Latest news with #Fripp
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Robert Fripp Recently Suffered Heart Attack and Underwent Two Emergency Surgeries
The post Robert Fripp Recently Suffered Heart Attack and Underwent Two Emergency Surgeries appeared first on Consequence. Robert Fripp recently suffered a heart attack and underwent two emergency surgeries in Italy. The legendary King Crimson guitarist detailed the experience alongside his wife, Toyah Willcox, in an installment of the couple's 'Upbeat Moments' YouTube series. The heart attack occurred as he was embarking on a flight to Italy last month to perform at an Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists event at Castione della Presolana in Bergamo. He was suffering from chest pains that he assumed to be acid reflux, but still decided to fly, arranging for an appointment with a doctor once he reached Italy. However, once he arrived in Bergamo, he was taken to a hospital to be tested before being admitted to intensive care, where he underwent two emergency surgeries. He was diagnosed as suffering from a trifurcated artery, and he had a pair of stents inserted during the two surgeries. Given the typically joyful nature Robert and Toyah's videos, the King Crimson founder managed to make light of the scary situation with some comic relief. 'Well here's the interesting bit,' said Fripp. 'I was in A&E [Accident and Emergency] not quite knowing what was going on other than I knew they were going to do something, and an orderly came along and shaved my balls!' Fripp, who turns 79 years old this Friday (May 16th), continued, 'Now the dear man, I really didn't wish his job on him at that point. Now this is the thing. So you're concerned with my heart, fine. What are you doing shaving my balls?' Editor's PickToyah said that the language barrier in Italy made it difficult to communicate with the medical staff, and at one point, Fripp mistakenly removed his clothing when he was asked what he wanted to eat. 'They were complex moments,' Fripp laughed. Thankfully everything else seems to have went well. Editor's PickWhile Toyah quipped that the couple are 'not allowed any nookie for a month,' as Fripp recovers over the next six to eight weeks, they will continue their famous 'Sunday Lunch' performance videos in the meantime. Fripp was also able to still direct the guitar show at Castione della Presolana a week after his surgeries. Below you can see the couple's video discussing Fripp's heart attack and surgeries. Popular Posts Drummer Chris Adler Opens Up on What Led to Firing from Lamb of God Stephen King's The Long Walk Movie Gets Long-Awaited Trailer: Watch Say It in Ghor: How Andor Brought a Brand New Language to Star Wars Metallica Perform "Enter Sandman" at Virginia Tech Stadium 25 Years After It Became School Tradition: Watch Jazz Pianist Matthew Shipp Derides André 3000's New Piano Project: "Complete and Utter Crap" Nicolas Cage Says He Is "Mistaken" for Nick Cave Almost Every Day Subscribe to Consequence's email digest and get the latest breaking news in music, film, and television, tour updates, access to exclusive giveaways, and more straight to your inbox.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Robert Fripp Suffered a Heart Attack After Thinking He Had Acid Reflux
Robert Fripp recently underwent two surgeries after suffering a heart attack he didn't even know he'd had. The King Crimson guitarist shared the story in a new video posted over the weekend alongside wife/collaborator, Toyah Wilcox. 'He had a heart attack two weeks ago,' Wilcox said in the clip. 'And you were in the right place, in the right time, and I am so grateful, because you've been through a lot.' More from Rolling Stone Robert Fripp's 1979 Cult Classic Album Has Never Been Played Live. Until Now Yes Drummer Bill Bruford Quit Music Over a Decade Ago. At 75, He's Back Behind the Kit Peter Sinfield, King Crimson's Original Lyricist and Key Collaborator, Dead at 80 Fripp then explained the surreal sequence of events. Last month, the musician said he'd been dealing with what he thought was acid reflux in the weeks leading up to a trip to Italy for a show. Having endured something similar a few years prior, Fripp didn't think much of it. But the day he flew to Italy, he said, he felt 'more discomfort.' While Fripp's team had already scheduled a doctor's visit, upon landing, they decided to take him to a cardiac hospital in Bergamo instead. While Fripp said he thought the doctors would prescribe him some acid reflux medication, they ultimately alerted him to some alarmingly high troponin levels in his blood, which can be a sign of a recent heart attack. Wilcox then said Fripp underwent 'five hours of surgery, intensive care, then a second surgery.' But the musician fixated on a totally different moment. 'I was in A&E [accident and emergency], not quite knowing what was going on, other than I knew they were going to do something. And an orderly came along and shaved my balls!' Fripp said with a laugh. 'The dear man, I really didn't wish his job on him at that point. Now this is the thing, you're concerned with my heart? Fine. What are you doing shaving my balls!' (Wilcox then sagely explained it was likely to rid his body of anything that could possibly harbor germs before undergoing heart surgery.) Fripp has since been able to return home to the U.K., and while he's currently on a few medications, he's on pace to recover well over the next couple months. Fripp ended the video by encouraging people who think they have heart burn or acid reflux to 'really look into it,' because 'it might be something more.' The musician also didn't seem to be letting the emergency surgeries get in the way of his music. Fripp noted that after being released from the hospital in Italy, he still managed to play his scheduled gig. 'You went to work,' Wilcox quipped, to which Fripp replied, 'No, dear, I went to play with my friends. And the performance in the church at in Castione della Presolana, it was stunning on the Saturday night. The audience were prepped with orchestral maneuvers, and it really was a magical event for me.' Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
