There’s no doubt that Jimi Hendrix was the best guitarist ever. If you ask any musician who doesn’t have a plan, they’ll agree. His career was sadly cut short, but he had Mozart-like skills on the six-string that could not be copied. If he likes your band and respects you as a musician, that’s pretty cool.
His amazing uniqueness was part of what made him so brilliant. His models and inspirations were harder to figure out than most because he had a very unique style that was based on feeling. He said that Bob Dylan’s work was so good that it was beyond inspiration. He also liked The Beatles and Muddy Waters. But who did he love and try to be like?
Robert Fripp, the guitarist for King Crimson, was asked if it was true that Jimi Hendrix shook his left hand during a Q&A event for Patricia Fripp’s documentary record Compelling Stories: The Inside Secrets. “Yes, he did,” Fripp said, trying to play it down before telling the story of how the two great guitar masters met.
“The only time I met Jimi Hendrix was when [King] Crimson played at The Revolution Club in Mayfair, London, in 1969. It was the first time I sat down,” Fripp said. “I have always been a sitting guitarist,” David Bowie, who played guitar all the time, said. “But you couldn’t sit down in a rock band.”
Greg Lake, the lead singer of the band, reportedly yelled, “You can’t sit down; you look like a mushroom!” when they decided to break the rules of rock and roll style. After some thought, Fripp said, “I believe that in many cultures the mushroom is a sign of fertility.”
King Crimson had only been together for a few months at this point in their sound. Fripp had just turned 23 years old. Even so, their virtuosic skill and unique new sound had made a lot of people in the music business very excited. In June 2002, Fripp became the famous seated player. This was a few months before their important prog debut album came out in October.
In the crowd that night, the best guitarist of all time was wearing all white. His arm was in a sling because he wasn’t able to play for a while. Fripp told Hendrix that he looked like one of the most “luminous men” he had ever met when they met after the show. When you think about how often he worked with David Bowie, Jimi is a truly brilliant person. If you want to get close to my heart, shake my left hand,” Hendrix told a humble Fripp.
That was the gold-plated punchline to Fripp’s story for a while, and it was pretty much the best compliment any player could hope to get. Hendrix had a unique style. When he saw other people’s abilities, it was like Lewis Hamilton complimenting you on your parallel parking. He was so innovative and skilled to the highest level. But that’s not the end of the story.
After a long time, Fripp ran into Michael Giles’s sister-in-law in a shop. Giles was King Crimson’s first drummer. She was there the important night that Hendrix shook Fripp’s hand, and by chance, she was sitting next to Jimi at the table. She probably confused Fripp so much with what she told him that night. He had to sit down if she ever caught him standing accidentally. She told Fripp, “He was going crazy and yelling, ‘THIS IS THE BEST GROUP IN THE WORLD!‘” She said he cried out this several times over the loud music.
“In all due modesty,” Fripp says to end the story. “That’s one of the best business cards that any working musician could ever show.” And I’m sure that everyone who likes guitar music would 100% agree with that. Remember that the next time you see him on YouTube with his wife Toyah Willcox singing a sexy version of “Fight for Your Right” in his kitchen.
Hendrix and Fripp may have been very different performers, but their uniqueness is what holds them together. “Fripp’s contributions to the David Bowie albums are singular,” says Fripp’s business card from Brian Eno. As a unique musician, he doesn’t do “sessions” in the standard sense. When people work with him, it’s not just because he’s a great player, but also because his imagination is so rich and original.
Eno went on to say, “He can take a piece of music in a very different direction, and he did that several times on these albums.”
“Epiphanies” were what Pete Townshend called Hendrix’s music, but Fripp was also playing colorful trips that not many people had heard before. His guitar playing seemed to come from his roving mind and not much else. Fripp was using music by Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, and other modern musicians to make a technicolor prog-rock sound. This was different from all the other rockers on the counterculture circuit. This is part of the reason why his mysterious sound couldn’t be confirmed.
This could be why Hendrix liked King Crimson so much. In the end, he lived in the mansion where the German Baroque musician George Frideric Handel had once lived. Handel was one of his heroes. Hendrix tried his hand at turning Handel’s classical music into rock music. He thought that good music would always be great.
Because of this, some of the best musicians today choose to avoid the rigidities of their genre and instead look for any inspiration that fits. What Miles Davis said is true: “Good music is good music no matter what kind of music it is.” As stars, Hendrix and Fripp used their power to support that message. They created some of the best “good music” that anyone has ever magically created.
These bands played rock music, but Crimson and The Experience were also like rock ‘n’ roll symphonies in their way. In light of this, Frank Zappa always hoped to pair Hendrix with someone who could read music and turn his ideas into songs for a classical orchestra. However, that never happened. Thankfully, enough great songs did come out that we don’t need to moan too much about that.
