Robert Fripp recently underwent two surgeries after suffering a heart attack he didn’t even know he’d had.
The King Crimson guitarist shared the story in a new video posted over the weekend alongside wife/collaborator, Toyah Wilcox. “He had a heart attack two weeks ago,” Wilcox said in the clip. “And you were in the right place, in the right time, and I am so grateful, because you’ve been through a lot.”
Fripp then explained the surreal sequence of events. Last month, the musician said he’d been dealing with what he thought was acid reflux in the weeks leading up to a trip to Italy for a show. Having endured something similar a few years prior, Fripp didn’t think much of it. But the day he flew to Italy, he said, he felt “more discomfort.”
While Fripp’s team had already scheduled a doctor’s visit, upon landing, they decided to take him to a cardiac hospital in Bergamo instead. While Fripp said he thought the doctors would prescribe him some acid reflux medication, they ultimately alerted him to some alarmingly high troponin levels in his blood, which can be a sign of a recent heart attack.
Wilcox then said Fripp underwent “five hours of surgery, intensive care, then a second surgery.” But the musician fixated on a totally different moment.
“I was in A&E [accident and emergency], not quite knowing what was going on, other than I knew they were going to do something. And an orderly came along and shaved my balls!” Fripp said with a laugh. “The dear man, I really didn’t wish his job on him at that point. Now this is the thing, you’re concerned with my heart? Fine. What are you doing shaving my balls!”
(Wilcox then sagely explained it was likely to rid his body of anything that could possibly harbor germs before undergoing heart surgery.)
Fripp has since been able to return home to the U.K., and while he’s currently on a few medications, he’s on pace to recover well over the next couple months. Fripp ended the video by encouraging people who think they have heart burn or acid reflux to “really look into it,” because “it might be something more.”
The musician also didn’t seem to be letting the emergency surgeries get in the way of his music. Fripp noted that after being released from the hospital in Italy, he still managed to play his scheduled gig. “You went to work,” Wilcox quipped, to which Fripp replied, “No, dear, I went to play with my friends. And the performance in the church at in Castione della Presolana, it was stunning on the Saturday night. The audience were prepped with orchestral maneuvers, and it really was a magical event for me.”
