Adrian Belew: Power Trios and Crimson Heads

Since 1977, Adrian Belew has been a guitar and songwriting innovator in the cutting edge rock field. Spending time in bands with Frank Zappa, David Bowie and Talking Heads, he's also clocked serious studio time with other artists including Paul Simon, Nine Inch Nails, Tom Tom Club, Tori Amos and Herbie Hancock. He's fronted the various incarnations of perennial art rockers King Crimson since 1981, as well as putting together several of his own solo projects.

Belew has continued his prolific output since 2005 by releasing four solo records just months apart titled Side One (2005) through Side Three (2006), all on the Sanctuary label, and Side Four (Independent, 2007). He has appeared on Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts Part I-IV (Null, 2008), and has been touring extensively with his new power trio featuring the young wunderkind brother and sister rhythm section of drummer Eric and bassist Julie Slick.

Belew has also just completed an August, 2008 mini-tour with a reformed King Crimson. At the two opening performances at the Belcourt Theater in Nashville, Belew appeared very much the leader, guiding the band through its labyrinthine arrangements with a sure hand and performing with the same confidence he has shown with Crimson for 27 years.

Chapter Index

1. The Power Trio
2. Guitar Talk
3. The State of the Music Industry
4. Side Four and The Bears
5. King Crimson
6. History
7. Frank Zappa
8. David Bowie
9. Talking Heads
10. Joining King Crimson
11. Back to Bowie
12. Back to Crimson
13. Painting and Improvisation

The Power Trio

AAJ: The 2008 Power Trio did a west coast run earlier this year and a few east coast shows, and now you're starting another tour here in Nashville. Will there be some new songs performed on this tour?

AB: Yes, in fact Eric and Julie, the brother and sister team I have in the trio, are coming here from Philadelphia on Saturday, and we have three days of rehearsal planned to incorporate some new material. A few things that are from my catalogue, a couple of songs I'd really like to try some stuff with, and then one brand new piece of music that's pretty epic, that I'm sure we'll be working on for all three days. Mainly for this whole year I'm dedicating myself to the power trio touring, and a little bit to King Crimson touring too, this summer. Most of August will be dedicated to King Crimson time. At the same time, I'm trying to develop new material for the power trio; I'd like to make a brand new record, half of which would be the power trio and half of which would be new solo pieces that I'll do by myself.

AAJ: Actually, that was going to be my next question: is there a future studio album with the power trio?

AB: Yeah; [for] the next record I'd like to have maybe five major pieces on it that are for the power trio. I've already got three that I'm writing. We're already doing one of them live, it's called "E," and the new one is called "Planet E," and those are both instrumentals, but I have a few songs that I'm working on too, with them, and it's turning out really powerfully and really well. I wanted to get them into the live show before we actually brought them into the studio, but you know we've only done one record together, which was all live. And I'm really anxious to see what we all can do in the studio.

AAJ: The first time I saw you with Eric and Julie was right here in Nashville last year, and I couldn't believe that two players so young could take the Bruford and Levin parts on some of the King Crimson material and more or less reinvent them.

AB: They're very special people and players; they amaze me all the time. They've got to be the best young players in the States right now, in my opinion. I just don't know where you could get a better bassist-drummer duo, and both separately, they're just amazing individuals, really gifted people. You know, everybody refers to them as, "the kids,' but when you're with them all the time, as I am, you see that they're really not kids at all, they're very smart, adult human beings, who have absorbed so much music, more than a lot of grown, mature musicians that I know.

Eric and Julie know all The Beatles' catalogue—everything that preceded that even—and all the Zappa and Bowie catalogues. Their wealth of information came from their father—he had a collection of records and a collection of bass guitars in his living room, and he had their bass and their drums set up there and he just showed them, "Here, try this, learn this, learn that," you know, with thousands of records worth of stuff since they were little kids. So it's their musical background and depth that really amazes me, and I'm really curious to see now what happens when we invent something totally new. Not taking Tony Levin's and Bill Bruford's parts and redoing them.

 

Power Trio l:r: Julie Slick, Adrian Belew, Eric Slick

AAJ: I understand you were connected with Eric and Julie Slick through Paul Green's School of Rock?

