Failure to Fracture: Anthony Garone’s Long Obsession With King Crimson’s Most Impossible Song
Anthony Garone’s Failure to Fracture is an exceptional chronicle of an equally exceptional undertaking: his two-decade quest to master King Crimson’s notoriously complex piece, Fracture.
What began as a personal challenge evolved into a profound exploration of discipline, transformation, and the very essence of learning. Issued by Stairway Press, this book transcends typical memoir, offering a unique fusion of autobiography, music theory, and philosophical insight. Its striking physical design, a collaboration with Dave Woodruff, mirrors the music’s intricate structure, featuring over 150 distinct visual layouts that reflect the composition’s labyrinthine nature.
Garone, the mind behind Make Weird Music, has spent his creative life championing artists who defy easy categorization. Through his writing, videos, and community building, he reveals himself not just as an accomplished guitarist, but as someone who truly appreciates diverse creative endeavors. What truly distinguishes Failure to Fracture is its unflinching honesty. It doesn’t glamorize struggle; rather, it presents the raw reality of perseverance and the quiet, often uncelebrated, nobility of steady progress. This is a profoundly human story, and its resonance reaches far beyond the world of musicians, connecting deeply with universal life struggles.
Turns out, when something seems impossible, it’s usually just waiting for us to re-learn the rules or invent a few new ones to make it happen.
“One of my strengths is an inability to truly give up on something I care about.”
The very title, Failure to Fracture, hints at a profound relationship with the concept of impossibility. Robert Fripp himself declared Fracture unplayable. How did this label, and the sheer 22-year duration of your quest, shape your understanding of what “impossible” truly means, not just in music but in life?
I didn’t know Fracture is “impossible to play” until many years after starting. My father told me that no one could play it, but that didn’t mean much to me in 1996. When I was learning Steve Vai, Dream Theater, and Joe Satriani music, I didn’t really know anyone who could play that either. So Fracture was just as impossible as Steve Vai’s Juice or Steve Howe’s Clap. I didn’t know the difference, and my ignorance and curiosity paved the path to learning.
For the 22-year journey, that’s just a bit of marketing. I did spend 22 years on and off learning the piece, but mostly because every time I tried playing it, my hand, wrist, and arm would hurt. Why return to the bed of nails?
It wasn’t until 2014, when I’d heard rumors that Robert Fripp was retiring from teaching Guitar Craft and Circle, that I thought, “Well, if I’m ever going to learn how to play this piece of music, this is it.” He was teaching a course in Mexico and I live in Arizona, so it wasn’t too far away. I was shocked to be accepted into the program, and it was a life-changing experience, as you might have seen in the book.
Also, “impossible” is clearly Robert’s own bit of marketing, because, well, he played it. If it was literally impossible, he couldn’t have performed it so many times in front of audiences in the 1970s. His 1968 composition Suite No. 1, Mov. 3 (from The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles, and Fripp) is perhaps even more impossible than Fracture in some respects.
In other words, “impossible” doesn’t mean impossible. To quote Robert’s aphorism: “Begin with the possible and move gradually towards the impossible.” In my book, I point to several other “impossible” pieces of music, like Bach’s Chaconne, Rachmaninoff’s 3rd piano concerto, or György Ligeti’s piano etudes. Certainly not impossible to play, but absolutely “impossible” to play. If you want actually impossible, then start with Conlon Nancarrow’s player piano pieces.
Spending over two decades on this journey must have come with some tough stretches. Was there ever a moment when you seriously considered giving up? What helped you push through? Was it something someone said, a shift in perspective, or just pure stubbornness?
It is difficult to answer this question through your lens, which is the inverse of how I view it. Every time I tried playing Fracture, I gave up. Giving up was just part of the process. The foolish and difficult part was picking up the guitar and trying again. Thankfully, Robert Fripp responded to my efforts in 2007 and was encouraging. So, about nine years in, I got some good tips from him and his diary. It was not enough to get me where I needed to be, but it was something. And sometimes “something” is all we need. He responded kindly to my efforts on a few occasions in his diary as well.
