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Adrian Belew
tourdates
offical Web site
"I put my solo career on the backburner for about four or five years now so that I could get King Crimson and the Bears both up and running again."
"...it was such a big crowd [at Bonnaroo], and they were so happy, and covered in mud, and you could tell they were really into the show — as soon as I got on the stage, I was really charged up."
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8.11.04
Running Wild with the Lone Rhinoceros: Adrian Belew Talks Music
by Greg Prato
Whether you know it or not, you probably own an album or two that features the exceptional guitar talents of Adrian Belew. One of the most underrated guitarists of the past 25 years, Belew got his first break in 1976 when Frank Zappa invited the unknown musician to join his touring band. From there, Belew recorded/toured with the likes of David Bowie and the Talking Heads, before accepting Robert Fripp's offer to join supergroup King Crimson in 1980 as vocalist/guitarist. Along the way, Belew was able to balance his Crimson endeavors with a solo career and a gig with power pop outfit the Bears, as well as lending his six-string talents to albums by such varied artists as Paul Simon, Nine Inch Nails, Herbie Hancock, Laurie Anderson, and Bela Fleck, among others. In the near future, the off-the-wall, instantly recognizable guitar work of Adrian Belew will even be heard on a music album by William Shatner.
Speaking from his home studio in Nashville, Tennessee, Belew recently gave us the scoop on his many upcoming projects, which will keep him busy for the rest of this year and probably all of 2005.
Musictoday: So let's start with what you're up to currently — I heard you have a lot of solo projects on the horizon.
Adrian Belew: Over the last, say, four years, while I've been touring and recording with King Crimson and the Bears, I've also had some occasions where I've been able to spend a few weeks at a time on my own music. So gradually over four years' time I've been piecing together different records. When I got to a certain point with it, I realized that it fell into two camps. One was music for a power trio and the other was more like loops and beat boxes. So I decided to make two separate records of those different kinds of material that I was gathering. The first record, which is the power trio record, I decided to invite Les Claypool (Primus, bass) and Danny Carey (Tool, drums), so it's kinda a frenetic, wild trio, where everyone is playing hard. [laughs] And there's a vocalist, which is me. The second record is more soothing music, like long synthesizer pads and things that take longer to develop. It's all songs, but there are bits of music as well. It shows just a completely different side of what I've been learning to do in the last few years. When I got deep into both of those records, and we're almost finished with them, I realized I had other material that had popped up in the meantime that didn't fit either category; the third record is a lot of different styles. So now what I intend to do is to release one at time over the next year and a half, and to do some touring possibly with a trio — try to go around the world with that. I believe they're coming out on Sanctuary, although the deal is not done for sure yet, I think that will be the record label. Until I know that, I won't know the release dates and the touring schedule. I'm extremely excited about it — I put my solo career on the backburner for about four or five years now so that I could get King Crimson and the Bears both up and running again. King Crimson, we went out and did a lot of touring the last few years, and several new records and DVD's, and the same on a smaller scale for the Bears. It didn't leave me that much time to concentrate on solo work, so I had to do it bits and pieces. In the end it all worked out.
Mt: Do the solo albums have titles?
AB: I've just been calling them Side One, Side Two, and Side Three. When I went to Sanctuary they said, 'Well, we like those titles.' What I'm going to do also, is in the last year and a half I've started painting — acrylic paintings on canvas. Something I've never even tried before, but due to an incident, sparked my imagination. I just took up painting and I've become rabid about painting now, so I've got about sixty paintings! And I think what I'm going to do is, there are a series of paintings that look similar enough that I'm going to have each one of the record covers be one of those different paintings. I think when you see the three records together you'll realize they're supposed to be together. And that'll kinda tempt the buyer to collect all three.
Mt: Getting back to working with Les and Danny, how did that come together?
AB: Well, Les and I have met over the years, he's professed to be a big fan of mine and King Crimson; and Danny with Tool, King Crimson played for about a month with Tool — I think this is about two years ago we did a tour, and they're also big fans of King Crimson. I had met both of those people, and I just felt that they were the right players; they both have unique styles. And for a power trio you really need players who can play more than what normally would be played. You want a drummer who's really athletic, and a bass player who's busy and has a lot of stylization, and the same is true for the guitar playing, which is pretty much over the top too. [laughs] So I called Les at first, and he recommended Danny, which fit perfectly to me because I already knew Danny a little bit too. I have a studio out here in Nashville, I usually do everything here, but because of equipment things — I mean, Danny Carey's got a huge monstrous drums set that's made out of cymbals, melted down cymbals, so it's a brass drum set. It probably weighs six tons, and in lieu of shipping it here to Nashville it would have cost more than the entire project. [laughs] I decided to go to California and work in Les' studio which he has up in the San Francisco area, and Danny came up with his drums. We worked about ten days, it was really fun, we did a lot of stuff, and obviously hit it off really well. Since then I've played with Les a couple of times — recently at the Bonnaroo show I sat in with Primus and played some songs with them. And Danny Carey recently was the opening act for the last King Crimson tour.
Mt: How was the Bonnaroo experience of playing with Primus in front of so many people?
AB: We went on so late in the evening; it was actually 2:30 in the morning. I was a little out of my mind, I go to bed at 11:00, so 2:30 in the morning is kinda late for me. But when you look out there and you see the crowd, and it was such a big crowd, and they were so happy, and covered in mud, and you could tell they were really into the show — as soon as I got on the stage I was really charged up. It's so fun to play with Les because he likes to jam, keep things loose. He's been playing a couple of Crimson songs for a long time, so we played one of those [“Thela Hun Ginjeet”], and he wanted to play one of my earliest solo songs, which is called “The Lone Rhino,” and he suggested that I try one of their songs, which is called “Blue Collared Tweekers.” All three songs were a lot of fun, in fact a friend of mine just brought over a live recording from the night, and it sounded very good — much better than I thought [laughs].
Mt: Is there any chance of the Claypool/Carey power trio touring together?
AB: I don't think I'll be able to get Les and Danny to do the touring because they're as busy as I am, and I don't expect them to sacrifice all the stuff they're doing. There was talk that we'll do a project in the studio, which will be a couple of weeks in a studio somewhere. But I don't know about touring. For touring, what I'm planning on doing is seeking out and trying to find some like-minded musicians, players who are maybe even undiscovered — hopefully in this area here. So I'm looking to audition some great drummers and bass players, and see what happens. But that's a little off in the future right now; I'm not really centered on that yet.
Mt: There were rumors that the auditions may serve as a reality show on VH-1. ?
AB: That's just a rumor at this point. There has been talk of that — there was a producer who brought that idea forward to us, and I don't think it's moved any further than that. So in my mind it's not a reality yet.
Mt: Is King Crimson currently recording a new album?
AB: No, King Crimson is not recording a new album. What we are doing is we're taking a small hiatus while Robert Fripp is touring Europe with the G3 Tour, and we've incorporated Tony Levin back into the band. Tony, as many of our fans will know, is the original bass player from King Crimson, probably one of the best bassists in the world. And he is on tour with Peter Gabriel, who he normally tours with. So the fact that Robert and Tony both had prior engagements meant that we couldn't do anything, pretty much, over this summer. So we got together, I think it was in May, and we learned the material needed to go and tour, like twenty songs at least, with Tony in the band, and Pat Mastelotto as the drummer, Robert Fripp, and myself. Just so that we know that we are centered and we can go out and play anytime. And then we decided, well, since everyone's got other things to do, let's regroup again here in my studio in September. So on September 5th, we are going to start writing new material here in my studio.
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