AB: That's how I met them. Originally, I went up to Philadelphia, the original School of Rock, where the founder, Paul Green, invited me for a seminar with his current students. This was two years ago and, while I was there, he said, "I want you to hear my best graduates, I have these two graduates, Eric and Julie Slick, they were in the all-star band for several years, and they're just the best players that I know of."

So he brought them in and we played together a little bit and that's how it happened. It just so happened that I had really been planning and looking for a long time for a trio. I had tried one or two trios, combinations that didn't work for me, and I had just about given up on that idea, even though I had made all this interesting material for it. I spent a lot of time developing the idea of looping guitars so you have kind of a fourth player and putting that into a trio format, and just about the time I thought, "Well, this is really not going to be a trio, I'm not going to get that to happen." I found them, and it was unbelievable, turned around just on a dime.

AAJ: In 2006, I caught some of your live trio performances with Mike Gallaher and Mike Hodges. How does this compare?

AB: Well, there are two differences with Eric and Julie, beyond anything else I've done. One is the energy they bring. I think that's the main difference that makes the material seem so fresh and new, it's because there's this dynamic energy coming off the stage from them. And, of course, it prompts me to join in, and I feel younger than ever when I play with them. And then the other thing is just their own inventiveness and uniqueness. People just can't believe it when they hear Julie Slick play bass guitar, she's a little girl who plays in her bare feet, and when you hear what she's doing it's so powerful and so correct.

AAJ: She seems, when I watch her play, so serene—almost disconnected from this sound that's so enormous.

AB: Yeah, I know, but lately she's changed that a little bit. I mean Eric is a phenomenal drummer, he's always been demonstrative. You watch him because he's doing all kinds of amazing things. But Julie used to stand there, kind of "the queen of cool," but since she got her new bass, a Lakeland bass that she's always wanted, it really has changed her. I've noticed it on the last tour that we did. She started moving around on stage and she's a lot more animated. I kind of like both versions of Julie.

AAJ: I definitely look forward to this show you've got coming up at Mercy Lounge [in Nashville].

AB: But this is going to be interesting because I rehearse three days with the trio, the next day King Crimson arrives. We rehearse for a whole week here in Nashville in a larger rehearsal place, and then the day that that ends, the next day, we play the Mercy Lounge, so on the 27th [July, 2008] I'll be practicing with King Crimson and on the 28th I'll be playing with the trio.

AAJ: You're going to have to revert your arrangements!

AB: So that's true, they are a little bit different because King Crimson is playing some of the same material that the trio plays, but we play it a little differently, so I'm going to really have my thinking cap on the first couple of nights.

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Guitar Talk

AAJ: So, will we ever see the Fender Stratocaster again, or is it Parker Fly guitars from now on?

AB: I love Strats. I think they're fabulous guitars, I always thought their balance and their playability was just, almost perfect, and then I got to the Parker Fly, and it is perfect. So, I don't know, it's always possible to break out the Strats again. I love Strats and I could see myself playing any number of guitars.

If you run in the next room, you'd see that I've got a lot of different varieties of guitars hanging up on the wall. When I play them—little by little, one at a time—I'll pull out the Gretsch, and I'll pull out the Rickenbacher and stuff, but no matter what I do, I am totally married to the Parker Fly. It makes me play better. That's the best comment I can make. Not only is the design phenomenal, it stays perfectly in tune, absolutely no dead notes, the neck is just incredible, the tremolo arm is fascinating, you could do anything. But, it just makes me play better.

I think it's the smoothness of the neck, see, because what they've done with the Parker Fly that's so unique is that they've cut away everything that's not needed on the guitar which cuts the piece of wood down to four pounds. That's why it's called a Fly. Normally, a neck that thin would just break right in half as soon as you put the pressure of the strings on it. What they've done, though, on the back of the guitar, before they paint it and everything, they bake on a very thin carbon poly-compound that makes the strength of the wood ten thousand times stronger, so you could actually stand on top of that guitar neck, I've been told (I'm not gonna try it) and nothing would happen. So, it's because of that it stays perfectly in pitch, it never varies, it's so thin and beautiful to play. It'd be hard for me to get away from the Parker Flys now. I think I've finally found my muse.

AAJ: I seem to recall seeing you not too long ago, maybe it was a Bears show, and I thought you had Fender amps?

