“Robin opened up the case, and there was a 1957 Fender Stratocaster. He said, ‘Do you like it?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘Take it’”: Robert Fripp on that one time Robin Trower gave him a highly coveted Strat – and why he never ended up using it

Robert Fripp is a Gibson (and Fernandes) aficionado through and through. However, the King Crimson guitarist did have an albeit very brief brush with Strats at one point in 1975.

“At the Reading Festival, Robin Trower said to me, ‘Do you have a Fender?’” he tells Guitar World in a new interview.

“I said, ‘No.’ And then, Robin opened up the case, and there was a 1957 Fender Stratocaster. He said, ‘Do you like it?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘Take it.’ Remarkably generous, isn't it?”

However, despite appreciating the gift, the guitar had to be stowed away. “It didn't fit,” Fripp says matter-of-factly.

“With an instrument, we put it on, we move inside the instrument, and the instrument becomes an extension of the body."

Fast forward 30-odd years, and Trower recalled that he had given one of his highly coveted late-’50s Strats to Fripp.

Fripp continues, “One day – and Robin and I are still friends – probably in the noughties, Robin said to me, ‘Do you still have that Fender?’ I said, ‘Yes. It's lovely, but I don't play it.’

“And so, I took it back to Robin and gave it back to him! He's such a generous player and man. And still, may I say, playing very well!” He adds complementarily.

In May, Fripp revealed he had recently suffered a heart attack and was recovering from two emergency surgeries.

Guitar World's upcoming interview with Robert Fripp will be published in the coming weeks.