{"id":410569,"date":"2026-05-04T01:32:41","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T01:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/410569\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T01:32:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T01:32:41","slug":"the-night-in-1969-when-jimi-hendrix-met-the-best-group-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/410569\/","title":{"rendered":"The night in 1969 when Jimi Hendrix met \u201cthe best group in the world\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jimi<\/p>\n

Credit: Bent Rej<\/p>\n

Jimi Hendrix<\/a> is the greatest guitarist of all time, and there\u2019s simply no two ways around that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ask any guitarist without an agenda, and they\u2019ll agree. In his tragically shortened career, he produced Mozart-like talent on the six-string that defied imitation, so if he likes your band and respects you as a musician, that is kind of a big deal. It\u2019s like Mr Heinz complimenting your ketchup.<\/p>\n

Part of Hendrix\u2019s brilliance was his stunning singularity. This entirely individualistic style, playing off feel, meant that his influences and inspirations were more obfuscated than most. We know that he greatly admired The Beatles, dug Muddy Waters, and said that Bob Dylan\u2019s writing was so good<\/a> that it was beyond inspiration. But who did he truly love and try to channel?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, during a Q&A event as part of Patricia Fripp\u2019s Compelling Stories: The Inside Secrets documentary album, King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp was asked whether it was true that Jimi Hendrix shook his left hand. \u201cYes, he did,\u201d replied Fripp, trying his best to downplay it before spinning his story of the time when the paths of the two great guitar wizards crossed. As it happens, it is one of the most auspicious stories in all of rock history.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe single time I met Jimi Hendrix was at The Revolution Club in Mayfair (London) when [King] Crimson were playing in 1969, and it was the first time I sat down [not ever, he\u2019s just referring to the fact he plays on a stool],\u201d Fripp revealed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/a>Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy<\/p>\n

\u201cI have always been a seated guitarist,\u201d continued the squatted guitarist who even convinced David Bowie to allow him to drag a rather un-groovy pew onto the playground of the stage, \u201cBut to be in a rock group, you couldn\u2019t sit down.\u201d That didn\u2019t seem to bother Jimi, who had grown increasingly uncomfortable with his own imprisoning theatrics.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Fripp\u2019s decision to defy rock and roll styling standards was met acrimoniously by the band\u2019s frontman, Greg Lake, who apparently yelled, \u201cYou can\u2019t sit down; you look like a mushroom!\u201d To which Fripp replied: \u201c[It is my considered opinion] that the mushroom is considered a fertility symbol in many cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n

At this point in their career, King Crimson were only a matter of months into their infancy. Fripp had only just turned 23, in fact. Nonetheless, their virtuoso talent and innovative new sound had managed to stir up an excited following within the music industry. The night when Fripp became the eponymous seated musician was June 2nd, a few months before their seminal prog debut record<\/a> would be released in October.<\/p>\n

In the crowd that night, the greatest guitarist of all time was clad all in white, temporarily out of action, with his arm in a sling. After the gig, Hendrix approached Fripp, who described him as looking like one of the most \u201cluminous men\u201d he had ever met. Considering that he collaborated with David Bowie pretty prolifically, Jimi must\u2019ve been a bloody luminous man indeed. Hendrix said to a humble Fripp: \u201cHey, shake my left hand, man, it\u2019s closer to my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a while, that was the gilded punchline to Fripp\u2019s anecdote and, for all intents and purposes, the greatest accolade that any guitarist could wish to receive. Hendrix\u2019s style wasn\u2019t just original. His playing was so revolutionary and skilled to the utmost degree that when he recognised talent in others, it was like Lewis Hamilton complimenting you on your parallel parking. However, the story does not stop there. His praise got even more profound.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best group in the world\u201d<\/p>\n

Years later, Fripp bumped into the sister-in-law of King Crimson\u2019s first drummer, Michael Giles, in a bookstore. She was in attendance on the momentous night that Hendrix shook Fripp\u2019s hand, and, as fate would have it, she was sat on the table next to Jimi. What she revealed to Fripp about that evening probably bewildered him so much that he had to sit down if she caught him on a rare occasion when he happened to be standing. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe was jumping up and down,\u201d she told a smiling Fripp, shouting: \u201cTHIS IS THE BEST GROUP IN THE WORLD!\u2019\u201d She asserted that he bawled this several times over the booming stereo system throughout the night. He was so enthused, in fact, that his ailing arm seemed to heal itself. \u2018The best group in the world\u2019 rang in Fripp\u2019s ears in that fabled bookstore.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn all due modesty,\u201d Fripp concludes the story. \u201cThat is one of the best calling cards any working musician is ever likely to be able to present.\u201d And that is a notion that I\u2019m sure everyone who likes guitar music would certainly second. So, remember that next time you see him sat in his kitchen rattling off an erotic cover of \u2018Fight for Your Right\u2019 with his wife, Toyah Willcox, on YouTube.<\/p>\n

In truth, while Hendrix and Fripp might have been profoundly different in a performative sense, their singularity is a tie that binds. As Fripp\u2019s calling card from Brian Eno also states: \u201cFripp\u2019s contributions to the David Bowie albums are of a singular nature. He is a unique musician who doesn\u2019t do \u2018sessions\u2019 in the normal sense: when people work with him it is not only for his prodigious gifts as a player, but even more for his unusually fruitful and original imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eno, who has always held human innovation paramount, continued: \u201cHe has the ability to send a piece of music into a quite different direction, and indeed did so several times on these albums.\u201d That\u2019s the sort of spirit that Hendrix adored, even precluding him from early commercial success as he refused to play conventional blues. <\/p>\n

So, there\u2019s certainly some kinship there. In the words of Pete Townshend, Hendrix might have been offering up \u201cepiphanies\u201d, but Fripp was also throwing out colourful journeys that not many folks had ever heard before. His guitar playing was derivative of his own wandering muse and seemingly not a lot else. <\/p>\n

In truth, part of the reason people couldn\u2019t corroborate his mystical sound was that Fripp was borrowing from B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k, Igor Stravinsky and other modern composers to cunningly craft a technicolour prog-rock sound as opposed to all the other rockers on the counterculture circuit.<\/p>\n

This is maybe why Hendrix loved King Crimson so much<\/a>. After all, one of his heroes \u2013 and a man whose former home he eventually lived in \u2013 was the German-born Baroque composer George Frideric Handel. Hendrix dabbled in transposing Handel\u2019s classical work into rock himself. Great music is timeless, was his thoughts. <\/p>\n

Thus, some of the very best modern musicians abide by the formlessness of shunning usual genre tropes and favour simply seeking out any influence that connects. As Miles Davis once said, \u201cGood music is good no matter what kind of music it is.\u201d Hendrix and Fripp are stars who used their majesty to support that message with some of the best \u201cgood music\u201d anyone has ever alchemically conjured into creation. <\/p>\n

In both cases, it was rock by virtue of the instrumentation, but in their own way, Crimson and The Experience were rock \u2018n\u2019 roll orchestras. This is why Frank Zappa always wanted to pair Hendrix with someone who could read music and transpose his ideas into pieces for a classical orchestra\u2013sadly, that never came to fruition. Thankfully, enough amazing music did come to fruition not to bemoan that too much.<\/p>\n

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