The tougher “stretches” were not so closely related to Fracture as they were to my poor sense of self-worth. My perspective was wonky. I have just written about this extensively in my upcoming book: Mental Prisons: A Self-Help Book for Nobody. For the most part, I was closely coupling my self-esteem to fleeting senses of achievement, capability, recognition, and so on. So, the fact that I could not play Fracture was just another sign that I was not a good guitarist.
The better part of me knew that I was a good guitarist and had something to prove. One of my strengths is an inability to truly give up on something I care about. My will seems to have a much longer half-life than most people’s. For example, I have a simple rule: if I want to buy something a year after the first inclination appears, then I buy it. A year is a good amount of time to evaluate whether something is actually important. Year after year, playing Fracture remained an important accomplishment in my life. So, I kept at it. This rule applies to much more than just music or buying instruments, but a year is the general “do I still want this?” timeline.
And looking back, has your idea of success or mastery changed over the years? Was it ever just about perfecting the technical side, or did the joy of the process itself become the real goal?
I am definitely not one of those people who believes the journey is more important than the destination. The destination is what matters most. Enjoying the journey is certainly part of the process, but nobody wants to get 85 percent to the top of Mount Everest.
As a 43-year-old man, of course my definitions of “success” and “mastery” have changed over 22 years. More than half my life has passed since I started Fracture around 1996 or 1997. For some reason, around age 10 I started thinking of myself as a loser and a failure. It took me 30 years to stop believing that.
Now I believe in myself. I know what I am capable of and I know how to work hard. “Success” is a subjective term, but “mastery” is less subjective. In terms of success, I have achieved more than everything I had set out to do as a young person. Playing Fracture was certainly one of those things. And now I am releasing my fourth book and my fourth solo album, produced largely in a beautiful backyard recording studio I built mostly with my own hands for a successful weird music brand I built from nothing with tens of thousands of followers. I also run my own business, employ other people, and am able to afford a nice lifestyle where I live comfortably, have lots of friends, and can safely raise three kids who are turning out to be wonderful humans. Those things, to me, are “success.”
Regarding mastery, I spoke to Steve Vai a couple of years ago about this. I said, “How do you feel being recognized as one of the greatest guitarists in the world?” He said, “Listen, if you look at the vast pool of music, rock music is a small slice of that. Then there is instrumental rock music. Then there is instrumental guitar rock music. Then there is the weird instrumental guitar rock music I produce. And it is nice to be recognized in that tiny slice, but I do not try to think about it beyond that.” Behind that wisdom is a lesson I have learned that is essentially: the more you learn, the less you know. Or, put more eloquently by John Archibald Wheeler: “As my island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of my ignorance.”
So, my sense of mastery really applies to the very limited use cases I consider to be important for my own edification. I am very good at the very few things I do, and I am reasonably good at other things, but in totality, I know so little about most everything. I cannot say I have “mastered” Fracture or any other song, nor have I mastered the technique. But I am one of the few people who actually can play it, which is fantastic. Even Bill Bruford congratulated and complimented me when he saw me perform it at the MoonJune Music Festival in Spain last year.
Perhaps I have mastered marketing Fracture as “something that I can barely play and that I have struggled with for 22 years.” That is not a terrible thing. But if you look at players like Alex Anthony Faide, Maria Barbieri, or Fernando Kabusacki, I am nowhere near what those guys can do with the piece.
You mentioned having to relearn how to play guitar, sit, stand, and even breathe, along with bringing meditation and a new way of using your body into the mix. That sounds like a deep, whole-self transformation. What part of that shift caught you most off guard or challenged you the most? And how did that process end up changing the way you connect with your instrument and with yourself?
