Former Rollins Band guitarist Chris Haskett once went as far as to claim that Crimson's music was "one of the highpoints of Western Civilization." Band founder Henry Rollins has often made the comparison between "Sabbath heavy" and "Crimson heavy" (suggesting that albums like Red relied more on musical tension and an underlying darkness than the theatrical tactics used by bands like Black Sabbath) when discussing music. Rollins has labelled Black Flag member Greg Ginn as the "Robert Fripp of the punk generation" due to his constant practice on tour with Black Flag and his dedication to running SST Records. With [new bassist] Melvin Gibbs, later material such as "Plague" or "Nightsweat" have taken on a darker edge, summoning up the ghosts of Crimson's mid-1970s work. As Haskett shows, The Rollins Band is the Crimson of the 1990s - both in music and attitude.

When discussing Gibbs, Haskett made an important point about changing musicians that also applies to each Crimson incarnation: "He served as a catalyst - the band became funkier, jazzier - people assume the change occurred because of the introduction of one element, but there was change all round. Henry now writes differently, I play differently than I did with [former bassist] Andrew Weiss. Melvin comes out of a quasi jazz, experimental, avant-garde tradition, so there is also a change in musical space that is left - I might have eight bars to play a solo instead of just one, so people think that you're playing differently when you've played the same you have all along."

"For me, Crimson is best represented by Lark's Tongues In Aspic, Starless & Bible Black (a lot of which is live) and Red. On those albums the band was heavy, young, fresh and energetic; mainly playing tonalities (minor seconds, flatted fifths) and textures that nobody else--except perhaps the Mahavishnu Orchestra were playing. What makes them one of best rock bands of all time that they were brave enough to just walk out onstage and jam. It really made an impression on me - the attitude of 'OK, we jam after this bit of the song,' - that's real courage. They made music that was thematic, developing certain patterns from scratch.

"To pull that off you need to have an understanding of what making music really is - its the difference between reading a poem onstage and making one up yourself. You have to recognise it when it happens, capture that rare moment.

"You become an ensemble, listening to each-other and the music coming out of you and around you. It's a team relationship - the challenge is to listen to others. The ability to merge yourself into an ensemble means that you have to open yourself up to the other musicians and hear the totality of the group. Henry says its 99% of the challenge. You tap into something and become merely an ear-hole through which the music appears. I'm not Transcendentalist, but that's a good description.

"When The Great Deceiver live set came out I really went insane and taped all the jams, because it captured that attitude perfectly, and by listening to the textures and tonalities, you can hear how Bruford, Wetton and Fripp interacted, and how the ensemble worked.

"If somebody walked up to The Rollins Band and told us to do a concert, but we couldn't play any songs, we'd shrug our shoulders and go 'Cool!' because that's one thing we're interested in. Most bands would say 'We don't know the progressions' or 'We can't do that' because they fail to recognise that real musicianship is more than technical knowledge.

"Fripp understands music as craft, its more than technical, and is an attitude to a certain degree. Devotion needs to be brought into it. I found the three Guitar Craft manifestoes and the various live recordings intriguing - a lot of what I expected. It tries to give people an understanding of those inner qualities, and once someone has been through that experience, they won't be the same person again."

"I didn't like the 1980s stuff much," Haskett admitted. "It was coming from a different direction, but Discipline and about half of Beat were awesome. I've only heard Thrak once, and its not a bad record - some of the tones are interesting. If they're now doing what they truly want, then that's admirable - more power to them!"

The Art of Collaboration and Self-Reinvention

Against this growing backdrop of critical acceptance, Fripp released the 1991 Frame By Frame and The Great Deceiver (1993) boxed sets, that included a comprehensive overview of the band and personal anecdotes.

The other members of the 1980s line-up had also achieved notable success - Tony Levin was touring with Peter Gabriel; Bill Bruford was involved with a Yes reunion and with his own jazz-fusion band Earthworks; whilst Adrian Belew had gathered accolades as an experimental guitarist and had a successful solo career, as well as working on lucrative projects such as Nine Inch Nail's The Downward Spiral (1994) and The Fragile (1999).

Fripp's first signs of returning to active duty were collaborations with David Sylvian on The First Day (1993) and Tony Childs on The Woman's Boat (1994). Both projects also included Trey Gunn. Childs told me: "Fripp seemed invigorated by the sessions, and working with him and Gunn has been a highlight of my career so far. He is incredibly creative in the studio, able to lay down moving solos within a few takes. . . He has a terrific understanding of what you can do with studio technology . . . I noted that because he didn't have to take responsibility for the recording, he was able to relax and be far more emotive . . . I'm not surprised that he feels he has done his best work on other people's records. "

In 1994 Fripp toured with Sylvian and Gunn, and also played at a "Guitar Masters Series" held at the New York World Financial Center. In the wake of the 9-11 tragedy (11 September 2001), he released a free MP3 of the performance as a memorial for victims of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks.

Crimson Reformation II: Critical Acceptance, Double Trios, and New Equipment

The natural outcome of Fripp's collaborations was the formation of the Discipline Global Mobile recording label and the reformation of King Crimson in 1994. According to Fripp, "Crimson doesn't reform; it's more like a reincarnation." The line-up had gone through at least 6 changes since 1969, with Fripp being the only remaining founding member left. His vision of a new line-up "appeared in a flash whilst I was driving past our village church towards Salisbury one afternoon in the Autumn of 1992 . . . In Guitar Craft we call such a vision a 'point of seeing' . . . The picture of a double trio format appeared . . . It was not what I intended, expected or wanted, but I trusted (and trust) this point of seeing sufficiently to act upon it. Sometimes it takes time for ideas to come into effect with the risk that the available moment for good ideas is lost."