Robert Fripp has shut down then introduced again King Crimson on plenty of events through the years. Whereas many thought the band ended for good in 2021, the revelation {that a} new album is underway in 2025 suggests it is perhaps occurring once more. In 2016 Prog explored one of many Fripp’s most notable reinventions – the formation of The League Of Gents, which resulted in Crimson’s exceptional Beat period of the 80s.
It’s Might 1980. Ex-King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp, ex-XTC organist Barry Andrews, bassist Sara Lee and drummer Johnny Toobad, collectively often known as The League Of Gents, have completed performing as what Fripp calls a “new wave instrumental dance band.”
Enjoying small golf equipment with tiny dressing rooms, as they’ve been, means venues crowded with well-wishers, these seeking time and – with a grim regularity – males cornering Fripp to have interaction him in fervent discussions of philosophical points.
Drawn, maybe, because of Fripp’s very public abdication from King Crimson in 1974 so as to go on a religious sabbatical, Andrews recollects a typical state of affairs of many such aftershows: “There have been a whole lot of boring fuckers within the dressing room; all very earnest, geeky blokes. It even received to Robert – who was single on the time and up for some motion – that as an alternative of basking within the oestro-waves of well-deserved post-show girly adulation, he was being cornered by yet one more sweaty bloke asking for some religious or musical steering.
“Johnny stated that if Fripp needed to eliminate these ‘seekers after data,’ he may strive pretending to promote them heroin. Gamely, Robert did precisely that – however his efficiency as a drug supplier was lower than convincing: ‘Would you want to purchase some smack? It’s actually good things!’ However it actually did the trick.”
Any account of Fripp’s route from retirement in 1974 to the re-emergence of a brand new incarnation of Crimson in 1981 will normally embrace a few notable stopovers. His cautious return to the music business included supplying the hovering guitar line on the title monitor of David Bowie’s “Heroes” in 1977.
That yr he went again on the highway as a part of Peter Gabriel’s touring band, beneath the pseudonym Dusty Rhodes, performing behind a curtain. With a producer’s credit score on Gabriel’s second album and Daryl Corridor’s Sacred Songs, he relocated to New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, which resulted in appearances with Blondie and others on the emergent new wave scene.
Very a lot relishing the function of an Englishman in New York, in 1978 he launched a private manifesto that mapped out his profession for the subsequent few years. Entitled The Drive To 1981, it was, he says: “a marketing campaign on three ranges. Firstly within the market, however not ruled by the values of {the marketplace}; secondly, as a method of inspecting and presenting plenty of concepts that are near my coronary heart; thirdly, as a private self-discipline.”
The ‘variety of concepts’ near his coronary heart included his first solo album, Publicity (1979). This was adopted by God Save The Queen/Underneath Heavy Manners (1980), and, maybe most importantly within the context of what was to come back subsequent, The League Of Gents, shaped in March 1980.
When contemplating the reformation of King Crimson in 1981, the significance of The League – as they have been recognized – is usually ignored. It’s not arduous to know why, in a manner. Their quick, four-to-the-floor instrumental tracks, with titles like Inductive Resonance, Dislocated, Thrang Thrang Gozinbulx and Ooh! Mister Fripp contained skewed, quirky melodies, animated with a punkish tempo. Of their dwell units, with about an hour’s price of fabric, these unusual riffs have been mixed with Fripp’s extraordinary out-there signature guitar, forming a piledriving avant-pop – dance music with a beneficiant twist of dissonance.
With “an emphasis on spirit relatively than competence,” as Fripp succinctly put it, The League Of Gents toured the golf equipment and faculties of Europe, Canada and america for seven months, totting up a complete of 77 exhibits. They appeared about as far faraway from virtuosic ruminations of Crimson because it was doable to get. Their one and solely album, self-titled and posthumously launched, didn’t adequately convey the band’s dance-orientated velocity. But The League have been the testing floor for a lot of the musical vocabulary that Fripp would come to refine on 1981’s Self-discipline.