Well, growing up as a self-taught ignoramus on the instrument allowed me to both see the potential of playing the piece while also being severely constrained by my technique. When I first got to my introductory Guitar Circle course, Robert Fripp took the group of us and asked, “How many of you are self-taught?” I raised my hand along with others, and he said, “So, someone who knows nothing about music theory, knows nothing about playing guitar, and knows nothing about performance — that person taught you everything you know.” It was an eye-opening idea because it helped me to see that I had never truly met my potential nor moved much beyond “emulation” in my creative life with the guitar. Of course I had written some of my own original music, but I think you get the point.
I was there for Robert Fripp to teach me new lessons about music and the guitar. I did not expect Robert to teach me a new way to live.
The biggest part of the transformation for me was posture and the Alexander Technique concept of “psychophysical reeducation.” Essentially, every vertebrate animal knows how to sit, stand, breathe, and so on without being told. It is only humans who unlearn the right ways of using the body. There is a great book called Body Language by Michael Gelb that covers a lot of this, including pictures of birds in flight and animals sprinting from a full stop.
At that time in my life, I was suffering from back pain. It was not debilitating, but whenever I got a massage, I did not realize how much pain I was hiding in those muscles. In just the single week of the course, my body adapted to the Alexander Technique in a tremendous way, shifting the musculature of my back rapidly. I was in unbearable pain, but it was not because my back was getting worse. It was because my back was undoing the bad habits of many years of bad posture. It took a few days of near-debilitating pain for me to be able to return to a new healthy norm with posture. Now I recognize when I am causing myself pain with poor posture, breathing, sitting, standing, and so on.
And this applies to many other areas of my life: guitar playing, typing, driving a car, lifting furniture, kneeling in the pews at church, playing the drums. Also, Robert’s “practice of doing nothing” has been transformative in that I now know that I need to prepare for doing something by becoming comfortable with the idea of doing nothing. As Robert said in the course (and I am poorly misquoting here), “Your animal has to be ready to do something, and if you are too busy doing other things, you will not be able to perform anything well.”
So I have learned about focus and about anti-doing. The “practice of doing nothing” is not a meditation or some sort of energy exercise. It is an actual activity of waiting and navigating the body, finding where I have trained it to do something when it should be doing nothing. We have a pet rabbit, and most of the day he sits around doing nothing. Animals are good teachers of doing nothing.
Markus Reuter described your book as revealing a kind of secret world that rarely gets talked about in popular culture. In your experience, what is that world of sustained inner work and deep self-reflection that lies behind real growth… depth? And why do you think so much of it tends to stay hidden from view?
Markus is one of the most insightful people I know, and for him to have said that about my book is a huge compliment.
The “world of sustained inner work and deep self-reflection” is just identifying what and where growth is, then identifying what is in the way of achieving it. Most of the time it is me. I believe very strongly in the idea that I am responsible for everything I think, everything I feel, and everything that happens to me. Whether it is my fault is immaterial — I am responsible for reacting to it. So, living a life where I am fully responsible for my own growth and success means I have to take the deepest possible look at myself and cut out what is not me.
There is the popular myth that when Michelangelo was asked how he carved the Statue of David, he said, “It is simple. I just carved away everything that was not David.” In that sense, I keep track of what is me and what is not. A lot of this is rooted in my Catholicism and the plan I believe God has for me. I spend time in prayer and meditation on what I am here to do and who I am here to be. If I am out of alignment with that (“the flesh is weak, but the spirit is willing”), then I need to carve away.
Taking full responsibility over my thoughts, feelings, and circumstances means that I cannot blame anyone else for me being upset. I cannot blame anyone else for the cards I am dealt, and I remind myself that things do not happen to me but rather, they happen for me.
As for why this “secret world” rarely gets talked about and why it tends to stay hidden from view, I just do not think the world values hard work, and especially not this type of hard work. To be a serious person requires taking a serious look at oneself. Mental performance coach Kapil Gupta recommends looking in the mirror for 10 minutes and staring that person in the eye, saying, “You are the maker of my misery.” I am not saying that is the morally or ethically correct action, but if you actually try doing that (which I have), it is brutal to the point of being unbearable.
