The unusual prog guitarist that Dave Matthews points to as a strong influence

Dave Matthews He is an artist with multiple influences. Your Dave Matthewsband has explored several subgenres, from rock to folk, from roots to alternative sounds. Even jazz and traditional African music — considering that the artist was born and lived at different periods in South Africa — have been present at certain moments in his career.

Throughout his career, Matthews mentioned different inspirations. The more experimental approach comes from idols like Paul Simon It is Stingwhile the rock vein is a contribution of his love for Jimi Hendrix. Regarding the various improvisations made during shows, he mentions his devotion to Grateful Deada band known precisely for its “unscripted” performances.

But what many may not imagine is that one of the greatest guitarists in the history of progressive rock — and one of the most inventive of all time — had such an influence on Dave to the point where the musician tried to imitate him on the guitar. Its about Robert Frippmember of the King Crimson who has worked with David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, blondie and many others, to the point of having contributed to more than 700 releases throughout his career.

In an interview with the radio host Howard Stern (via Guitar World), the leader of Dave Matthews Band commented that the fingering techniques of Fripp They were decisive in his own style of playing the guitar. However, he believes that if Robert If I saw him playing — and trying to imitate him — I would consider him an “idiot”.

“He would probably look at my guitar and think, ‘You’re an idiot.’ But he uses a tuning in which he plays in a very formal way [com as mãos abertas]. Like in my music ‘Warehouse’, it makes a sound and you can create these patterns and just repeat them. There’s probably an easier way to play it, with it being less spread out across the neck of the instrument, but it’s satisfying to play that way.”

Matthews mentioned another song — one of his best known, in fact — in which he tries to replicate the style of Fripp: “Satellite”. About her, he highlighted:

“I was just trying to imitate him and I was also ignorant. It ended up becoming a combination of these two things. Instead of listening, I looked to try and play what he was playing. So I tried it and it didn’t look anything like what he was doing, but it looked cool.”

Robert Fripp constantly evolving

As expected from a guitar genius, Robert Fripp most likely you wouldn’t find it Dave Matthews an idiot. On the contrary: the guitarist of King Crimson He has demonstrated several times that he is open to new influences in music.

Since the start of the pandemic, he started a fun online video series with his wife, the singer Toyah Wilcox: Sunday Lunch. During filming, the couple plays songs by other artists and adopts a very eclectic repertoire, which ranges from Billy Idol The Metallica it’s from Britney Spears until Led Zeppelin.

Amidst the wide range of songs he needed to learn, Fripp discovered the talent of many famous guitarists, but for some reason he had not paid attention to. One of them is Dave Mustaineleader of Megadeth. When talking about the thrash metal icon, he said:

“Exploring ‘Holy Wars…The Punishment Due’you could see that Dave Mustaine He is a serious musician. He thinks differently than I do musically, but there are similarities too. I can see this from researching his style: he seems to work in patterns — developing and introducing variations within those patterns, something I also do.”

He then added:

“That song Megadeth It was a challenge for me. Playing it properly would take me about three months, with about four to eight hours a day of training. It would take a lot of concentration. If you’re doing 90 seconds, you still need to work as hard as it takes. He’s definitely someone I wasn’t familiar with before, but I’ve come to respect a lot.”