King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, who turned 80 last week, seems to be doing much better after suffering a heart attack last year; he even gave his first live performance since the incident last month at Church of Sant’Alessandro Martire in Italy. Despite the strong recovery, he’s still left with some peculiar questions — mainly, why were his balls shaved while he was being treated?
“You’re concerned with my heart, fine. What are you doing shaving my balls?” the guitarist remarked in a vlog last year with his wife, Toyah Willcox, who was laughing beside him as he recounted the story. Willcox added that maybe it had to do with clearing his body of anything that could harbor germs since he was going into heart surgery.
In a new interview with Uncut, Fripp gave an update on his health, and revisited his balls mystery. “I was in A&E, they hooked me up to a monitor, and the next step was this dear man turned up and shaved my balls,” he says. “I thought, ‘Well, if this is something to do with my heart, why is he shaving my balls?’”
There was never a reason given for why it happened. “The man shaving my balls didn’t tell me,” he explained. “Very few of the staff spoke English, which led to one or two funny moments, like me taking my pants down for inspection by a matronly nurse, who was actually asking what I wanted for lunch.” Fripp survived the heart attack, but the mystery of the shaved balls may haunt him forever.