.
Fans
A series of Questions for Robert from a Pesty Questionier VII
PQ: You’ve made lots of comments, for decades, about fan relationships. Why?
R: The main aim is to understand my life as a working player.
PQ: How does that relate to fans?
R: To understand any situation, activity, or undertaking, you have to see the whole picture of the operation. For the working player, the four primary areas to investigate are music, musicians, audiences and the industry. Then, look at the mechanics of how they relate to each other, how they work together, and how they work individually within their own limited spheres of interest.
For example, you have the relationship – music, musicians, audience. What happens when that relationship is mediated by commerce? Does money changing hands alter how musicians and audients engage with each other? Does the relationship between musicians alter when money is involved? And, does the music change when money becomes part of playing music?
If we’re looking at the tetrad of the Music System, we get the dyads…
Music – Musician
Music – Audient
Music – Industry
Musician - Audient
Audient – Industry
Industry - Musician
The triads…
Music – Musician - Audient
Music – Musician – Industry
Music – Audient - Industry
Musician – Audient – Industry
If we apply triadic analysis, each of the four triads have six ways of relating to each other. That is, six kinds of relationship within each triad.
PQ: That’s a bit intellectual.
R: Kinda. Each of the triads have a kind of feel, a kind of flavour. This comes from experience. It’s impossible to get a handle on them unless we move out of the head, get our hands dirty in the “real” world. When we are in “real” world situations, the confusion in situations become clearer, we get a better sense of the mechanics when things bang together.
The relationships get more sophisticated when we look at the different qualities of each of the terms. For example, with a musician…
Genius
Professional Master Musician
Happy Gigster
The same with qualities and degrees of audients, music, and business persons. Such as managers. The history of some groups and artists are inexplicable unless you know the management and business history.
When we take all these factors into account, and there is no final answer to any of it IMO, the mechanics of our subject of interest become clearer.
PQ: Alright. Back to fans. Surely fans have the right to be recognised and acknowledged?
R: Complex question. In their role as audients, honourably addressing the responsibilities and obligations that go with being Mother to the Music, the performer honours the role of audient, respecting the person accepting and discharging that role, knowing and embracing the impersonal yet intimate nature of coming-together within the performance as an act of music, or act of musicking acknowledging Christopher Small’s use of the verb.
The Act of Music is the Music.
PQ: That is a bit complex.
R: The difficulties begin when the roles, filled by performer and audient, move outside the defined performance space. Then the roles move from the impersonal to the individual and become personal.
PQ: What’s wrong with that?
R: If that’s your question, you might equally ask - what’s right with that? The form of your question makes it difficult for me to answer the question within your question, which you didn’t ask.
PQ: OK. So what do you think my “inner question” is?
R: “Surely the common humanity between fans and the subject of their interest is worthy of being recognised and acknowledged?”.
PQ: If I did ask that question, how would you answer?
R: Yes.
PQ:That’s straightforward.
R: When the question is straightforward, a little space opens between the question and its answer, so less barrier to an answer being given.
PQ: Well, running with this. You have a terrible reputation for how you deal with fans. Have you ever put yourself out to meet the fans? To “recognise and acknowledge their common humanity with you?”.
R: Quick answer, yes. This was a personal aim for the Frippertronics touring, in Europe and North America, of 1979. A very demanding four months, and commensurately rewarding. A little historical background…
In 1969 I felt that audients and players, punters and performers, we were all on the same side. This was the last gasp of the counter culture, of 1960s idealism, which didn’t quite make it into 1970. We were all there to support Music, knowing that “Music can change the world”. What surprised me then, with King Crimson’s sudden success, was the degree of hostility that KC seemed to trigger. Today, I take it as a commonplace that any positive generates a negative reaction of equal force. The practical concern then moves to: how do we bring the two opposing forces together? Perhaps for another day.
The huge money-flow success of the record and music industry between 1968-78 attracted the attention of ambitious business persons. In the 1980s ambitious business persons went into property. (As an aside: Mr. SG Alder used the EG Music Group’s success 1969-76 to move into property 1977-78, until the collapse of the property market in the Autumn of 1988 compounded his disastrous problems as a Lloyd’s Name).
In the 1970s, records and stadium rock were growth areas. Performances moved out of clubs, into theatres, into stadia. The physical distancing of punters and performers went with that. Physical distancing, physical barriers, security staff to “protect” the performers - I didn’t feel the “we’re on the same side” vibe anymore.
And good to bear in mind that not every performer was looking to explore the “common humanity” between audients and performers. Some just wanted to be stars. In which case, the distance in attitude widened beyond the purely physical. “Common” humanity became a little more uncommon. Well, that’s my experience on the ground.
The 1979 Frippertronics tour was set up to down barriers between audients and, in this case, Fripp as performer. Record stores, small performance places, and some offices in record companies. The assumption within this: we do have a common humanity to be mutually recognised, accepted and trusted. Trusted, for example, in terms of personal interactions, where politeness is a given. EG Management didn’t like this approach. Mark Fenwick managed ELP within the EG Office, then Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry, and Mr. Fenwick’s response to the proposed small, mobile and (aspiring to) intelligent unit touring, was negative.
Mark Fenwick: They’ll see the emperor has no clothes!
RF: The emperor has no clothes.
