There just wasn’t enough rehearsal time.Whether you like In the Court of the Crimson King or not (and you’ll need to if you buy the four-volume CD set which features four versions of the song), you can’t help admiring its energy and polished intensity. It is, however, despite selling extremely well – the cover designed by Bruce Godber, a roadie with no artistic training, was a big selling point – far from perfect Robert Fripp is a perfectionist. He gives his interview, in two parts, in a separate room in the Intercontinental. “This is the temporary headquarters of Discipline Global Mobile,” he says, as opposed to the lounge next door where Sinfield, Giles, Lake and McDonald are gathered.
Discipline Global Mobile is Fripp’s record company, aimed at producing avant-garde music of singular intensity without ripping off his artists. He has been in litigation with previous managers for the past six years and is only just rising above the legal maelstrom.”Time to make music again?”"I’m always trying to do that I had no natural talent to begin with I’m always learning.” Teaching, too. Fripp’s Guitar Craft, a fusion of summer school and medieval guild workshop, is legendary and never less than fully booked.Neat, polite, intense and disturbingly precise (a man who can remember the Sixties, and he was there), Fripp is a hero to many budding guitarists, a pretentious mystifier to others who just want to get on down and boogie He doesn’t mind what you think. “Is Epitaph, King Crimson’s music from 1969 worth re-releasing? That’s up to you.
What impresses me still is the way the power of the music was balanced by great control The musical life can be the door to excess We were pretty disciplined I called my next band Discipline I also like the fact that the music has an innocence. It was never cynical.”Fripp could never be accused of cynicism. If anything he seems far too sincere to have been involved in rock. It comes as no surprise that his next major appearance is Salisbury Cathedral during the first week of June.Salisbury is near home, HQ of Discipline Global Mobile The house is beautiful and used to belong to Cecil Beaton.
“My wife, Toyah [Wilcox], can’t be with us today,” says Fripp, “as she’s being photographed with Beaton, our rabbit, for a Sunday Times celebratory rabbit feature.”You can’t get cuter than that. Fripp, peering quizzically and accusingly through round-framed glasses, is an enigma in the world of contemporary music, but so was King Crimson in that one, remarkably successful year when the band looked set for great things, but split before it was out.As Peter Sinfield put it in the title song of Fripp’s intense four-volume CD collection:”Confusion will be my epitaphAs I crawl a cracked and broken pathIf we make it we can all sit back and laughBut I fear tomorrow I’ll be cryingYes, I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying.. “He needn’t have worried. There’s no crying at the Intercontinental, no hint of paranoia. Nerry a cat’s foot, much less an iron claw at the Intercontinental’s entrance doorn’Epitaph’ is released 14 April, on Discipline. Without the ruins, Luxor would be a provincial agricultural town of little importance. Foreigners have travelled down the Nile valley for centuries to excavate, study, rob and admire Egypt’s Pharaonic ruins The greatest concentration of these are around Luxor But, recently, the place had a taste of relative anonymity. In the first half of the Nineties, regional instability caused by the Gulf War, Islamic militants inside Egypt deliberately shooting tourists, and economic recession in Europe, combined to starve Egypt of tourism.
Cairo and Aswan are cities large and diverse enough to carry on much as usual without tourists For Luxor the effect was serious. Anyone who did visit Luxor during those difficult years was rewarded with a warm welcome, feeling genuinely appreciated as a cafe customer, passenger on a felucca or horse and carriage, or hotel guest. The Pharaonic temples and tombs were quiet and cost only a couple of pounds to visit. Sailing down the Nile was a truly romantic experience; Luxor was a pleasant destination for a week of winter sun.
But now it is definitely back in the business of mass tourism. The Egyptian authorities have been quick to cash in on the boom Entrance fees have doubled at most of the sites.
