4. Fripp & Eno(No Pussyfooting)
Your playing on Electronique Guerilla and Fripp’s on (No Pussyfooting) have a lot in common – who influenced whom?
Heldon One [Electronique Guerilla] and (No Pussyfooting) were released in England and France the same month. I had heard the tapes of Robert Fripp in 1972 and 73 that King Crimson used to play at the time between sets and before and after their concerts. And that surely influenced me.
The year before, I had met the people at EG [who released Eno, Bryan Ferry and others through Island Records]. Muff Winwood was very enthusiastic about releasing Heldon. He said, "We’ll do it, but we are full right now, so can you wait a year?” That’s normal with a release schedule but when you are 22, you are in such a hurry. So instead of waiting, I set up the label Disjuncta to release my music.
I went to the Fripp & Eno concerts in Paris that was recorded in 1975. Those two nights are one of the more important things in my life, they meant a lot to me for a lot of reasons. Another time, I took Gilles Deleuze to see Fripp play. Deleuze wrote the most important description on music that has ever been written, in just four or five pages. In real life, he didn’t have records, he didn’t listen to music. Yet he gave us the best theory of music, because he’s a genius. I took him to see a concert of Robert doing Frippertronics at the Olympia in Paris, in a small room in the basement. I really wanted Deleuze to see it and afterwards, I was so happy to get them to meet. They had a brief exchange, but Gilles doesn’t speak English. He said to me "Is he very good?". I said yes, but he had no idea. He didn’t really know anything about music, he had just three albums.
I’ve been very friendly with Robert Fripp since 1974 and we still attend each other’s concerts.