AB: No, I've always pretty much used, in the last few years, this combination—at the top, a pair of Johnson 150 millenniums, at the bottom, a pair of Line 6 Vettas.

 

Adrian Belew's guitar collection

When you saw me with The Bears it was probably just with the Johnsons. They do look a little like Fenders. About 80 per cent of what I do comes from the Johnson amps, really. I add the Line 6 in for extra sounds and overdubbing sounds live, and then this Bose setup, which is absolutely fantastic. I love this setup, called the Bose L1, these columns that you see with the bass cabinets on each side, those are for the high fidelity things that I want to use, like my keyboards, my synthesizer sounds, and my loops. So it keeps them separate from the actual guitar. So you have really a quad guitar system there, both of those amps being stereos, with stereo sounds in there, and then a stereo high fidelity system. So really it's like three guitar rigs in one. It keeps my feet busy.

AAJ: I noticed you were having to sit for part of the show.

AB: Well, yeah, well let me just demonstrate since we're sitting in front of my rig. There are many times when I'm doing something with this pedal and I'll have to do this pedal too. This [pedal] is controlling the Johnson and this [pedal] is controlling the effects. You can't do it standing up. So, there are times now when I get to that point I just sit down. Plus, I'll tell you the truth, I've learned sitting down you play a lot better. You have a lot more control over what you're doing. You know, I get excited, I still want to stand up and sing and jump around.

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The State of the Music Industry

AAJ: To change the subject a little bit, I wanted to read you a quote here, that the most recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Billy Joel, said to John Mellencamp. Mellencamp had suffered some heart attacks and was a buddy of Joel's. Mellencamp was getting inducted into the Hall of Fame and Joel says, "Well John, congratulations, not only have you made it through some heart attacks, but you've outlived the music industry." What I'm leading to is, CD sales are down by a large percentage, file sharing is not going to go away, Radiohead and your buddy Trent Reznor have been giving away records or downloads for free. I wanted you to discuss your view of the music industry as it is now. I know you've been selling downloads on your website.

AB: For the last year I've been tempted to restructure what we do by getting more and more involved in the internet and the online store and blogging, and having a weekly download of a rare cut that was never released. That's my attempt at joining in with the new way of doing things. But it's not all that new to me because, since 1992, I've had my own record label, Adrian Belew Presents, which a lot of my stuff came out on because there were no major labels interested in what I did. My music doesn't really do much on radio, it's always been a little too out there, so I've always had a good strong live performance aspect to what I do, and a following because of that. That's where I've been able to sell most of my CDs. All of those trends that are happening now for everybody else, they're not that new to me.

AAJ: So it wasn't a big surprise.

AB: No, not a big surprise. Now, giving away free downloads, that's a different thing, that I think you can only do that if you are somebody like Radiohead or Trent Reznor, who you know you've got a million people there who are going to do something and so you know you're going to get some money back out of that. Now, if you're like me and you sell two thousand records, well you've got to sell every one you can sell.

AAJ: Is that a typical number, say, when Side Four came out?

AB: I wanna say Side Four sold about three thousand copies, yeah.

AAJ: And that's pretty typical for an Adrian Belew release?

AB: It is now. Not years ago, with eighty thousand records typical.

AAJ: Was that when you were on a major label?

AB: That was when you're on a major label, and the funniest thing is you made no money being on a major label, selling eighty thousand records. You sell three thousand records, and you do it the right way—you go out and you tour and you sell them to the fans who are right there—and you make all the money. And it's a lot more money than you would ever see from the record labels.

AAJ: That's a great irony, isn't it?

AB: It's truly what we all knew—that the whole time everybody was being recorded and put out on these big record labels, we were being screwed blind; everybody knew it. It was the old school way of doing it from the fifties, there are books written about it, saying how everyone is being ripped off, and always have been ripped off, so that's kind of why, way back in the nineties, I said, "Well, I'd rather make all the money, even if it's less sales, and I'd rather have all the control and do everything myself,," "cause I never found anyone in the music business who understood how to market what I do, never once. I mean, I've met a lot of really smart people in the music business, and with many different record labels—EMI, Virgin, Warner Bros, Atlantic, Island, MCA... On all those labels, in various associations I've had—King Crimson, The Bears, my solo records—no one ever figured out how to market what I do. So, I figure, I guess it's just pretty weird and I'll market it myself.

