“David Bowie and Brian Eno used to laugh at me, saying: ‘You’re not supposed to be able to play that!’” Adrian Belew on Frank Zappa’s lessons, Robert Fripp’s synth guitar, and what’s coming up with Steve Vai

Since his days alongside Frank Zappa, David Bowie and Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew has refused to remain static. Now, at 74, the Kentucky-born Strato-slinger is at it again, this time with his latest and entirely mega project, Beat.

You’ll have heard the news, which Fripp leaked a few weeks before the band formally announced themselves in April. And you’ll be preparing for wild prog rock dreams to come true when Belew hits the stage with Steve Vai, Tony Levin and Danny Carey to celebrate King Crimson’s well-loved ‘80s albums Discipline (1981), Beat (1982) and Three of a Perfect Pair (1984).

Though Fripp declined an invitation to participate, Belew was glad to receive his blessing, because he holds his ex bandmate in the highest esteem.

“It was a great pairing,” Belew says. “We could interlock our styles of guitar playing – but we could also go completely apart from each other. It was wonderful; I knew what he was going to play and vice versa. We did three world tours; and strangely, those records are now coming back into people’s minds again. I think they’re as fresh as ever.”

Taking on King Crimson music without Fripp is challenging, but Belew believes he and Vai are up for it. “The internet is already full of comments and thoughts, so it’s a lot of pressure. I think we’ll do great. Steve and I will have to do the same thing that Robert and I did – Steve and I are going to be guitar partners. I’m absolutely certain he can do it.”

“He’s on tour now with Joe Satriani. I texted him yesterday and I said, ‘I’m thinking about adding these two songs. Did you happen to bring that book of transcriptions?’ And he said, ‘It’s sitting right here beside me on the bus.’ We’ll dedicate ourselves to trying to bring this music from where it once was to where we are now.”

You, along with several other alumni, have been celebrating the music of David Bowie lately. 

“I sometimes join the large expedition, where they put a new band together. I’ve had a lot of chances to go back through that era and listen through it again. What happened to me from ’77 through about ’82, with Frank Zappa straight into Bowie straight into Talking Heads straight into King Crimson, I was traveling at light speed!”

You came in during a pretty experimental period alongside the D.A.M. Trio. What was that like?

“It’s hard to remember because so many things happened so fast. It was like I was halfway dreaming, halfway awake; I just could’t focus – like, ‘This is what’s happening here. Not two years ago, I was making $75 a night, if I made that much, playing in bars. And now here I am at Madison Square Garden with David Bowie!’

“I was lucky to fall into that era of his music; the Brian Eno trilogy, as they call it. They were stretching things and trying a lot of new things, and I seemed a good fit for that. They used to laugh at me, saying: ‘You’re not supposed to be able to play that!’”

It must have been a trip going from working with Bowie after someone like Frank Zappa.

“Frank’s work, for me, was life lessons – how to be in the music business, be a professional touring musician and travel around the world. Maybe even, you know, make records or films; we did both of those.

“It was how to how to run your own business – so many things that weren’t really related to the notes and the sound. But of course, learning five hours of Frank Zappa material was a 24/7 job for me the whole time!

“I was catching up because I was the only one in the band who didn't read music. Frank wanted you to play his music correctly and consistently. He wasn’t really there for you to say, ‘Hey, I’d like to try this. How about that?’

“That was not Frank’s way. He had everything the way he wanted, and he needed people to play it right, be on time, and not come in half-drunk or any of those stupid things.”

How did working with Zappa prepare you for what was to come with Bowie?

“It was a school and I graduated from it. Before that point no one had really shown me anything – not even how to play guitar. I worked things out myself. To have someone of Frank’s stature, his genius, telling me what to do and showing me the ropes, was more important than even being in the band. It was incredible tutoring.”

