Adrian Belew Interview

by Rick Landers.

The career of guitar visionary Adrian Belew has been an inventive musical odyssey. He has mastered the ability to journey into the avant garde while anchoring his compositions to the fundamental driving forces of pop and rock, often playing along the outer edges of contemporary music in ways that have been punky, new wave, comedic, bizarre, and twisted.

His talent extends from guitar work with King Crimson to collaborations with Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, Nine Inch Nails, Jars of Clay, Mike Oldfield, Laurie Anderson, the Jaguares, Robert Palmer, Peter Gabriel, Crash Test Dummies, Paul Simon, and, another man who's gone where no man has gone before, actor William Shatner.

While working with musical explorers like Frank Zappa, Robert Fripp, David Bowie and David Byrne helped hone his music vocabulary, Belew's solo recording career, beginning with the 1982 debut album, Lone Rhino, has seen him add a host of words and phrases of his own.

In 1990, Belew won Guitar Player magazine's Experimental Guitarist award for the fifth time in a row and in 2000, Adrian was honored by the city of Cinncinati when Peter Frampton handed him a CAMMY lifetime achievement award. In 2004, Adrian's "Man in the Moon" was selected as one of the "Top 10 songs for Dads" by Better Homes and Gardens magazine, along with John Lennon, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.

Always artistically on the move, Adrian Belew has added his support to the young musicians of Paul Green's School of Rock Music; started the Adrian Belew Power Trio; continued to tour and record with King Crimson; and, found time to record with his long time musician pals, the Bears. Each of Adrian's latest three solo CDs, Side One, Side Two and Side Three bear cover art created by...Adrian Belew.

From his home studio, Adrian spoke with Modern Guitars about his career, guitars, new projects, and Belew's other love - painting.

Before you met Frank Zappa was your guitar playing or concept of music more pedestrian?

Adrian Belew: I suppose it was in a sense in that I hadn’t discovered how to play in odd time signatures. I have always liked interesting music, especially modern classical music like Stravinsky and Vareze. I even knew about Vareze before I met Frank. And I always liked interesting percussion ensembles. So, I wouldn’t say totally pedestrian, but I have been caught up before in pop music - Steely Dan, the Beatles, Hendrix - stuff like that.

Did your musical contributions influence Zappa?

AB: I really don’t know. [Laughs] I never had a chance to ask him that. I’d probably say no. I was in a very early stage in my life. Since then, I've probably led and mentored and taught rather than impart things. But, apart from Frank, my work with David Bowie, Talking Heads, and King Crimson may have inspired others.

The thing with Frank, he really wanted a vocalist-guitarist and so I would say he was less interested in my guitar playing. That just wasn’t what he needed. He was the guitar player in the band and what he needed was someone who could cover his guitar parts when he would sing and who could be both a vocalist and guitarist. And secondly, and more importantly perhaps, he wanted a front man who'd wear funny costumes.

Did you start out as a guitar player?

AB: I started out as a singer and I sang all my life to relatives and anyone else who would listen. I took up the drums at age 10 and joined my first band when I was 14. I was the drummer, but I was a singing drummer. It made me kind of special. My band, The Denems, was the Cincinnati version of the Beatles in the sense that we played all the classic Beatles stuff from the early '60s and the British Invasion period before Sergeant Pepper's and Jimi Hendrix and that second round of the British Invasion.

What are the highlights of working with Robert Fripp?

AB: He was in King Crimson from the git go. He was the founder, along with Greg Lake, Ian McDonald and Michael Giles in 1969. King Crimson is always on tour doing something new. You know, working with Robert has the tendency to bring out things that you didn’t know you had in you. He shows you yourself and challenges you to challenge yourself. He’s a great reflector in that way. So, my years spent in King Crimson have been really as a partner with Robert in discovering ourselves- what we can do together and what music we can make that no one else will or can make.

And David Byrne/Talking Heads?

AB: I came into the Talking Heads in the period when they were on their rise to fame. It was quite evident. You couldn’t walk into a restaurant without Talking Heads being played in the background. Their music was custom made for what I was doing. It was really wide open for colorful and wacky guitar sounds and things. Most of their music was in one key, very few key changes. And very funky. So, for a guitar player it was just like a field day. I liked them very much as people - I got on with them really well. And I felt that they were starting something new and fresh. I was happy to be a part of it.

It seems you’ve always been out there on the edge of guitar playing yet close enough to the mainstream to hold an audience - very edgy and interesting. Do you have some allegiance to basic rock in your work?