AAJ: When you were cutting tracks on the Ghosts I-IV record most recently, did Trent tell you, "Hey I'm gonna let some of these tracks go for free," did you guys have a discussion of that?

AB: Actually, what I discussed was Trent was very brief, because he said to me, "This is a secret. I don't know what I'm actually going to do here, and I don't know what I'm going to do with the music, maybe it'll be a soundtrack, maybe it'll be a record, maybe I'll use it as downloads, but at any rate I wanna keep it secret, so I don't wanna say much about it, and I don't want you to say anything to anyone about it,, "cause I want it to come out as a surprise." So, I didn't ask any more questions. The nice thing that transpired was that he said, "You know, I feel like you're helping me write some of this." So I had some writer's credit on some of the music and that's usually not the way it works. If I go and I play a lot of wild stuff on Trent Reznor's album, I don't necessarily expect that that makes me a writer. Most of the time you're paid and that's it, but in this case he said no, I'd like you to be more involved, stay here for a longer time and try to write some of it with me.

I really appreciated that, it was the most generous aspect of the offer and for me personally, working with Trent is always eye-opening, I love the way he makes records. His production is phenomenal, and where else do you get to play what I play on his records?

AAJ: Yeah, no doubt. I noticed he did something that I haven't seen anybody do—he had more and more deluxe versions of the record including one on Blu-Ray, you know, that's post SACD and DVD audio, that's as high resolution as it gets.

AB: It is, and he sent me the box set, which I think sells for three or four hundred dollars, it's just incredible, you know, a lot of artwork, a lot of special things and I think that's the way you should approach it because I look at myself and, on a lesser scale than Trent Reznor, I'm an artist that has a small appeal, you know, small people, but it's a very high-scale thing, so...

AAJ: Niche?

AB: I guess that's the word, yeah. Where you really should offer a lot of versions of what you do, and you should offer it in different scales, you know you should have a three hundred dollar box set or you know a ten dollar giveaway, you know, or a free download, or something. Boutique! That's the word I was thinking of, I'm a boutique artist, as a boutique artist, you're on a different level, you're not out there trying to sell a hundred thousand records anymore, you're trying to do the most high quality presentation of your music that you can. I'm very careful with that. I don't just put out everything that I do and I don't put out anything unless I've done the artwork perfectly and I'm totally happy with the package. I never want to be in a position when I look back and say, oh we kind of slacked on that one, it wasn't as good, you know.

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Side Four and The Bears

AAJ: On the Side Four record, for example, was that recorded in one night or was that picked from multiple shows?

AB: That was all one show. On a very cold, snowy, two foot snow night in Dayton, Ohio in February.

AAJ: Did you plan to record multiple shows?

AB: I planned to record three shows, and we did, we recorded three shows in a row. I actually thought the next night—which was in Cincinnati, where I grew up—I thought that would be the show. But by the time we got to Cincinnati there was a blizzard, so the audience wasn't really there, the show didn't sound as good. The Dayton, Ohio, show, however, had a really nice energy about it, and it was also in a room that just really sounded nice-a nice warm wooden room where you could hear everything, you could hear the excitement of the audience and feel it. The performance was surprising because we didn't know we were being recorded that night. Our engineer John was just trying it out that night.

AAJ: Well he definitely got good sounds. I guess you lucked out.

AB: Well, you see he was getting ready for the next night, which we thought we were going to be recording.

AAJ: So this was more like a dress rehearsal.

AB: Yeah, and he said, "Well, I just turned the tape on just to make sure, to get the levels and see how it was," and that's the nice thing about the trio, it in a way mixes itself onstage because everyone's very aware. You have to be very careful, because you're playing sometimes to loops that I make right then and there, so you have to be very careful, and you can't just play louder than ever one night . . .

AAJ: And you can't change tempo . . .

AB: No, you can't change tempos and things, and you have to really be precise.

AAJ: I heard a rumor that the last Bears tour was going to be the final Bears tour. Is that true? It was so short.

AB: Well you know, what we did with The Bears is we went and we looked at the markets and we went after all the offers and we realized well, to make a whole tour out of it, it would only makes sense to do the Midwest really, these dates here make sense, and we'll come and have some money in our pockets and we won't have killed ourselves. The other guys in The Bears work regular jobs, and they can't just take off a month and go touring around, they can say, "Well, we can do it for two weeks and get a two week absence from our jobs."

