Q: If you have a difference of opinion, how do you resolve the issue?
What I would say is this: if anyone is working together, for example within a group context, or within a business context… The key to this is, do we share the same aim? If we share the same aim, the possible is always possible and often, the impossible is possible, too. However, if we are working together and we don’t share the same aim, there is going to be problems.
David and Robert share the same aims. You can go to DGM and see the DGM principles of ethical business which we share.
Let’s move on to another situation: King Crimson. Robert’s first principle of King Crimson is, the music comes first.
Secondly, within the context of the group, the interests of the group come first, that is, ahead of the personal subjective interests of the members of the group.
So, the music comes first, the group comes first. What do you do if you’re working in a band with a person who thinks they are more important than everything else? How do you resolve that one?
Here is another context, within a group of four people, one thinks the are more important than everyone else, the other thinks is all about them and they are directing how the band plays. They the sun within the Crimson solar system and the other players are planets in the orbit that they are directing. This is is a four piece and the are two contrasting viewpoints. How do you deal with that?
This for me was day-to-day life in King Crimson. This is not imaginary stuff.
So, the answer to that one would be, in a group of four people, where the four people do not share the same aims, if they are articulated, what do you do? The answer is you keep playing music. You do not have a business meeting.
Robert Fripp
Saturday 24th. September, 2022
That Awful Man & His Very Nice Manager Tour 2022
Swyer Theater, Albany