AB: Yeah, I always had in my background kind of an interest in pop music - well crafted songs, great melodies, succinct guitar solos - and on other the side, an interest in experimental sounds - the wild stuff that maybe drives you to the edge a little bit more. I’ve forever been trying to combine those two elements. Not many people are interested in doing that so it’s given me my own little audience, as you say.

I think that it’s something that I’ll never stop doing because I think there are always fresh ways to interpret what is called pop music. And I’ve never been mainstream, per se. I never had a hit because I realized what I like to do isn't palatable to the average listener. I stopped trying. It’s more for the musos [Australian term for musicians] of the world, the ones who like to sit around and really think about it and be invigorated by it, not the ones who want to watch American Idol.

How have things have changed for you in the recording arena from your first solo CD, “The Lone Rhino”, to your most recent releases?

AB: Well, for the last 12 years I’ve had my own recording studio in at home. I was one of the first people to really embrace the idea of putting in your own studio when the digital revolution came along and something like that became more affordable. I stopped spending my record budgets on large expensive studios which were very impressive and fun, but nonetheless too expensive. Instead, I built my own studio.

That’s the main thing that’s happened in my life. I would say that one of the most important things that’s happened to me musically is the fact that every day I work in my own studio. I have an employee, a full-time engineer, who comes in every day.

And so, five days a week I’m here. I’m in my studio right now, in fact. It’s a constant generating of ideas even if you only get a little something done each day. The kind of accumulation that occurs allows you to put together three studio albums in 18 months.

Well, number four is slated to be a live record. I’ve never actually made for my solo work a proper live recording. I think I have got a very hot band, the Power Trio, and the material is very well suited to this kind of thing. What I’m covering right now in my live shows is a little bit of retrospective mixed in with some very new stuff and a good deal of King Crimson done in a trio format for the first time. So, I think overall that would make a very good opportunity for a live record from Adrian Belew.

Your website is ten years old – you caught on to the Internet pretty early as far as leveraging that technology. Was this your idea?

AB: That was totally the idea of Rob Murphree, who's still the webmaster today. He’s done it faithfully and incredibly well for ten years, for nothing really. That’s incredible because people now charge thousands of dollars for the privilege. He’s kept the website so well tuned that people like to come back to it. We’ve recently gone from about 30,000 hits per month to 250,000. It’s an incredible amount and it says a lot for how good a job Rob Murphree does.

I’m personally not as good with computers as people might imagine. Well, I don’t know what they imagine but I think a lot of people assume that I’m a real nerd and do a lot of magical things and stuff with electronics. I actually have trouble plugging in! [Laughs]

I think that’s one of the things that keeps a lot of people coming back to the website. There are a lot of things going on all the time, little things and big things, and he keeps it completely updated. I sent him a quick update just yesterday and a few days before that I sent him a synopsis of our one-month tour of Australia. That’s why people go to websites.

I see a future in it, where it becomes part of your daily ritual. You visit the site and there might be new visuals or some other new piece of material. Something’s always going on that can keep people interested. I’m lucky I have Rob.

When did you discover painting and begin to develop that talent?

AB: Well, it was, I suppose, a little over two years ago. I keep saying two years, but it’s probably closer to three years by now. It was an accidental occurrence that caused me to want to paint. I always had thought that when I was a very old person, like 75 or something, that I’d have time to paint. I’m so entirely overwhelmed and busy all the time now. I just never thought about doing it.

But as it turns out painting was a great thing to get into. I love to paint and I approach it the same way I approached music when I first started learning music. I’m self-taught at everything I’ve ever done. And the same is true with my painting. So, I’m constantly discovering things. And it’s so much like music in that you’re dealing with depth and dimension and the colors are just like tone, you know?

And there are so many things about it that relate to music. It’s really another side of the same creative valve. But it’s really blown open something for me - something in my mind and in my heart. I can spend hours and lose myself in painting now.

Is the artwork on your latest CDs your own?

AB: Yeah, all the art work on those were painted by me and put together by me. It was my idea to tie all the three record album covers together thematically by using similar kinds of looks and layouts. We used a tri-color system throughout all the records but they change a little bit from one to another. And we included five or six paintings per record. I don’t know how much interest that generates, but to me it’s one way for people to say to themselves that maybe they should buy the disc instead of downloading it. Many people are like that. I’m like that. I like to have the physical elements, especially if something is unique about it.

What was it like when you and your high school band got back together for your high school reunion in 1997?