Andrews doesn’t recall an excessive amount of about his first encounter with Fripp through the making of Publicity – his consideration was diverted elsewhere. “I primarily keep in mind Peter Hammill, being subsequent to overdub after me, necking half a bottle of brandy earlier than going within the vocal sales space. He stated it was to ‘silence the acutely aware/essential a part of my thoughts,’ or phrases to that impact. I assumed that gave the impression of a rationale that is perhaps helpful to me sooner or later.”
Andrews subsequent heard from Fripp, residing as soon as once more in London, when the guitarist pushed a observe beneath the door of “a squalid squat” in Kings Cross, containing an invite to type a band. “I have to say, I relatively favored the concept of him doing that in his good swimsuit!” With Lee and Toobad recruited from punk outfit Child And The Black Spots, they’d what to Andrews felt like a lower than promising first rehearsal. Adjourning to the pub after a couple of numbers, Andrews recalled Fripp was in a sanguine temper.
“Robert stated he needed to revolutionise rock’n’roll with the folks round this desk. I wasn’t too positive if it was going to be doable, given what I’d simply heard. However hey, it meant going to remain in a visitor home in Dorset, and so they have been about to throw us out of the squat.”
We have been forged in Robert’s film: ‘He was a 70s guitar hero, they have been a bunch of North London chancers. Now they should go on the highway…’
Barry Andrews
With Andrews’ frenetic keyboards performing because the glue between Fripp and the rhythm part, he was content material to let the guitarist direct proceedings. “I believe the deadly flaw within the League Of Gents was that it was put collectively round Robert’s musical proclivities, and me and The Toobads, as they have been recognized, have been forged as if in Robert’s film. ‘He was a 70s guitar hero, they have been a bunch of North London chancers. Now they should go on the highway…’ We have been inspired to fake it was an actual band. I didn’t actually see the purpose of that. Robert was the guitar star, we have been his backing band. What was the issue?”
If there was an issue, it was that Fripp was actively contemplating a return to what he termed ‘first division’ music making. In his mannequin there existed three divisions. His solo Frippertronics basked within the third, and anxious analysis and growth; representing, he stated, “attention-grabbing concepts and civilised way of life, however you gained’t earn a dwelling.” Above that was the second division, which ”“will earn you a dwelling if you happen to graft, and you will get professionally respectable, however you gained’t change the world.”
Throughout its tenure, The League hovered precariously between the 2. A number of items of their repertoire bristled with the scorching, cyclical guitar music Fripp was itching to take additional. Throughout the warmth of a gig, it was frequent for them to hurtle from dissonant and explosive energies right down to simplistic and ethereal moods. Their capability to reconcile these contrasting parts had a blunt, unrefined effectivity. Although generally missing subtlety, the trade of time signatures whereas melodic heavy lifting alternated between the back and front of the group, was essential to the event of Fripp’s subsequent step.
As they undertook a remaining string of UK dates in November 1980, he was by now considering a return to that first division, and with it, entry to the perfect musicians, higher budgets and a a lot wider viewers. When The League Of Gents performed their remaining present on the London Faculty Of Economics on November 29, Andrews sensed the band had run its course.
He stated he was sick of ‘enjoying with people who find themselves drunk.’ Truthful sufficient, truly. And a little bit of a reduction all spherical
Barry Andrews
“I believe I used to be feeling extra like a part of some sort of Gurdjieffian social experiment gone improper – and kinda patronised, if I’m sincere. We’d received collectively to do some tunes and produce them again to Robert, in a half-baked try and attempt to be greater than lab rats. After I rang Robert to inform him, he stated, ‘I’m placing the band on maintain.’ One in all his causes was that he was sick of ‘enjoying with people who find themselves drunk.’ That was us advised. Truthful sufficient, truly. And a little bit of a reduction all spherical.”
Though cautious of returning to the insanity of the music enterprise that had induced him to stop in 1974, Fripp was prepared to take action – however this time beneath his personal phrases. He famous: “You’re on a tightrope. Both manner, it’s a must to leap. In the event you fall, you lose your well being, sanity and sometimes your soul. However you simply would possibly fly away. So there’s your selection.”
The drive to 1981, now accomplished, had taken him to his remaining vacation spot: Beat-era King Crimson.