Mr. Fenwick’s approach to management distanced performer from audient, to maintain / develop the mystique of the artist / star. My intention was otherwise.
PQ: How did that work for you?
R: Quick answer: very well, particularly in the US and Canada.
PQ: Why North America?
R: Firstly, language. Secondly, a more unified culture/s and national border/s. Europe has a lot of borders, many cultures. Thirdly, the US had more public spaces, such as record stores and clubs. Europe had more industry spaces, less public spaces, available to me.
And it helped that performances were mostly free. In record stores it was - come along, see a free presentation, music and Q&A, buy an Exposure album. Or not.
PQ: When punters buy tickets, the atmosphere changes?
R: Yes. My experience of engaging personally with audients changed in 1980.
PQ: Why?
R: How and why did the world change? Lotsa answers to that one. Politically, Reagan became the US president and Margaret Thatcher was the British prime minister. I am not commenting on their broader policies including the economic, other than to say something like: there was a shift in the wider cultural imperative.
Immediately, my experience face-to-face, was that members of the public made demands on me. Regardless of whatever I felt, fan rights were more important, more deserving, had greater weight than me if I declined to engage. With autography, photography, singing things, being allowed to sit in an auditorium and watch / listen to other bands on the bill with interruption. Increasingly the justification used – we give you money! I quote an actual situation in the Rockefeller Center, NYC, shouted down and along the ground floor corridor, January 1982.
PQ: What changed?
R: This was a process underway, where a market economy became a market society.
It is an illegitimate construal that buying a ticket confers rights, even rights over the person of the performer, outside the performance and performance space. Essentially, it is defining “our common humanity” in material terms.
Where there is mutual agreement, fine. Like the development of VIP eventing. This is now a key part of any touring group’s financial planning. Streaming has siphoned off what would once have been a royalty stream, so live work is now the primary income stream for most working players.
At King Crimson shows, David Singleton created the Royal Package. David and a member of the band would speak to the VIP Eventers and answer questions. Usually I’d welcome the RP participants, which I enjoyed a lot. VIP events are a defined and consensual professional undertaking that extends beyond the defined audient / performer roles. Not quite impersonal, not quite personal. A liminal zone.
PQ: Why “illegitimate construal”? Fans have bought your stuff, gone to shows.
R: I give my dentist money. He doesn’t expect me to hang with him, he doesn’t expect to hang with me, just because we’re up to speed on my dental hygiene. Although if I asked politely, he’d probably autograph my false tooth. But, since he didn’t actually make it, maybe not.
PQ: But fans are people. Don’t they have the right to be recognised and acknowledged?
R: Along the lines of, acknowledging our common humanity?
PQ: Yes.
R: Alright. At certain point, where we are present to ourself we become present to another. In the conventional formula: I am Thee and Thee is me. There is mutual recognition. And may we note: when we are present to ourselves there is no demand for recognition / acknowledgement by another. It is sufficient to be present. Firstly, to myself. Secondly, to be present to another. Thirdly, to recognise ourselves within each other. I see you. You see me. We are One. All is good.
PQ: You’re on a roll. So where does fan demand for recognition come from?
R: It’s their dragon that wants to be tickled.
https://www.dgmlive.com/diaries/Robert%20Fripp/2025-02-26-rf-diary
PQ: Back to St. George’s pet.
R: I doubt that our pal George would look on his dragon as a pet, more a continual reminder that if he fell asleep on his horse, Georgie’s backside would get well-toasted with fiery breath.
PQ: You see fans as dragons?
R: No. But when I get pitched – you’re a creepy and failed person because you won’t sign my stuff when I gave you my hard-earned pay and I only wanted to say hello and while I’m only saying hello put my arm around you for a selfie and a squeeze, there’s nothing wrong with that anyway, it’s only a small thing it’s not like I’m doing anything wrong, in any case I have the right to be recognised and acknowledged by you so why are you walking backwards and away from me, I feed you and pay your household bills – the part of that good person demanding my limited attention is their dragon. In a word, their egotism.
In Sufi practice, acknowledging a person’s dragon would be considered unethical.
PQ: How so?
R: Western ethics differentiates between right and wrong. Sufi ethical practice differentiates between the real and the imaginary / illusory, the “higher” and “lower” parts of our common humanity.
Attention is a power. When I give my attention to a person, it strengthens that person. More accurately, it strengthens that part of the person which receives my attention. Fan demand for recognition doesn’t allow for me to choose, to give attention or not. So for me to give their dragon attention, is to strengthen their egotism. In any practice, this is the inverse of the aim: to free ourselves to serve what is highest in us. As is said - what is highest in us, is not far from what is highest in us all. And what is highest in us all, is not far from what is Highest.
PQ: That’s a bit cosmic.
R: Alright. A practical example from the life of a working player. The musician serves the Music. Would you agree?
PQ: Yeah. That sounds right.
R: Where the musician uses music to attract attention to themself, things begin to get out of tune, out of time. If that musician becomes popular, with simpering adulants and accompanying fame, if the musician allows themselves to believe the crap, the channel for Music to work through them gets blocked. If the musician is full of themselves, there’s little room for Music. Music has to work way harder to get into our world.
Conventionally expressed, we have to get out of the way. Even, to get out of our own way.
PQ: How do you deal with success?
R: There’s nothing like humiliation to galvanise the attention.
Music from the 1979 Frippertronics touring...
