You Are Allowed to Enjoy This...

Probably the single most important album in my record collection is “Exposure” by Robert Fripp, as it has been a very great influence on me personally and musically. I came to it via Peter Gabriel’s second album, which was produced by Fripp and has his hallmark guitar sound all over it. That album I found quite unique and referring back to the NME Encyclopaedia of Rock that used to be my favourite read in the school library, I discovered that this Bob Fripp bloke was everywhere on the rock musical landscape.

So further investigation was required and on one shopping trip to London with my school friends Ian and Fahim, we stopped off in the old Tower Records complex on Piccadilly Circus and that’s where I bought my first cassette copy of the album. On hearing it, it completely blew me away in a similar style that hearing my first Genesis album did (mind you, my first Genesis album was “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” so it was understandable that as an impressionable 15-year-old, I might be blown away). Firstly, there was the music: what were these sounds? I had not heard a guitar played like that before and by the instrumental “Breathless” track, I was hooked. This track alone is better than anything RF’s done with King Crimson bar Fracture – it has everything you could want and more – it’s heavy, it’s obtuse, it has depth.

The original cassette that started it all

And depth is an important part of this record. Not only do you have some strong musical statements being made, with Fripp creating a sort of subverted British punk new-wave laced with prog, there’s also the lyrical themes of alienation and vulnerability. You also have great vocal performances from Daryl Hall, Peter Hammill (again, this was my first introduction to Hammill), Peter Gabriel and Terre Roche. The cast list is also like a prog rock roll call with Brian Eno, Phil Collins and Tony Levin appearing. There’s also some blistering drumming from Narada Michael Walden who appears on that “Breathless” and in a weird act of synchronicity was scoring a top ten hit in the UK in 1988, the same time I first experienced this album. So there I was, working behind the record counter of my local Woolworths, pointing at this soppy soul single from a guy called Narada and then playing “Exposure” saying it’s the same guy. Oh what a hopeless little sprout I must have seemed.

So this album isn’t just about rock and roll songs, no – there’s also a weird autobiographical thread running through it with Fripp interspersing the songs with “indiscretions” or conversations he had recorded of his mother, neighbours arguing as in the blisteringly unpleasant “NY3”, as well as cod-philosopher JG Bennett spouting aphorisms that Fripp himself would later adopt as part of his own persona. “It is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering” and “If you have an unpleasant nature and dislike people, this is no obstacle to work” are two that spring instantly to mind and that I quite enjoy. Of course, you are all welcome to my own particular aphorism with which to amaze your friends: “State the bleeding obvious and people will think you are a genius”. So this creates a very strange and jarring listening experience, but for me it felt totally natural.

By the end of the record, you get Peter Gabriel performing a radically stripped down version (at the time) of his song “Here Comes the Flood” which leads into the very first solo appearance of Fripp’s Frippertronics performance committed to record. Now for those of you who aren’t in the know, Frippertronics is a system in which you use two reel-to-reel tape recorders to loop the live sound you’ve recorded and then dub further layers of sound over the top, to create dense or shimmering washes of sound. And in the play out of “Water Music II”, you hear Fripp demonstrating this system with aplomb creating a dense wave of sound that still fills me with emotion today. All me a soppy old sod, but there’s something about that song that always affects me.

So at seventeen, I had this record that I didn’t quite understand, but I knew spoke to me in volumes. It was very British in its outlook, yet it didn’t particularly sound British. But from that record I was cursed with following Fripp’s career and on from that I followed his solo antics and his on-off relationship with King Crimson. While “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic” comes close to equally “Exposure” none of the Crimson canon can equal that first and only true solo album from Fripp.

That was just my preamble of an introduction because now I have to give you a little potted history of the record before I can review this revised, “tarted-up” version. Now, in 1978, Robert Fripp produced Peter Gabriel’s second album and also worked with Daryl Hall on his “Sacred Songs” solo record. The intention of Fripp was to create a “MOR” (or Middle of the Road – I never understood that terminology as all of these recordings can be described as anything but MOR) Trilogy – with “Exposure” forming the cornerstone of the trinity. The idea was that Daryl Hall and Peter Gabriel would guest on Fripp’s solo recording and that there would be some overlap between the three records. Unfortunately, Daryl Hall’s manager Tommy Mottola didn’t like the professional relationship Hall and Fripp had. It was bad for business because Hall was a blue-eyed Philly Soul Boy and not some balls-out, geek rocker. What would the people think? And so Hall’s “Sacred Songs” album was locked away in the vault for three years and Fripp was forbidden to use all of the Hall recordings on his solo album.

Now hold that thought – Fripp had originally decided to call his solo album “The Last of the Great New York Heart-Throbs” and some promo copies of that LP slipped out with Hall doing the majority of the vocals. After the order from Mottola to stop using Hall was issued, Fripp scrambled back to the studio had radically redid his recording with Peter Hammill taking over Hall’s parts. And so the eventual 1979 release of “Exposure” was a bit different from how it was conceived originally.

