Interview with Adrian Belew in Fender's Frontline
Submitted By: L. Bruce Higgins (LBH2 at cornell dot edu)
Jeff Rocca Posted the following to alt.fan.frank_zappa:
Mike Keneally Talks With Adrian Belew
[Mike interviewed Adrian for Fender's Frontline in early 1994.
The interview appears here courtesy of the fine folks at Fender.]
There's not enough room in this nifty introduction for me to say all I should
about Adrian. You know about his illustrious career already, but here's
something you might not know: he's got a new album out, on Caroline, called
Here. You ought to buy it. If you have none of his albums, buy that one first,
because it's superb, and because the people at Caroline care very much about
Adrian's career and are being very nice to him, so they should be rewarded.
Once you've got that, buy an album from a couple of years ago called Inner
Revolution, which no one knows exists, but which is also spectacular.
Fender thought it would be interesting to have one ex-Zappa guitarist interview
another (they were not aware that Adrian interviewed Steve Vai for another
publication recently; I suppose Warren Cuccurullo will have to interview me
next), so they asked me to talk to Adrian and I was thrilled to do so:
Adrian Belew: Hello?
Mike Keneally: Adrian.
AB: Yeah!
MK: Mike Keneally here.
AB: Hey, Mike, how're you doin'? I was putting a Fender Jazz
Bass part on a song that I'm doing for King Crimson. I'm
doing some demos this weekend of song ideas that I have for
the rehearsals which start Monday.
MK: As long as you brought it up, who's actually going to be performing?
AB: Well, it's going to be what Robert Fripp refers to as a
"double trio". As opposed to triple duets. Which means, two
guitars---Robert and me; two bass player/stick players---Tony
Levin and Trey Gunn; and two drummers--- Bill Bruford and Pat
Mastellotto.
MK: Wow. Very interesting.
AB: It's a pretty incredible combination. The six of us have
never played together, and we're gonna do that starting this
coming Monday for three weeks. I'm attempting some pretty
interesting marriages of ideas right now.
MK: I think the world can look forward to something interesting, because your
last two solo albums have been the culmination of everything you've been
working towards. You really nailed it. You've definitely hit your stride.
AB: Well, thank you very much. I'm going to continue on in
this melding of pop and avant-garde ideas, and King Crimson
can take me in lots of directions that I can't go by myself.
But I do enjoy making my solo albums alone because it's fun
for me, and it's a more personalized statement that way.
MK: Were you as proud of Inner Revolution as you have a right to be?
AB: Yes, I think so. I never put out records that I'm not
happy with, and I think Inner Revolution is 95% as good as I
wanted it to be. I think Here is approximating more 98%.
MK: (laughs) That's good.
AB: The reason being I just had more time for song
development and, doing it in my own home studio, I was able
to try a lot of ideas and make sure that the song underneath
all the ornaments was as good as it possibly could be. And
I've still got about a half a dozen songs left from that that
I haven't even finished yet. If I had the words for those
songs I'd be halfway through the next album. It takes me a
long time to decide on Iyrics. And sometimes I'm attempting to
nail something that might have a timeless quality about it.
Like "Peace On Earth". I think that that's a song that will
always be relevant because the things that are said will
always be true, and that's a really difficult song to write.
It's kind of like attempting to write "Imagine" (laughs).
MK: (laughs) Going in, that's a lot of pressure.
AB: I don't think it's in the same league with that, but...
MK: It's a severely gorgeous song. That one and "Fly" are both astonishing on
the new record.
AB: "Fly" happens to be my personal favorite. It began as a
little one minute idea that I had on the dobro, and I just
immediately came downstairs and starting recording it, and
wrote it all at once, instead of belaboring it like I usually
have to do. And it turned into a five-minute piece with all
these tape loops and wonderful GR-1 sounds and a lot of
interesting things in it that roally created exactly the
atmosphere that I wanted, which is somewhere between the
pleasure and the tension of flying. Because flying, for me,
is an awful experience (laughs).
MK: You were talking about the percentage quotient of the last few records.
When you look back over your solo career, can you judge how close you came to
nailing it on each of your records?
AB: I'm very proud of Lone Rhino. I didn't think that Twang Bar
King worked out quite as well. Once again, it's probably not
being able to take the time to develop the material. Desire
Caught By The Tail is a whole different bag of bananas. I like it
a lot, but I do think it's darker than I thought it was at
the time. Some of the instrumental music that I plan to
release soon is in a similar vein, only it's much more
uplifting.
MK: Just from the tones on the new record, it's obvious that things are
sparkling more for you now.
AB: My life is in so much better shape than it was, say,
three or four years ago. I met my wife, Martha, in 1990...
MK: Would that be May 1, by any chance? (Note: "May 1, 1990" is the first song
on Here.)
AB: That's May 1, 1990, the day we met in Orlando, Florida
after the David Bowie Sound + Vision concert. I my life has
just been going steadily up ever since. On a career level,
too, I feel ldie I'm achieving more and more of what I set
out to do in my lifetime, which is create a body of music
that somehow makes a complete picture. And having my own
studio has made me super productive. My engineer, Noah Evans,
lives next door. I got up this morning and I said "I know
what this King Crimson idea should be, let's record it", and
we've just been doing that for the last two hours.
MK: The song "Brave New World"; is that fully in earnest?
AB: Yes, it is. I think there are good and bad points to
technology, and I wanted to point out some of the astounding,
good things about it. It's still very impressive to me that I
can stick a little piece of paper in a fax machine, and
seventeen seconds later it's in England.
