Every interview I have ever read with Robert Fripp makes me think he is often being tongue-in-cheek, rather post-modern/deconstructionist. Driven by what? Nihilism? I do not know.
I am not sure how the inventor of Frippertronics can call Eric Clapton (of whom I am NOT a fan) tedious.
Sometimes, I get the feeling he is just putting us on, as in the “Drive to 1983”, where he doesn’t state what the point of it is, and the music doesn’t tell us. And he doesn’t tell us. Perhaps it is a mockery of other drives.
So, he is a talented guitarist, but I think like a lot of the modern art guys he doesn’t take the art (by his own admission, really) or much of anything, seriously. Instead, he seems to mock almost everything in that dry English way.
He sounds fine on Bowie’s “Scary Monsters” LP.
More like professional jealousy because he never came close to the commercial success of either of them. Ironic he used the word tedious because that's how I find KC and most other prog groups.