AB: It was incredible! There was something about it that was unexplainable. I don’t know if you’d call it spiritual or what, but it’s like we all turned into teenagers again. And all the people felt it. The 600 or 800 people all seemed to be transported back to that earlier time. We played 30 Beatles songs from their early catalog and it sounded like we had just played together the day before! And apart from a few added pounds and a little loss of hair here and there, you could almost imagine being back in 1965. Even some of the girls we’d grown up with in high school stood in front of the band and screamed after each song!

"Better Homes and Gardens" named your “Man in the Moon” as one of its Top 10 Songs for Dads. As a father, how did that make you feel?

AB: Oh, it made me feel incredible! More than just being a father, it made me feel incredibly sentimental about my father. The song is written about his death, which happened when I was 19.

I’ve had a lot of people tell me over the years that it kind of breaks them up a bit. They're still there in your life. They sit in your memory and they’re still in your mind. My father comes to me in my dreams a lot. And it’s not a bad memory. He comes and goes and we hang out. It’s a good thing. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s an honor, period, especially because I’m not the kind of artist that I think of in terms of being in Better Homes and Gardens. [Laughs]

You're incredibly busy. Are you able to keep a balance among your various roles with respect to family, friends, and work, and still give yourself a little space to breathe?

AB: Well, unfortunately, I don’t have that many friends these days. I have to say, my friends are people I’ve worked with and they’re spread across the universe. Very few of them live here in Nashville where I live, so that’s always been a problem with me. Friendship has been a problem. I work with people intensely and travel around the world with them and then don’t see them for a year. I’m not much of a phone person or an emailer. I’m a one-on-one kind of person. I like to sit and have dinner with you and look at you and tell stories and laugh.

So, friendship doesn’t play that much of a role in my life right now. My family plays a big part in my life. That’s why I have my studio in my home. My wife and I are home schooling our two little girls. So, it’s a 24-7 thing and if you put all those things together, I probably spend more time with my family than the average person, even though there’s a lot of traveling in the things I do. I’ve been keeping journals for the past 10 years and it turns out that I travel less than a 100 days a year. So, most of the time, I’m home.

Not bad for a touring musician.

AB: It’s really not. We’re very strategic. My wife and I manage me. She takes care of all the contractual business and money stuff and we make all the decisions together. So, we can be very selective and say, “This is how much travel we want to do and these are the days that make sense and these are the ones that don’t.”

But your question was really about how I juggle or balance things. I think I do well because I simply allot slots for things. Now I’m doing this and then the next week I focus on the next thing. It keeps a lot of things on the back burner and when they get to the boiling point...[pauses]...I’m using a lot of cooking metaphors here!...[Laughs]...I focus on the, "We need to finish this now!" It keeps me changing all the time and forever interested in all the things I might be trying. One thing is, when you have an employee, he comes, he shows up every day. You can’t decide to say, “I’m going to take a nap.”

You're playing and endorsing Parker Guitars – tell us about how that came about and the gear you’re using.

AB: Well, Parker guitars I’ve loved for 10 or 12 years, since they first came out. I went to Japan and they gave me one when I was there. I just loved the way that guitar played! It made playing so much smoother and fluid and I just loved everything about that guitar. But, I could never play one live because I had, in a sense, kind of painted myself in to a corner. Mainly because of all the gimmicks I used, especially with all the MIDI devices, the Sustainiac, and things like that, I couldn’t imagine turning myself back in time playing guitar without those things. About two years ago, I finally had a conversation with Ken Parker and asked him, “Is there any way we can do something about this?” and he said that he would build some custom guitars for me.

That is what started the ball rolling that had me switching to Parker Guitars. It’s been something that’s completely changed my life around. It’s made me so interested in guitar again because now I can play what I consider the very best guitar there is. It plays like no other guitar. It makes me play and makes me want to play better. I play guitar now more than I ever did because of the Parker Fly, and I’m not just saying that.

We designed a prototype guitar for me which incorporates all the custom electronic changes I wanted and that’s going to be available at some point. They’re trying to figure out who’s going to build it because it’s so complicated. They have everything including a vacuum cleaner attachment [laughs] built into the guitar. Right now, I’m playing a Parker Deluxe and loving every minute of it.

I think if you’re really interested in why I’m saying about the Parker Fly, you should go to parkerguitars.com and read about the evolution of the guitar and you’ll learn why, in my opinion, the only really revolutionary thing that’s happened since the invention of the Stratocasters, Telecasters and Les Pauls of the '50s are these guitars.

