King Crimson's Robert Fripp Quits Music Biz

The prog legend says that it's a "a joyless exercise in futility"

Published 7th Sep 2012

In a new and extremely rare interview with the Financial Times, of which he is a reader, Fripp has revealed that he's stopped making music for now because he has become disillusioned with the business side of it.

He points to a long running dispute with Universal as one of the reasons he's stopping "I couldn’t concentrate on music,” he says. "So I made the choice to give up my career as a musician in the frontline to deal with the business.”

He says that the focus on money has changed the way that bands and record labels interact. "The greater the success, the greater the pressure to keep repeating yourself,” he says, adding that the links between the record labels and the bands has "moved from a symbiotic relationship to a parasitic relationship”.

For now Fripp is to continue working on his excellent King Crimson remasters which continue this autumn with an enormous reissue of Lark's Tongue In Aspic. The new box set edition of the album is a remarkable 13CD/DVD set containing eight CDs of live material.

You can read the full interview HERE