May 16, 2023
Today is the birthday of guitarist Robert Fripp, and yesterday was the birthday of his frequent collaborator, the experimental composer and producer Brian Eno. It’s hard to measure how influential these two artists have been, not only to me but to generations of musicians and listeners. It would not be an exaggeration to say that their work changed my life, as much as anyone else in my personal pantheon of musical heroes.
I encountered Robert Fripp first, thanks to my high school friend, Kurt Ziegler. He and his two brothers lived with their mom and her sister, who were both British. One day Kurt and I were digging through his aunt’s record collection, and one album cover jumped out at me: a dramatic painting of a red and purple face with its mouth wide open in a scream and no title or artist printed on the front.
It was the first album by a British progressive rock band I had never heard of, King Crimson. Of course I liked the opening track, “21st Century Schizoid Man,” with its heavy riffs and distorted vocals. And there were some pretty ballads with flutes and mellotrons. But what really got my attention was the instrumental interlude on Side 2, after the song “Moonchild” (including “The Dream” and “The Illusion”). It was very abstract and sparse, with a lot of silence. I didn’t know what free improvisation was at the time, so I had no real point of reference for it. (I later learned that their percussionist, Jamie Muir, also played with free improvisers like Derek Bailey.) I can’t honestly say I liked it, much less understood it – it was utterly alien to me, and in stark contrast to the rock aspects of the rest of the album – but it made an impression precisely because it was so confusing. This was my introduction to “experimental” music, and suggested there might be more ways to think about music than I had realized. (I had somehow missed the Beatles’ “Revolution #9” up to that point.) My curiosity was piqued, and my ears were pried open.
My introduction to Brian Eno came several years later. My friends Arthur Baker and Joe Frankel were a couple years older than me and had gone off to college at UCSB, where they shared a dorm room. I went up to visit them during spring break, and found that their musical tastes had expanded considerably. I think this was largely due to Joe’s influence; he had become an Art major and was interested in the avant garde. During that week I was exposed to so much that was new to me, and it forever altered the course of my listening and ideas about music, and really my life: the Velvet Underground and solo albums by Lou Reed, John Cale, and Nico, the Modern Lovers, Patti Smith, Bowie, Roxy Music, Quiet Sun, Henry Cow, Hatfield & the North, Robert Wyatt, Matching Mole, Can, and a bunch of early punk records. The first thing they played for me by Eno was “Baby’s on Fire,” with its blistering Fripp guitar solo. Mind blown.
Not long after that I was digging through the crates at my favorite local used record shop, and came across “Evening Star,” the second album by Fripp & Eno as a duo project, which until then I didn’t know existed. I of course picked it up, expecting something like “Baby’s on Fire.” What I got instead was something very beautiful, quiet, mysterious, and hypnotic, with no vocals.
Again, I had no frame of reference for this – there was no such thing as “Ambient Music” yet – but I was instantly smitten, and this album served as a gateway to all kinds of music that would eventually become so important and influential to me.: Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, La Monte Young, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Pauline Oliveros, Robert Ashley, Meredith Monk, Fred Frith, Derek Bailey, Harold Budd, Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman, Cluster, Neu!, and on and on. All of which put my experience with that first King Crimson album in a much broader context that finally made sense.
Albums in my collection may come and go, but I have never once considered the option of not having this one. I may not listen to it so often these days, but when I do it still never fails to satisfy. And so for my One Song pick for these guys, I’d have to go with the title track.