I think I was actually in Wimborne, Robert Fripp's home in both childhood and part of his adulthood, when I dropped into a newsagent and saw in the NME that Fripp was appearing in the Rough Trade shop later that week. This would have been on the 16th or 17th July 1985, and I'd just deposited my Live Aid donation in Wimborne post office. Happily, our holiday was over by the end of the week, so I was able to head up to Talbot Road, arriving after Fripp had started (I think it was about 5pm), which meant I had to crane my head through the door into the packed shop from out on the street. Fripp was high-mindedly deconstructing the separation between rock performer and audience by interspersing five-minute solo improvisations with Q&A sessions. The majority of questions were ungraciously focused on other celebs: "What's it like to work with Peter Gabriel?" A: He's very polite and gentle, and if you ask him to do something he doesn't want to do, he won't refuse, he will just find it very difficult to do — "Is it true that Jimi Hendrix came backstage to praise King Crimson?" Answer involving extended discourse on right-handedness and left-handedness, delivered in the trademark soft Dorset burr ("if you were to ask me what hand I hold a pen with, I would tell you… And if you were to ask me which foot I kicked with when playing for Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, I would tell you… However, this may be to impute to you questions that you do not wish to ask.) — all because Hendrix had his right arm in a cast at the time, so legend has it he invited Robert to "Shake my left hand, man: it's closer to my heart". But between these responses, Fripp outlined the plans he had to set up his Guitar Craft classes for players or would-be players determined to rebuild and extend their mastery of the instrument. He explained he was doing this in America and not the UK, because Americans had a burning commitment, a passion and a persistence that he felt was missing on this side of the Atlantic. Cue several protests from the audience that this sweeping generalisation plainly did not apply to them.
Twenty four years later and, having last year abandoned an attempt to create some kind of research institution to carry forward Guitar Craft in the face of red tape from the Charities Commission, Fripp seems to be hinting that he may bring the whole Guitar Craft chapter to a close.
But this CD is, I think, the first recorded fruit of the Guitar Craft, released in 1986 and bought by me very soon after. Like so many Fripp-related albums, I find it a frustrating listen: moments of gorgeous beauty interspersed with lengthy pieces that feel like technical exercises. So Guitar Craft Theme II: Aspiration is lovely (even if it reminds me strongly of a Brian Eno piece — I think maybe one of the Sparrowfalls from Music for Films?), but is then followed by All or Nothing I, which seems very 'thin' musically.
Another question Robert was asked at the Rough Trade shop concerned what music he was listening to at that time. One of the things he mentioned was Balinese gamelan recordings, and that certainly had an effect on purchases like this, which I made a few weeks later.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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