(Credits: Raph Pour-Hashemi)
Tue 11 November 2025 19:30, UK
While most people tend to get more cantankerous as they age, it seems to be the case that Robert Fripp has done this in reverse, living out his most irascible period early on and mellowing with age.
Now perhaps best known for dressing up in the kitchen with his wife, Toyah Willcox, and choosing to perform outlandish and sickeningly sexually-charged covers of well-known pop songs, this is far from the trajectory that most would have predicted the po-faced King Crimson bandleader to have taken in his later years, considering how difficult many of his former bandmates have suggested he was to deal with in his prime.
Forever demanding more than the musicians around him were capable of, and testing them to their limits, his belligerent attitude and staunch perfectionism made him one of the most feared performers in the progressive rock scene during the 1970s. While this ultimately helped King Crimson write some of the best music in the genre, and even within the wider rock world, a lot of people would probably describe Fripp as the biggest taskmaster they’ve ever worked alongside, and that, despite the success they garnered with the band, he was a nightmarish individual to collaborate with.
However, it’s not just his own bandmates who were on the receiving end of his ire, and being the contrarian he was known to be, he would frequently hold others to the same high standards, admonishing those who didn’t meet his expectations when it came to pushing the boundaries of rock music. It’s all very well having this stance in your own band and wanting the very best from them, but to berate others who weren’t quite up to speed with making adventurous and expansive records might be a touch too far.
One of the artists for whom a large portion of his displeasure was reserved was none other than blues legend Eric Clapton, who while setting the world alight with his guitar playing, did nothing to impress the stoic Fripp. In fact, he was so aggrieved by the lack of invention in his musicianship and the fact that he only seemed to continue to peddle the same primitive blues riffs and soloing that he lashed out at the British icon in a 2025 interview with Guitar Player.
“Clapton I think is mostly quite banal,” he revealed to the publication, although he did acknowledge that he “did some exciting things earlier in his life with Mayall.”
He then continued to unleash his most fiery takes on the musician and his other exploits, stating, “I saw Cream live once and I thought they were quite awful. Clapton’s work since, I think, has been excessively tedious.”
While this derision came in more recent times and is more reflective of his former self, the fact that Fripp has proven himself to be a much more light-hearted individual in his senior years goes to show that the dislike he has reserved for Clapton is something that has stuck with him for decades, and is something that he still can’t hold himself back from professing. Goodness knows just how condemning his comments on Clapton would have been in the ‘70s.
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