Who wants to read about this type of work? What headlines would be compelling enough for someone to click through and read or watch? Most people just want to be informed, educated, and entertained. And there is good reason to dismiss the work of radical self-awareness as “navel gazing.” I do not think there is enough evidence to suggest that there is an appropriate amount of this self-reflection work.
And it is work. Who wants to think about that? Bleh.
Failure to Fracture is evidence of this. The only reason people care about the story is because enough people have a morbid curiosity with Robert Fripp and the limits of his own capabilities. If he says, “Fracture is impossible to play,” then who dares try? Well, there is this masochist on YouTube who did it and documented his 22-year story.
It is the kind of work that is generally unappealing, not entertaining, and overly self-indulgent. I did not do the video series or the book for attention, but if I am honest, I do not mind that that is what I got.
Ultimately, the “sustained inner work and deep self-reflection” should lead to quiet contentment, not public performance. So, I am part of the problem, but I get the upside.
That week with Robert Fripp in rural Mexico sounds like it left a deep mark. Beyond the technical focus on right-hand technique, what did you take away from his way of thinking or teaching that truly shook something loose in you? Was there a moment, a phrase, or an idea that reframed how you see music, or even how you move through the world?
No. Robert sees music very differently than I do and has a different relationship with it. What I have learned most about Robert, and come to appreciate more every year, is that he is a hard worker who does what he feels compelled to do, whether he feels up to the task or not.
Fripp’s Guitar Circle and the way he carries himself seem to reflect a really intense, almost philosophical way of living through music. How much of that broader approach or way of being did you end up taking on, whether consciously or not? And in what ways does it still shape how you live and create today?
I think people have a perspective of Robert that I just never had. Yes, he is philosophical, but in person he is jovial and emotional. We spent a full day together at his house in England a few years ago and have interacted a bit through email and Facebook. I just saw him last month and he was especially friendly and generous, but these were very short interactions.
We need to learn to separate how Robert is perceived from how Robert actually is. I have experienced him as a teacher in the Guitar Circle, as a presenter and speaker, as a performing guitarist, and (dare I say it) as a friend.
Someone asked me at a guitar clinic in Argentina why Adrian was the emotional frontman and Robert was the quiet background philosopher in King Crimson. I said that was a gross mischaracterization of Robert. He is probably the most emotional person on stage, and he is much more interested in engaging with Music than anything else.
There is a quote from G. K. Chesterton that I love about Oscar Wilde: “Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.” Chesterton is taking a fun (and well-deserved) jab at Wilde here. In a much more charitable and generous way, I feel similarly about Robert. I do not play music for the same reasons Robert does. He is so moved by Music that he feels he should orient his entire career around encountering it, and I am happy to let Robert pay that price on behalf of the rest of us. I would rather strap on a guitar and shred until my fingers blister because I like playing guitar more than I like making music.
Make Weird Music is all about celebrating artists who break the mold and do not fit into any neat category. How does your intensely personal journey with Fracture — a piece that itself pushes musical limits — inform the mission and curatorial philosophy of MWM? Is there a direct correlation between embracing the “impossible” in your own life and advocating for “weird” music?
The one thing I want people to see about me playing Fracture is that I am an actual guitarist and musician, and not a virtue-signaling “music critic” or “music YouTuber.” My pursuit of Fracture happened over many years because I was self-motivated as a guitarist to do something difficult. I want to feature more artists on MWM, regardless of their levels of fame or achievement, so they can inspire more people to do the same.
Back to G. K. Chesterton, he once described progressivism like a police officer entering a crowd and telling everyone to disperse. To where? Who knows. In a darker vein, Patrick McGoohan once said that progress is the enemy of mankind. So, when we talk about “pushing musical limits,” I think there are healthy areas of progress and unhealthy ones. MWM seeks to highlight the good, the true, and the beautiful in an inspiring and generally positive way.
In that spirit, I generally do not feature any artists with massive egos, who are overtly activistic, or who participate in any sort of music or creativity that diminishes others. We pursue artists who pursue art in an authentic and honorable way. Yes, sometimes we have artists like Ostrich Von Nipple, but I have spoken at length with the guy behind OVN and he is deeply in pursuit of music as an art form. He is just as authentic to me as Steve Vai or Laurie Anderson.