The Guardian
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Jamie Muir obituary
None of the many former art students who enlivened the British rock scene in the 1960s and 70s brought with them a greater sense of anarchic spectacle than the percussionist Jamie Muir, whose stage equipment included not just drums and cymbals but steel chains, blood capsules, a bowl of pistachio shells and a bird whistle. Muir, who has died aged 79, was introduced to the public in late 1972 as a member of King Crimson. This was the third lineup convened by the group's leader, the guitarist Robert Fripp, under a name that had first made headlines in 1969 with an appearance at the Rolling Stones' free concert in Hyde Park, followed by the release of an incendiary and globally successful debut album. Fripp's new assemblage included the singer and bassist John Wetton, the young violinist David Cross, and a drummer, Bill Bruford, whom he had enticed away from Yes, another successful progressive rock group. In the six months Muir stayed with them, his presence changed the group's philosophy completely, loosening the notoriously strict guidelines imposed by Fripp and exploring the boundaries of improvisation. This was a shock not just for their audiences but for the musicians, too. Into Fripp's world of complex interlocking riffs in unorthodox time-signatures came a man in a bearskin bolero, orange loon pants, a waxed moustache, an infectious grin and an instinct for disruption, whose idea of a solo might involve emptying a sack of leaves over his kit. For Bruford, a schooled musician for whom the experience might easily have been discomfiting, Muir's presence – almost that of a performance artist – represented a liberation. 'He had a volcanic effect on me,' he remembered. But then, suddenly, on the eve of a tour of the UK, Europe and the US, he was gone. The group's management issued a statement claiming that his absence was caused by an injury suffered on stage. In fact Muir had returned to Scotland to spend several years as a Buddhist monk, the indulgences of his former life replaced by retreat and meditation. Later he returned to painting, to which he devoted the decades before his death. Born in Edinburgh, one of the four children of a solicitor, William Gray Muir, and his wife Elizabeth (nee Montgomery), he attended Gordonstoun school in Moray, where he encountered a younger pupil who would become King Charles III. That was followed by Edinburgh College of Art, where he studied painting while playing the trombone in jazz bands. In 1967, having dropped out of college and switched to drums, he joined a free-jazz group called the Assassination Weapon, who played in a pub with their own light show until attracting the attention of the police and losing the gig 'for inducing a drug-like atmosphere'. Moving to London, he took a job as a department store assistant while playing with various bands, including the poet/singer Pete Brown's Battered Ornaments, the jazz-rock band Sunship and the Afro-rock band Assegai. He also founded a short-lived free-improvisation group called Heavy African Envelope, two of whose members, the singer Christine Jeffrey and the electronicist Hugh Davies, would also join him, along with the saxophonist Evan Parker and the guitarist Derek Bailey, in the Music Improvisation Company, which made an album for the ECM label in 1970. That year he joined the saxophonist Don Weller in a four-piece rock band called Boris, whose appearance at the Marquee in London received an enthusiastic recommendation in Melody Maker. Intrigued by that review, and by a subsequent interview Muir gave to the paper, Fripp contacted him. After the two had played together informally, the drummer became a most unlikely recruit to the guitarist's new lineup. Their first full appearance was on a popular weekly German TV show called Beat Club Bremen, followed by a 27-date tour of the UK, where audiences were disconcerted to find that the only tune they recognised was 21st Century Schizoid Man, a favourite from the first album, itself withheld until the encores. When the band made a studio album, Larks' Tongues in Aspic, its title was taken from the phrase Muir produced in response to a request to describe the kind of music they were now playing. 'King Crimson was ideal for me because it was a rock band with more than three brain cells,' Muir said later. 'I felt completely at home.' Reviewers and audiences, once they had recovered from the initial shock, were largely enthusiastic. Nevertheless, after a gig at the Marquee his colleagues learned of his decision to leave not just the band but the world of music with immediate effect. He had been persuaded to lead a different life by reading Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda. 'I didn't feel happy about letting people down,' he said, 'but this was something I had to do or else it would have been a source of deep regret for the rest of my life.' His next few years were spent at the Samye Ling monastery near Eskdalemuir in Dumfries and Galloway. When Muir re-emerged in the early 80s there were occasional engagements with music, including a duo album, Dart Drug (1981), with Bailey, and the soundtrack to a film called Ghost Dance (1983). But painting became the priority, first in Islington, north London, and then at a permanent home near Penzance in Cornwall, although exhibiting his work held little interest for him. Parker remembers Muir asking him to sit for his portrait, and taking a long time over doing so, using a pencil to produce a work in a very detailed and painstaking hyper-realist style. When it was finished, Muir laid it on his kitchen floor over a sprinkling of leaves and rubbed the pencil across the paper to produce a frottage effect before picking it up, showing it to Parker, crumpling it into a ball and tossing it into a waste bin. He is survived by his brother, George, and a sister, Mary. Another brother, Andrew, predeceased him. Jamie (William James Graham) Muir, percussionist and painter, born 4 July 1945; died 17 February 2025