You now have a guitar that stays in perfect tune and has no dead spots. The neck is carbon fiber and can withstand 10,000 pounds of pressure and it has no dead spots, every note is even, no dead notes and the tremolo goes all the way up a major third and dive bombs without going out of tune. And it looks like it has a custom car finish. It’s incredible!

Some Parkers I've seen have very deep, rich finishes.

AB: I was told when I went through the factory that when they’re done painting them they then spin them dry. That’s one reason they’re so beautiful. The three colors I chose for my guitars are all chosen from custom car color books that I have and they’re twelve-stage paint jobs. That means that there are six stages of silver paint and then the color you put on top of it. So, when you put them under light, they’re incredible. And they change according to the way the light hits them. They’re very modern guitars. It’s like a Ferrari versus a Chevy. No offense to anyone who owns a Chevy. [Laughs]

What other instruments do you play?

AB: I play everything on my records - piano, flute, upright bass, electric bass, cello, and I have one record where I listed 52 instruments.

Mandolin or banjo?

AB: I do play mandolin, I haven’t played banjo. I don’t own one. I play anything I can get my hands on. I have a Japanese koto, for example, and on Side Two it's a koto all the way through instead of guitar. I used that as my main instrument. So, just really anything I can make music with. I’ll study it and work with it until I get something acceptable. It keeps me fresh and keeps me moving forward.

A while back I saw that you were on the road with Paul Green’s School of Rock. How did that come about and what do you do for the school?

AB: It came about through Paul Green just reaching us and saying he was interested in "doing something with Adrian". I participated in a master’s series, where they get someone to meet with their All-Stars. There are fifteen schools and the All-Stars are the top forty students. They have an Alpha Team and an Omega Team with twenty students each out of 1,500 students. The twenty I worked with learned my music and King Crimson music and it turned out quite well. The school wants its students to learn and be intrigued by two things: Frank Zappa and King Crimson music. They consider those influences to have the advanced elements that they want their students to gravitate towards.

So we learned. Twenty students and I learned a full show’s worth of my material and King Crimson material. The idea was to rehearse with them for a couple of days and then go out and play. I mean real shows, like the Knitting Factory in L.A. and the World Café in Philadelphia. The students run the whole show, including set up and merchandising.

Their music assignment might be to learn five songs or three songs because the band is not a full-time band. It’s a floating band. We also put in a couple of seminars. When we were in New York we went to the New Jersey branch of the school and I did a two-hour seminar.

Any inspiring or touching stories about the kids?

AB: Two of their earliest graduates and most applauded graduate students are a brother and sister team, Eric and Julie Slick. Eric plays drums and Julie plays bass. I met them at a show and they did “City of Lights” and they’re just astoundingly bright kids and eager to do stuff. I thought that this would be an opportunity for them and for me. I like to have people in my band who are fresh and eager to play and malleable in the sense that I want to direct the proceedings, like a teacher, as I’m doing this.

I’m really excited about it and I’m sure they are too. Eric has been playing with Project Object that is a New York-based Frank Zappa tribute band that has some of the players from Frank Zappa’s band. Ike Willis and Napoleon Brock are sometimes with them. It’s an incredibly accurate version of Frank Zappa’s music and Eric's the drummer.

For a 19-year-old kid to be able fill the shoes of people like Ainsley Dunsbar and Terry Bozzio, you can imagine what he’s like. But at the same time, he's a very solid person and a very unaffected young kid who just wants to work. It’s so great being around that kind of enthusiasm. It’s a little bit like the Denems' reunion for me, because it’s putting me back into that frame of mind where I want to work harder and harder to achieve.

I also like being back into that power trio thing because it causes everyone in the band to work harder, you have a lot of room to fill. And if you’re the guitarist in that band and you don’t have another guitar player to rely on, you really have to be thinking on your feet. It gives you a lot of freedom but it also puts a lot of responsibility on you as well.

What projects do you have percolating?

AB: This week I have rehearsals with Eric and Julie and I'm finishing up the Bears' new record. It’s our fifth record together. Beyond that, I’m working quietly with Robert Fripp on something called Project Fix that will be all improvised music. We do want to play some shows, but the long term idea is that by doing things together we can generate the building blocks to pull something together for the next King Crimson record, even though I’m on drums.

I feel a little funny being on drums, but Robert says that he needs it to be me so he can loosen up enough so he can create something. He’s playing brilliant guitar stuff and I’m struggling playing drums. With the v-drums, I have my bass drum and cymbals and things and I sequence the bass lines. So, I’m the drummer and the bass player. We’re a trio of two! [Laughs]!

Related Links
Adrian Belew
The Adrian Belew Power Trio
King Crimson

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