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“David wanted someone to just go wild on guitar. That’s what he needed; Frank didn’t need that from me. He needed me to sing a lot and play his parts. David needed me to grow wings and fly away. And he encouraged that all the time.

“You can see in some of the videos that, while I’m taking a solo, David’s standing with his arms crossed and beaming like a Cheshire cat because he just loves it. He loved to hear people go wild like that.

“And it fit in with what he was doing: David’s music was always strangely mainstream and yet really off-the-wall, especially during that period.”

I imagine your previous experience of working things out on your own lent itself to going off the wall with him. 

“Absolutely. I was ready to go. I didn’t have a lot of titles or sounds to choose from, but I was able to combine them in different ways with some of the hand techniques I was using, like bending the neck and crazy things like that.

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“It all came across as kind of a new picture; I don’t think anyone had heard or seen that. It was another thing David loved – he wanted somebody that could kind of match his stage thing, not just another player standing up there playing their instrument.”

Did your gear change much as you transitioned from Zappa to Bowie?

“Oh, yeah – everything changed. When I was with Frank, I had just come from nowhere; I had no equipment to speak of. I auditioned for Frank through a little Pignose [battery-powered] amp. But by the time I got to David, I had discovered a the Roland Jazz Chorus [JC-120], and that became my amp.

“That really changed things. It was a completely different way of playing guitar. Strangely, it’s solid-state, very clean, and Japanese-sounding. But there were other things you could do – you could warm it up and pair it with some of the Electro-Harmonix pedals.

“One day I realized that if I walked over in front of the Roland Jazz Chorus, a Stereo Chorus amp, I could suddenly point the guitar at the front of the amp and move it around, and it would make this incredible oscillating sound.

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“I could take the chorus setting and move it back and forth between that and vibrato and so forth. It’s a sound you cannot possibly get – no pedal in the world will make it. It’s a natural occurrence between two speakers being in chorus together. I used that a lot of early records.”

How did you take the rig you used with Bowie and push it forward with King Crimson?

“The main thing that changed from that first period from David to Talking Heads to King Crimson was that I went to Japan. I met the people at Roland and they said, ‘We have a new thing – a guitar synthesizer.’ I’d been dying to have something akin to what keyboard players could do for 10 years, and they gave me one.”

You were one of the earliest adopters of the guitar synth, right?

“I’m not certain but I’m pretty sure I had the first one in New York, as they weren’t available there yet. When I joined King Crimson, Robert had a Roland JC-120 and also the synthesizer; it was actually the second one they made, but it was the first one that anyone ever used.

“The first one has been a bit too much – it was like a big Farfisa organ. The second one is the blue one, the GR-300. So much of the King Crimson sound of the ‘80s came from that one device.

“It was a simple instrument: you could only do maybe five or six things with it, and you had to manually tune all the different oscillators. You couldn’t save a sound! It was the era before things got much more digitized.”

You’re primarily known as a Strat guy, so the guitar synth must have been a shock to the system.

“Even if you just put it with the guitar, you had a very unusual sound. The guitar didn’t sound like a normal guitar and that really changed things. So the next thing I did in that period was my first solo record, Lone Rhino, using all the things I had coming from David, Talking Heads and King Crimson.”

What was that setup like?

“The Strat and maybe four, five or six little pedals. But for Twang Bar King, the second solo record, I started using the guitar synth. I had Fender build me a Mustang with all the accoutrements from the guitar synthesizer.

“You had all kinds of things you could operate from the guitar, and you had to have a special pickup. Once that got designed, I started using what became known as the ‘Twang Bar King guitar’ because I made that record with it. I used that in King Crimson from there on.”

You’d matched wits with Zappa, Bowie, Eno and David Byrne – a lot of interesting characters. What was it like working alongside Fripp?

“The first thing with Robert was that he’d already designed the kind of guitar playing he favored – fast picking; very, very precise. He needed a second guitar player to play it. It required two people playing the same thing, offsetting from each other. Frame by Frame is a great example of it.