The word “weird” stems from the idea of taking a creative risk because it is part of a compulsion to express oneself. This is why I do not feature artists who are chasing fame and fortune. I just want to show the world that you can be authentic and in pursuit of legitimate goodness without compromising yourself or selling out. The money and clout do not matter nearly as much as the motivation. I am just as interested in talking to “unknown” artists like Jake Finck or Kristen Carey as I am in talking to bigger names that the “prog” community recognizes. Sure, those videos do not usually perform as well, but I am not here for the numbers.
The only reason the numbers matter to me is to make our spotlight bigger and brighter so that when we shine it on an artist, he or she gets more sales, streams, attention, clout, and so on. I want artists to feel that they have potential for upside when they take a creative risk. And this is why I open my home and my pantry to artists traveling through town. We have had several bands stay at our house, and we load them up with food and drink for the road. (Just ask Kavus Torabi or Bent Knee.)
Even if the world does not express deep interest, I have been blessed with money, a nice home, lots of food, good health, and plenty to share. With whom much is given, much will be expected. This is how I give back to the world.
The Failure to Fracture video series has struck a chord with a huge audience, racking up hundreds of thousands of views. How did documenting such a vulnerable, arduous process publicly influence the journey itself, and what role did the community around MWM play in sustaining your dedication?
I do not think of it as “vulnerable” or “arduous” because it is not rooted in ego. It is just part of being a musician who has chosen to do something hard for the sake of it. There are just not a lot of people doing hard things in public, owning up to their own shortcomings, and saying publicly, “Hey, I cannot do this because of ME.” We are supposed to be the change we wish to see in the world, right? That is all I am doing.
Making the video series did not really “influence” the journey in any way. I set out to play the song, and I did. Then I did it publicly. And I hope to do that again.
The community, however, was definitely influential for me. It accelerated my own enthusiasm because so many people were rooting for me to succeed. I had no idea that anyone in the world would EVER care about some teenaged kid who tried playing a really hard song on guitar. When I was 16, I just wanted to be a world-famous guitarist and be like the next Steve Vai or Joe Satriani.
Now that I am older and wiser, I know that there can only be one Steve or Joe, and that is what is so wonderful about them. I am just being me and, as my friend Giovanni Pagano told me, I kind of am a “famous guitarist” now. So, I ended up getting what teenaged me wanted without taking the path I thought I needed to take.
Life is good and I credit God for blessing me with this path.
“Music is a creative gift and we are endowed with that gift.”
Some reviewers have called Failure to Fracture a kind of guide to living your best life or a personal development blueprint. For folks who might not be musicians, what is the one big takeaway from your story that you hope everyone can apply when they are facing their own challenges?
Oh no. The “one big takeaway” question. Hah.
If there could possibly be one big takeaway, it would be this: Be a Serious person.
Life is hard, but it is even harder when we do not do anything about it. Whether it is a song you are learning, a speech you are giving, a person you are firing, a financial risk you are taking — as long as it is honorable, you should go for it. It does not matter if there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. What is good for you is good for humanity. I am a big proponent of Thomas Aquinas and the work Bishop Robert Barron has been doing to promote it. Pursue what is good, beautiful, and true.
Music is a creative gift and we are endowed with that gift. Use it well and make life better every day. You cannot be a Serious person if you have no mission and are not in pursuit of a meaningful destination.
The physical design of Failure to Fracture, boasting its “over 150 unique layouts,” feels like a tactile extension of your journey, a kind of visual counterpart to the sonic labyrinth of “Fracture.” How crucial was it for the book’s very physical manifestation to echo the meticulous craftsmanship, the spirit, and ultimately, the transformative nature of those 22 years? It is as if the book itself is a piece of “weird music” for the eyes.