So that's why we hand selected the best dates available in a geographic area. We could have maybe done the same on the east coast, probably not on the west coast, but in the Midwest it seemed the strongest, so we went there. As far as it being the last tour, I would never say that. My relationship with The Bears is: every few years something happens, every three to five years everybody says, "I've got some songs, you got some songs?" "Yeah, I got some." So I never really say, "That's it," there's no reason to.

AAJ: Wow, what a shame people as talented as Rob Fetters and the other Bears would have to work a day job. They should be out playing music all the time.

AB: Yeah, Bob Nyswonger is an incredible bassist who is a real estate agent. He's a world class bassist, and he can play with anybody. And yet, he's not able to make enough money at it. It's sad.

AAJ: The man's bass tone is just huge.

AB: He's a fabulous player. They all three are. They are all great writers. That was the whole idea behind The Bears. Let's get four great songwriters to sit around and focus on writing on certain kinds of songs. Now I will say this: I've lost my interest in writing three minute pop songs. It may come back. But currently, I'm not interested anymore. I feel there's no real place for it in the world. It's already been done. I don't want to do it as I'm a little too old for that now. I don't want to write songs about romance, etc. I want to continue down the vein that I have with King Crimson and the Power Trio, which is exploding music, powerful music. Taking it out there. Making it as unique and powerful as you can. And it doesn't always result in a three or four minute kind of song. These days I'm more excited about what you can do outside of that format.

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King Crimson

AAJ: Let's discuss the Discipline Global Mobile record label. There have been some excellent releases from them lately. There has been Collector's Club Volume 37 (DGM Live, 2008), which is a show from The Pier in New York City in 1982, The Collectable King Crimson Volumes Two (DGM Live, 2007) and Three (DGM Live, 2008), which focus on the 1982 and 1996 lineups, and a smashing 2003 show from Japan recently made available for download. (Two more shows from the August, 1995 tour of Texas have been made available for download along with 2 shows in Atlanta from 1995, plus a show from this year's run in Chicago.) What do you think about hearing performances 20 years later—how do you feel about that?

AB: I have mixed feelings about it. I would never criticize it because I know it is the backbone of what Robert Fripp feels he has to do to survive in the music business. He is taking care of the legacy of King Crimson. He takes it out of the hands of the bootleggers. He has broadened the spectrum of what is out there and is available to the fans.

But, being one of the player for 27 years, sometimes I'm embarrassed by them. The recordings are not always as precise and beautiful as I would like them to be. And as you mentioned, I didn't know for example that we were going to use the rehearsals from Woodstock in 1994 as a recording. If I would have known that, I would have been playing on a different level. I was trying to work out things. I don't always like people hearing what I play when I'm not sure of myself.

AAJ: It was a work in progress.

AB: Yeah, that's how I am about my releases. I wait until they are perfected. King Crimson doesn't do that now. We release just about anything. [Laughs] But as I said, I don't want to criticize it. It's not my record label. I have nothing to do with it. Every now and then, I might receive a little money from it. Probably not much. [laughs] But it's Robert Fripp's thing. I don't' want to criticize his thing. I'm glad there is somebody out there watching out for King Crimson's legacy because it's a big part of what I've done with my life. But I mostly watch out for my own private performances.

AAJ: But some of those performances...

AB: King Crimson can have some amazing evenings and some incredibly bad train wrecks too.

AAJ: Well, I don't think he has released very many train wrecks to my ears. I've been listening to some of the releases from the catalog—for example, some shows from 1996, which included six-piece performances of tunes like "Waiting Man" and "Discipline." I know this lineup didn't perform these songs very often, and I found these particular performances very moving and escaping their bounds.

AB: I think it's wonderful, that aspect of it. That the listener can get a bigger dose of what we did than just what was done in the studio. And King Crimson has always considered itself more a live vehicle than a studio vehicle. So on any given night... you never know what could happen.

AAJ: While we are on King Crimson, in 2003, after the departure of bass and stick player Trey Gunn, did you have fears that the band might never play again?