“Robert and I sat down for hours every day; I had to get up to speed with being able to play like him. After we got to a certain point, and I was getting good enough to do it – because it wasn’t my style at all, and I’m not the best picker in the world – and Robert was feeling good about it, I started trying to write songs with it.

“Then it was, ‘Okay, get back to your Stratocaster and start making your sounds like an elephant!’ It really came to the point where Robert and I had separated into our own worlds. I always said it was two sides of the same coin: Robert has his approach, and I had my approach of making those sounds, noises, feedback, and bird calls.”

Fripp named the Beat project – is that right?

“Yes – in brief, I’d been working on the idea of putting together a band to do those three records – Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair – the ‘80s trilogy. I talked to Robert in 2019 and he declined being any part of it. But he said, ‘If you want to celebrate King Crimson and you want to drive it, go ahead. I will give you my blessing.’”

How did Steve Vai become involved?

“We started thinking, ‘Well, who could possibly be in the band?’ The big part would be, ‘Who would step into Robert’s role?’ The only person I could think of was Steve. I heard him say in an interview that he had a lot of affection and admiration for Robert.

“So I thought, ‘Well, maybe there’s a chance – you never know.’ I called him, and lo and behold, he was so excited; I couldn’t believe it. So we started talking… and then, of course, COVID hit. That added another two and a half years onto the waiting process.

“I wasn’t sure Steve would ever be able to do it because, after COVID, he had 18 months of touring commitments that he’d previously booked. We had to keep waiting. By the time we thought, ‘Okay, let’s call Steve now,’ he was ready to do it; he thought he could fit it into his busy schedule.”

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Is that when you approached Tony Levin and Danny Carey?

“Yes. Tony had been in King Crimson, but I didn't think we were ever going to get him. But his schedule opened and he was delighted to do it – he said, ‘It would be a big challenge!’ But he accepts that kind of thing. He thrives on it.

“I thought, ‘Wow, we are one person away from having the kind of elite musicians that could do this.’ I didn’t want to have a band that didn’t do it as well as it could possibly be done. You had to have people of that caliber. And then Danny Carey came into the picture. 

“I’ve known Danny for many years; he’s always talked so much about Bill Bruford and those three records. He said that when he first started drumming, those were the things he listened to and was inspired by.

“So I knew he was a huge fan of that music. The same thing happened – the Tool tour was about to end and they were going into writing mode and didn’t know how long that would take. So yes, Danny wanted to go off for a few months with us.”

How will you and Steve approach the gig?

“We got together in L.A. after we had all that stuff in place. He and I sat down in his studio full of gorgeous stuff – like 400 guitars – and we sat there for a whole day ticking through. We listened to all the songs I had decided we should do; although I’m still considering things. I’m going to have that done in a few days.

“We had a book with all the material transcribed for guitar – my parts and Robert’s, except my solos. They say in the book that there’s no way they can tell you how to play my solos. And that’s true because I can’t either!

“I think it really relieved Steve a lot because he wants to make sure that what we do is honorable to the originals. Not that we have to play them exactly the same, and not that we're going to be a cover band. We certainly will not be over time; I believe we will make it our own. 

“But there are many well-defined elements in King Crimson’s music that have to be there. Steve was concerned about those things, and after we went through it, and I told him the things I thought we could branch out from, he felt a lot more relieved.”

What’s the key to locking in with Steve, seeing as you’re both going to need a lot of space?

“We don’t know – we have yet to play a note! I suspect Steve and I will end up being the same as Robert and me. A different version of it, of course, but two sides of the same coin.

“I’m anxious to hear what he’ll come up with – which won’t be just him playing Robert’s parts. But Robert’s parts are fantastic, and they will need to be there. Once we’ve had some rehearsals, I’ll tell you how it’s going. Until then, I’m guessing.”

• Beat commence their tour on September 12. See Beat Tour for full dates.