While primarily known for his work with King Crimson, Adrian Belew has taken his inventive and boundary-pushing approach to guitar to various camps, including Frank Zappa, David Bowie, and Talking Heads, to name just a few – heck, he's played so many sessions, he even ended up on a number one Mariah Carey single without realizing it.
This year, he added another star-studded project to his resume: the Beat Tour, alongside Steve Vai, Tool drummer Danny Carey, and King Crimson alumnus Tony Levin.
Joining this troika means Belew is bringing some of his most iconic, career-spanning guitar gadgets and gizmos on the road once more, including his signature Parker Fly – and in a new Rig Rundown with Premier Guitar, he has revealed the guitar's origin story.
“I felt like Ken Parker had taken 20 years to eliminate all the things that normally happen with electric guitars, all the problems you have, the tuning, the neck, the frets wearing out, just everything that normally can go wrong with a Fender or Gibson. He figured it all out,” asserts Belew.
He explains how he first had the Parker Fly – the 1993 model co-designed by Ken Parker and Larry Fishman – for years, before realizing he required a model more tailor-made to his experimental leanings.
“So I called Ken Parker and I said, ‘You know, I've really been wanting to use your guitar. I love it so much, but I need a synthesizer guitar. Is there anyone [or] any way we could do something about [that]?’ I need a MIDI guitar, is what I said.
“He said, ‘Well, that's funny, because when we first brought it out, it was supposed to be a MIDI guitar. It was built to be that.’”
While that was the famed luthier's original plan, the Parker Fly already had a lot of specs that made it revolutionary – not least its light weight, which made it an unlikely guitar of choice for Grand Funk Railroad's Mark Farner.
Accordingly, Belew claims teh guitar had already taken them four grueling years to produce. However, the Beat guitarist eventually managed to persuade Parker to create the MIDI guitar of his dreams.
“I said, 'I just want the most modern things we can have now.' So I was only changing the sound parts, not the guitar.” What transpired was a guitar-meets-synth model with a 13-pin out for MIDI/synth capability, a DiMarzio humbucker, a Sustainiac humbucker, a Fishman piezo, Line 6 Variax components and Parker's flat-spring vibrato system.
“I swear this guitar never goes out of tune. Plays beautifully. I play better with the [signature] Parker Fly. I can't explain it better than that,” Belew concludes.
The 65-date Beat tour kicked off in San Jose, California, on September 12, with the supergroup performing 19 songs across two sets.
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