AB: I always consider that it might be the last time. About two years ago, around 2006, Robert Fripp had his engineer, John Sinks, come and get all his stuff out of my studio here in Nashville. He usually keeps a lot of his stuff here. I figured, "Well that's it. Robert's moved all his stuff out of my house so he must be done with me." [laughs] In fact, he told me recently that he thought at that point, that was it, he was done with King Crimson, maybe forever. But he doesn't come right out with it. He never tells you. So you have to kind of guess for yourself. It really kind of left me high and dry. I had planned on a whole year's worth of work. And suddenly, whew, I realized there was no King Crimson.

AAJ: Good time to put a power trio together.

AB: Yeah, fortunately I was able to make that leap there. If it hadn't worked, though, I'd probably be upset about it. But I'm not. I know Robert pretty well. I've been working with him for 27 years, and he's got his own mind set about things. And once he decides something, he goes that way. Then, he might undecide it. [Laughs] He is consistently inconsistent.

AAJ: If you know this, what was Fripp's revelation that he could get King Crimson back together for 2008?

AB: He told me that he realized that bringing [Porcupine Tree member] Gavin Harrison as a second drummer would bring new life to the material, and that excited him. Now, whether it has anything to do with beyond that—if he's wanting to make new music, or it's a making money thing, I really have no idea. At this point, I'm taking it for face value that it's time for King Crimson to do a few shows this year and maybe next year does the same.

AAJ: I know you've already had some rehearsals. Robert Fripp keeps the camera going and posts the shots in his web diary on dgmlive.com. How have the rehearsals been going so far?

AB: I guess they've gone okay. We've learned things faster than Robert thought we would. I thought they we would learn them quicker, but he thought it would take a long time. I think Tony and Gavin maybe surprised him a bit because they did their homework and really knew the material. I don't want to say too much, but I'm a little curious about how it's going to come off live because at this point we're only doing material that everyone has heard different versions of the band do. There's nothing new for the most part, maybe some drum duet type things that are new, but nothing else new.

And, it concerns me only that if we go out and really ace it, then that will be great. But if we go out and sound like every other version of the band, then what's the point? So I'm concerned at this point. And if you ask me this in September, I'll be able to tell you. And I think what I will tell you in September is , "Wow, of course we were hot and I loved every minute of it."

AAJ: What has it been like with Gavin Harrison on the drums, so far?

AB: Gavin is sensational. He's a wonderful guy. Fabulous player. Like we said earlier, he really did his homework. Never floundered for one minute. Can do amazing thing with his feet and hands. [Laughs] And, I think importantly for Robert, Gavin's English. Robert felt like he had lost the English side of King Crimson, which I can totally understand because in my experience, long before I was ever in the band, it was a totally English band. AAJ: A very British band.

AB: Very British. Very English in its thinking and terminology and its lyricism, its background, its culture. I know it's been somewhat changed over the years by the infusion of Americanism—people like myself and Tony Levin. But I'm happy to see it go back to the English shores as much as possible, I think that's where it belongs.

AAJ: I thought a recent post by Robert on his web diary was just hilarious. He says "Here's Adrian's basement, and here's Adrian coming downstairs to show me my part on, "Level Five."" I thought that was just great—you showing him his part. So, am I ever going to hear "Larks' Tongues In Aspic Parts I-IV" and "Level Five" in the same show?

AB: Wow. I think not, probably just because it would be too much of the same.

AAJ: 45 minutes of...

AB: Yeah, I mean truly—it's the same piece of material being redone different ways. Same tempo area, same scale usage. So if you backed them all up together, would probably be too much of a good thing.

AAJ: I understand. Where did he get "Larks' Tongues In Aspic"? I always wondered... why did he call it that?

AB: Ah.... I don't know. Many of those titles came from Peter Sinfield, the lyricist who was in the band at that point. [Editorial note: Sinfield had left the band by the time of Larks' Tongues in Aspic (DGM Live, 1973). According to Wikipedia, "The title was invented by percussionist Jamie Muir and is meant to signify what he heard in this album's music: something fragile and delicate (larks' tongues) encased in something corrosive and acidic (aspic)."].

Sinfield is the one who came up with "In The Court of the Crimson King." I believe he is the man who named the band King Crimson. I could be wrong about this history, I don't know. Those are things that he claims.

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