With the advent of CD in 1982, a lot of record companies were eager to cash in on this phenomena and so it was only natural that Fripp would get the chance of reissuing “Exposure” on CD. However, Fripp saw this as an opportunity to clean up his record and make some changes. Some songs got a slight remix with Barry Andrew’s keyboards being dropped from “Disengage” and “Haaden Two” and both Hall’s and Hammill’s vocals were tweaked for this new 1983 edition, which was eventually released in 1985. Confused yet? You will be. So now you had a slightly different version to the LP edition from 1979 and this was a trend that Fripp continued with the CD reissue/abridgement of “The League of Gentleman/God Save the Queen/Under Heavy Manners”, which is probably the most radical hatchet job he did on his own music.

But I digress. To sum up, there are three versions of “Exposure” – the first featured Daryl Hall predominantly on vocal duties with a different track listing and was never actually given a commercial release, the second featured Peter Hammill replacing Hall’s vocals and was commercially released on LP and the third was a remix/remastering job which saw some elements of the album changed for the CD edition.

Now when I heard that there was going to be a 25th Anniversary release of this album and it was Robert Fripp’s intention to bring out a definitive statement of these recordings, I was very excited. Initial thoughts were that it would be a three-CD package with each of the versions represented and cleaned up for our aural enjoyment. But subsequently, it turned out that it would be just a two-CD affair with the first disc representing the 1979 LP edition and the second disc representing…well, that’s the mystery, because until I actually got my grubby mitts on a copy we didn’t know if Fripp was putting the 1985 version out or the “Heart-throb” version or what?

The copy I have is from Japan and comes in deluxe mini-LP packaging, featuring the album as a gatefold (though the original LP wasn’t, but this isn’t an issue) and there’s a second non-gatefold version of the packaging that comes with it, so you have two separate sleeves for the two CDs. How deluxe is that, eh? I have been spoilt! The artwork and design of both is excellent and are an accurate facsimile of the original album. My only minor niggle is that some politically correct bod has starred out the words “nigger” and “spic” from the lyric sheets, which I thought was a bit silly as those words were from a conversation Fripp had taped from an arguing family and were used in the real world, in real context. The CD also includes a nice booklet and a colour postcard emulating the one that was included in the original LP release.

Looks inconspicuous...

My goodness, it's packed with lovely stuff!

The first disc of the set is the 1979 edition, remastered and clean. I have only heard my LP version that I bought for a £1 at Sounds Familiar on Wood Street, Walthamstow, and that is crackly and a little quiet. The remastering is subtle – it sounds good and is powerful and punchy in the right places.

The second disc of the set is neither fish nor fowl – it is entitled “Exposure – Third Version” and is a new creation. It’s not the “Heath-Throb” edition nor the 1985 version, but a sort of bastard hybrid of the two. Yes, you get Hall’s restored vocals on “Disengage”, “Chicago” and the previously unheard “New York, New York, New York”, but you don’t get him singing “Mary” or “NYCNY” or “Exposure” – though two of those versions do appears tacked on the end of the disc as bonus tracks. I’m not sure what to make of the second disc at all. OK – there’s not much difference and the playlist is roughly the same, but throwing out the seminal “NY3” in favour of “New York, New York, New York” is baffling. But that’s Fripp’s decision.

Again, the remastering job is a good one and it retains its late 1970s punchiness. There are five bonus tracks at the end of disc two – two of which are the discarded “Disengage” and featuring Peter Hammill and “NY3” – the three other tracks are “Exposure” and “Mary” with Hall singing solo and “Chicago” played out as a duet between Hammill and Terre Roche, which jars me slightly as I am just so familiar with the original version.

Overall, I like the package but some of it leaves me scratching my head. I know it would have been overkill, but a three disc set with the original version of “Heart-Throb” and the two subsequent versions would have nailed it for me, but Fripp has a habit of never quite giving you what you want. Instead, you just have to make do and shut up. I also have an issue with the accompanying booklet. While the original version of the album is well catered for, there are no lyrics reproduced for the new versions of “Disengage” and “New York, New York, New York”. It would have also have been nice to have some memories from Daryl Hall or the other performers in there. But again, these are little niggles on my part. In the end, Fripp has not brought out the definitive edition of “Exposure” but instead continued the mythos of a flawed masterpiece. That’s the way it has always been and so, I guess, that’s the way it should stay.

How to Make Your Own Copy of “The Last of the Great New York Heart-Throbs”

What the album artwork might have looked like?

You can now own your own copy of the original musical vision Robert Fripp had when he started recording his first proper solo album. You will need a copy of “Exposure – 25th Anniversary Edition” and “Sacred Songs” by Daryl Hall. Now follow my tracklisting below for a glimpse of what might have been:

01 Preface (Exposure Disc 1)
02 You Burn Me Up I’m a Cigarette (Exposure Disc 1)
03 North Star (Exposure Disc 1)
04 Disengage (Exposure Disc 2)
05 Chicago (Exposure Disc 2)
06 Exposure (Exposure Disc 2 – bonus track version)
07 New York, New York, New York (Exposure Disc 2)
08 Haaden Two (Exposure Disc 1)
09 Mary (Exposure Disc 2 – bonus track version)
10 Breathless (Exposure Disc 1)
11 NYCNY (Sacred Songs track)
12 Water Music I (Exposure Disc 1)
13 Here Comes the Flood (Exposure Disc 1)
14 Water Music II (Exposure Disc 1)
15 Postscript (Exposure Disc 1)

Enjoy!