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Robert Fripp hails this classic nu-metal riff as “astonishing”
Hint: it’s a song from the rocker’s Sunday Lunch series.
Image: Steve Thorne / Getty Images
There are guitar riffs, and then there are guitar riffs that even King Crimson mastermind Robert Fripp deems “truly astonishing”.
The latter, as Fripp reveals to Guitar World, is none other than Blind by nu-metal pioneers Korn, a song he covered last year on his popular Sunday Lunch series.
The guitarist — who’s perhaps better known more recently for his shenanigans as one half of Toyah and Robert — told the publication that he heard Korn for the first time when they chose to cover Blind, and that he was “really impressed” by the band’s guitarists James “Munky” Shaffer and Brian “Head” Welch.
“They’re heavily into seven-strings and alternative tunings,” Fripp says, before circling back to the song Blind, which he describes as “such an amazing riff.”
“It’s truly astonishing how the two guitars interact with each other,” he says. “Doing it as a single guitar tuned to E, I hope they forgive me, but I gave it the best shot I could possibly give it from a place of respect.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Fripp also spoke about his experience with seven-string guitars, saying, “When I worked with Steve Vai on G3 for the first time in 1997, I was actually the ‘G4’ – I would be doing the play-on music rather than get up as one of the three shredders. Steve was probably the first mainstream person to use a seven-string, with the Ibanez that was made for him. I didn’t have one, so Fernandes made me one.”
“But with all my work in King Crimson and Guitar Craft, I didn’t get around to using it. Then it went into Crimson storage in Seattle and it didn’t get shipped back here until a few months ago, then Sidney [Fripp’s mystery student] borrowed it for a while.”
While he didn’t manage to use the axe on his Blind cover, Fripp says that he “found some time to get more hands-on” with the guitar and “wondered what tuning [he’d] use”.
“I figured it would be best to go with C pentatonic with a top A. I don’t like a B on the bass. I don’t like B as a note… it’s unsound,” he explains. “If I tune low, it has to be A, which is probably closer to what Slipknot might use.”