Robert Fripp

United Kingdom, 1967–now

English guitarist from Wimborne, Dorset, and the constant of King Crimson through every one of its line-ups. His question to himself was what Hendrix would sound like playing the Bartok string quartets, and most of his career is an answer to it: cross-picked lines in odd metres, no vibrato, no blues phrasing. Frippertronics — two tape machines feeding each other — became the ambient work with Eno, and he has produced or played on records by Bowie, Talking Heads, Blondie and Peter Gabriel.

MusicRoots documents 7 artists who influenced Robert Fripp and 1 artist Robert Fripp influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.

Who influenced Robert Fripp?

• Béla Bartók — The half of the question he spent a career answering: what would Hendrix sound like playing the Bartok string quartets? The cross-picked lines in odd metres are Bartok's rhythmic language on an electric guitar.
• Jimi Hendrix — The other half. Fripp took the volume and the electricity and left the blues phrasing behind — which is why he sounds like nobody else who came out of 1967.
• Igor Stravinsky — The Rite of Spring, and the idea that a metre can be a weapon. Most of what King Crimson does with 5/4 and 7/8 starts here.
• Django Reinhardt — Where the picking comes from — a guitar line that moves like a horn rather than strumming behind a singer.
• Duke Ellington — Fripp played in a dance band before he played rock, and the habit of writing for an ensemble rather than for himself stayed.
• Charlie Parker — Named alongside Ellington in the same early listening — the speed and the phrasing rather than the harmony.
• Antonín Dvořák — The earliest of the classical names he gives, and the most conventional — the one that came before Bartok and Stravinsky took the tonality away.

Which artists did Robert Fripp influence?

• Robert Miles — One of the six he named, and one he went on to work with rather than only listen to.