Well, I cannot take any credit for that. I like to tell people that it is really Dave Woodruff’s book that just happens to have my words in it. (Dave is the designer of all my books and my new album.)
It was not crucial to me for the book to mirror the effort or the path I took. For me, a book is a way of getting something out of my system. Dave deserves all the credit for that book being what it is. It certainly drove my publisher crazy and it is an expensive art project, but to me, it was worth every penny and every hour of work. No exaggeration, though, I did not write the book with the final product in mind at all. Dave said to me, “I have a surprise for you,” and sent me a PDF of about 30 different layouts. And I said, “Am I supposed to pick one of these?” And he said, “No, the whole book will be like this.”
I was as surprised as anyone else.
The book is an art project and a coffee table book. The fancypants edition sold out after two print runs, which was equally shocking. I am very glad it turned out the way it did and we were able to send copies to important people like Robert and Trey Gunn.
For me, I look at it as a real feather in my cap. Again, not because of the content of the book, but because of the visuals. And that includes all the illustrations and drawings that I did for it.
How did this intensely personal, decades-long pursuit intersect with your family life, and what was their perspective on your dedication to a piece of music that, for them, might have been a constant background hum?
Honestly, it annoyed my family more than anything else. It was probably a zero-sum game and not a net positive. I think they are happy with the results (the book, the press coverage, the international recognition, getting interviewed by the BBC and Guitar World Magazine, the inquiry from the chief editor at Rolling Stone, etc.), but I do not think they enjoyed or appreciated me learning the piece. My wife, I am certain, is glad to no longer hear the “mosquito music” in the house.
Looking back at the entirety of this epic journey, what is one piece of advice you would offer to your 16-year-old self, just beginning to grapple with “Fracture”?
The path I took is the one that led me to this incredible destination. I would not trade it for nearly anything. The only thing I would advise my younger self about is: “Give yourself some grace. You have so much potential.” There is no reason I should have beaten myself up so much for so long, especially over the struggle to play impossible pieces of music. That was legitimately bad for the soul and subtracted from what I could have been offering the world all those years.
Having conquered what many, including its composer, deemed “impossible,” what new “impossible” challenges, whether musical or otherwise, are you contemplating or drawn to in this next chapter of your life?
First of all, I would never use the word “conquered” about Fracture. That would be impossible. Other than that…
My new album (titled OK, but why?) is really intense and wonderful. I absolutely love it and think it is a top-tier guitar record. It brings me far more joy than Fracture, and I think people will really enjoy it. Some of the music on there is really wacky. Steve Vai offered this quote about it:
“Anthony Garone has made an unapologetic, dense, alien melodic, rhythmic brain twisting, sublimely lovely solo record. He’s taken all his inspiration and added a healthy dose of harmonic steroids to create something bizarrely beautifully unique. I’m sure glad I don’t have to play it.”
I mean, come on. How amazing is that?
I will never stop challenging myself, despite living a life beyond my wildest imagination. I have built a business from scratch that earns hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. I have built a YouTube channel from scratch about weird music that has nearly 6 million views and is approaching 50,000 subscribers, with more than 100 people financially supporting it. I have three incredibly talented, healthy, and smart teenagers. Today is my 21st wedding anniversary to an amazing woman. I have two homes almost entirely paid off and a wonderful backyard recording studio full of instruments and gear. I live in the greatest time humanity has ever experienced. I was interviewed about my book for a feature article about Robert Fripp’s guitar parts in Guitar World magazine. I helped make a transcription book of the 80s King Crimson albums. I am friends with some of the greatest musicians of my lifetime. I just bought a Lotus Super 7 last year and I have done a ton of work on it with my bare hands. And I feel like I am just getting started. All of this is impossible to the kid who grew up thinking he would never amount to anything.
What is next? Just keep going and letting things happen. Life is so good and I want to do everything I can to shine a brighter light on the good in the world. Plenty of people are focused on the negative. I want people to be more creative, fulfilled, and drawn to beauty, no matter where it is.
Klemen Breznikar
Anthony Garone Website
Stairway Press Website
