Watch Robert Fripp and Toyah Wilcox cover David Bowie for Halloween special
To celebrate the imminent arrival of Halloween, Robert Fripp and Toyah Wilcox have covered ‘Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)’ by David Bowie for their Sunday Lunch series. The original song, released in 1980, featured Fripp on guitar – one of various collaborations he made with Bowie.
Fripp and Wilcox, who have been married since 1986, started the Sunday Lunch series during lockdown, recording short clips of them covering songs – Fripp on guitar and Wilcox taking on vocal duties. Since then, they’ve covered countless bands, from The Cardigans and Megadeth to Kiss and Foo Fighters.
Talking to the Guardian back in 2021, Wilcox explained why she and her husband started the series. “Here I am in this house with this 74-year-old husband who I really don’t want to live without. He was withdrawing, so I thought: ‘I’m going to teach him to dance’. And it became a challenge,” she revealed.
Fripp loves doing the series too, although Wilcox is the creative genius behind each video. Despite receiving some resistance from King Crimson fans at the start, Fripp couldn’t care less if people found the series embarrassing or not. “My wife insists performers have a responsibility to lift people’s spirits in hard times. Do I respect that? My answer is yes, completely and utterly I do. […] At age 76, why should I give a fuck? This is my life,” he said in the same interview.
Thus, if you’ve ever wanted to see Fripp wearing Bowie-esque makeup playing guitar while Wilcox sings a dramatic rendition of ‘Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)’, you’re in luck. The couple wrote in the description of the video that they “love this one paying homage to the David Bowie classic.”
Interestingly, Fripp faced a legal battle with Bowie’s estate in 2019 after claiming that he was not properly credited for his contributions to Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) and Heroes. Despite the fact that he was more than just a session musician – he actively contributed to the album with innovative guitar parts – he was not credited as a featured artist.
Fripp wrote on Facebook, “The dispute centres on the refusal of PPL [Phonographic Performance Ltd] and the David Bowie estate to acknowledge that contribution to the Heroes and Scary Monsters albums is that of a Featured Player.
“This accreditation as a Featured Player is supported by Brian Eno, Tony Visconti, David Bowie himself (although the terminology was not then in use), and the Court Of Public Opinion over four decades.”
The final time Robert Fripp spoke to David Bowie
In 2002, Bowie was tasked with curating Meltdown Festival in London, using his illustrious phone book to secure acts such as Coldplay, Badly Drawn Boy, Suede, Supergrass, Television and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to perform.
However, one name that evaded him was Fripp, and the final conversation between the pair was Bowie attempting to secure him to perform at Meltdown.
During an interview with Rolling Stone in 2019, Fripp recalled: “[There] wasn’t enough time to do it properly, so I declined. My wife [singer-songwriter Toyah Wilcox] has never forgiven me. My wife is a very considerable Bowie fan. That’s an opportunity missed, but I don’t feel I could honorably have engaged with it.”
Nevertheless, Fripp has nothing but admiration toward his former collaborator despite falling out of contact, and claimed that the impact Bowie had on him will never leave him, adding, “Whenever you work with someone creatively and intensively, something changes; something is fused. It’s maybe something like having a lover, where they’re always part of your life.”
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