Steve Hackett recalled how a conflict over cheese led to him no longer being invited to Robert Fripp’s dinner parties in his new autobiography, ‘A Genesis In My Bed.’ The guitarist detailed the incident in a recent interview with Classic Album Review:
“I don’t think he’s forgiven me. I didn’t eat all of Robert Fripp’s cheese, but he noticed that I was leaving the salad and eating the cheese instead, at which point he said, ‘You can’t have any more cheese.’ And I deliberately took another little nibble. I think that did it. There are those who said, perhaps, he was exhibiting the need to be controlling. Perhaps, he was testing me.”
He said the cheese in question was cheddar and continued:
“I should have sent him. I was in Galder, recently, the place where the cheese comes from, at a cheese festival. Because I was playing in Holland. I should’ve sent him some cheese. I just didn’t know how to get it from one place to another without it arriving moldy, and it would’ve seemed like an insult.”
The Two Were Friends
Robert Fripp and Steve Hackett’s relationship went back to the 1970s. When Fripp decided to leave King Crimson in 1974 due to his dissatisfaction with the music industry, he asked Hackett to replace him. The management rejected the suggestion, causing a hiatus for the band.
The Genesis guitarist reflected on the offer in a 2021 chat with Ultimate Classic Rock:
“I had absolutely no awareness of that at the time. He [Fripp] and I knew each other and spent time together. I had, you know, nothing but admiration for the way he basically led that band. At a time when most bands were doing material that was blues-based, this was much more organized… Hell, we bought our first Mellotron off them because they had spares! That was meeting Robert for the first time.”
He recalled:
“We as Genesis were the poor cousins at that point. We had a King Crimson hand-me-down. But there we are – it was certainly worth it. In the wake of The Beatles, of course, the MK II Mellotron had a lot to answer for. It really helped Genesis a lot. I was very keen on Genesis expanding the keyboard arsenal as much as possible so that we had a big wide range of sounds to put across the stories of what we now call ‘progressive rock.’”
You can watch Steve Hackett’s full interview below.