglés.

Pues eso, el típico libro de música para fans.