Unlikely characters

GP — With computers and synthesizers available to help you create music without an instrument and its technique, what attracts you to the guitar?

RF – It depends on what one’s work is. I was tone deaf and had no sense of rhythm when I began playing the guitar, and I’ve pondered that for many years. The answer I finally came up with was that music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls on unlikely characters to give it voice. That’s one answer. Another is that working with the guitar is part of work. And I recognize that I simply continue to work with it.

GP – Do you view it primarily as a tool?

RF – Yes, a tool for living. Some people make music their god. I don’t. But music is a very remarkable opportunity. It’s a tangible way of dealing with the intangible. It’s a practical, down to earth way of developing a relationship with the ineffable. Now, most people involved in music have experienced at least once what happens music comes alive. It’s as if one is living for the first time. And it’s almost money for jam, that by developing a relationship with music, it becomes available to the musician all the time. When I was staying with a friend in New York in July 1981, I leapt from the sofa. I understood how it was that music came into the life of a musician; like a friend. Always present and always available, but never pushy, in a sense. But always there and available. As a working musician, as a professional musician, the way in which I worked changed because of that insight. Instead of rushing around looking for other bright ideas – Robert is going to create some music – it would be truer to say that the music creates the musician than the musician creates the music. The quality of music is always present.

– Robert Fripp, interview