What have you been watching over the summer? No prizes for guessing evening viewing habits in the Fripp/Willcox household, as this week, Robert and Toyah have tackled Limp Bizkit’s seminal 1999 nu-metal slam Nookie – one of the defining tracks of Woodstock ’99, documented by Netflix’s recent, and quite, quite excellent, Trainwreck documentary.
We’ve seen the King Crimson prog icon perform some unlikely material during the couple’s long-running Sunday Lunch series – not least classics from Rage Against the Machine, Queens of the Stone Age and Green Day – but nothing could quite prepare us for the sight of Fripp digging into Wes Borland’s pit-churning drop-tuned riffs while Toyah handles those love ’em or hate ’em Fred Durst lyrics.
And yes, that is a sideways, diamante-adorned baseball cap atop the head of one of the most innovative guitarists the instrument has ever known.
Rather than drop his customary Fernandes single-cuts down to Borland-approved tunings, Fripp turns to one of his signature double-locking Stealth models, which are built by the UK’s Crimson Guitars.
It’s hard to be sure what version of the guitar is being used during the clip, but we can tell you that the Stealth models tend to be fairly tricked out, with examples boasting a custom-made ball bearing tremolo system, Graph Tech Ghost piezo system with hexaphonic MIDI, plus Fripp’s beloved Fernandes Sustainer system and a set of bespoke pickups. You can check out all of that in the demo below.
In a recent exclusive interview with Guitarist magazine, Fripp described his approach to the instrument as “What would Hendrix sound like playing the Bartók String Quartets?” Good to know there’s room for a few nu-metal floor fillers within that philosophy.