MK: I was curious because of the way that song ends: it starts fairly
triumphantly and droozles down into this real subdued, minor-key ending. I
wondered if there was some subtext there.
AB: Some people will say that technology is ruining the
world. But I think it has the wherewithal to save us as well,
so I thought it would be nice to celebrate it. That's the
perfect song for AT&T commercials.
MK: Is "Dream Life" an intentional Harry Nilsson tribute?
AB: Oh, no, not really, but now that you mention it, I'm
doing a version of "Me And My Arrow" for a tribute album to
him. Harry was one of my all- time favorite singers, right up
there with Roy Orbison, John Lennon etc. And a real cool
writer.
MK: Definitely.
AB: All the money from the album is going to go to his
family, his remaining six children.
MK: There's another song from the same album that "Me and my Arrow" is on, The
Point, which is called "Are You Sleeping?" If you compare that to "Dream Life"
I think you'll understand why I came to that conclusion. The contours of the
melody are real similar.
AB: All I remember is sitting on my couch in the living room,
and just having this song, "Dream Life", kind of pour out of
me. It's the kind of song that makes me get-a little
teary-eyed whenever I play it.
MK: Have you been doing a lot of these new songs at your solo shows?
AB: I haven't really done any solo shows for this record yet,
but I embark on a two month tour this June and July, of the
entire United States, and the band I'm going to take is what
amounts to The Bears. Rob, Bob and Chris, the other three
members of the Bears, are also a band called Psychodots. Th
will come and do their skow, then I'll join them and we'll do
my material. I think it'll be a really excellent tour.
MK: Will you be doing any Bears material?
AB: Yeah, of course we will. We'll probably put in some King
Crimson songs and songs from all the different periods of my
solo career. But, taking a clue from our buddy, Frank
Zappa...
MK: (laughs)
AB: ...we're going to learn a lot more material than we need,
and we're going to alternate it every night.
MK: That tradition's also being carried on by his sons. I just got back from a
tour with Z, Ahmet and Dweezil's band, and when we see the same faces at show
after show after show, we feel an obligation to keep them interested.
AB: I don't really want to be, as John Lennon once put it, a
performing monkey. Most of the creativity comes in the studio
and the songwriting process, and all the problem-solving
involved in producing and creating a record. But it doesn't
mean you can't go out later and still be creative in a live
format.
MK: I saw The Bears in San Diego a couple of times before the first album came
out, and the shows live on in my memory as two of my more exhilarating concert
experiences. And then, it seemed as though, especially by the time the second
Bears album came out, that some of the steam had been let out of the balloon.
AB: It was a very good band, and we had a great chemistry
that was rare. It was almost like a songwriters' workshop,
you know, where everybody traded off their choruses and
verses and made songs out of that. But what really
happened---unfortunately it happens a lot---is that there was
no real financial support. A band can be great, but if you do
seven tours of the United States and you're still not getting
anywhere, in fact you're getting deeper and deeper in debt,
you finally have to say, "Well, maybe this is not going to
work". The record label folded after the second album, too.
That didn't help much.
(both laugh)
And then the next thing that happened was I did Mr. Music Head,
and that record did about ten times better than any Bears
record did. So there you go.
MK: That seems like a very important album for you.
AB: It's very unusual because it's almost like two different
records. The first side---this is back when they had
sides---is e pop songs, and the second side is a whole
different sound. I actually did the second side first, and
then began what turned out to be the first side. So it was
about seven songs before I had this little novelty song
called "Oh Daddy". And that's actually what got me a record
deal. (laughs) No one was the least bit interested in the
material that I had until suddenly "Oh Daddy" appeared on the
scene.
MK: So you had the album more than half done before you even had a deal.
AB: The whole second side was done, and most people thought
"this is a little bizarre, Adrian...I don't know how you're
even gonna get a record deal".
MK: There's several beautiful songs on that record. "Bad Days" is incredible.
AB: "Bad Days" is one of my favorites, and "1967". Those two
make that record special for me.
MK: Any thoughts on Young Lions a few years down the road?
AB: Well...I would give it an 80. I had ten weeks to do Young
Lions, from top to bottom. If you're playing all the
instruments, writing everything, producing it, ten weeks
isn't much time. That's one of the reasons why I chose some
songs that were already written, like "Heartbeat", for
instance, and the Roy Orbison tribute. But I ran out of time,
in fact was doing the last two songs as I was rehearsing the
band for the Sound + Vision David Bowie tour. That's why I
feel that album is slightly compromised.
MK: "Men In Helicopters" is the shining thing on that album, for me.
AB: I think that's the best ecology song I've ever written.
There's only one or two ways you can talk about things like
what we're doing wrong to the planet without sounding like
you think you're better than someone else. What I like about
that song is it says we're ALL responsible. It's such a vivid
picture to me: these guys shooting animals from helicopters
with high- powered rifles, and you just think, what a sad
state that is for the world to be in.
MK: It's a very passionate song. That was a good one (laughs).
AB: Thanks (laughs).
MK: Are you happy with your new label?
AB: I'm very happy at Caroline. I believe in their
philosophy. The philosophy of a major label has to be that
they're going to put out five artists a week, and whoever
sticks quickly gets all the money and backing. Versus the
Caroline method, which is more "get down, get on the street,
talk about this record for a year, and work it hard, and if
there's no hits, keep working it".
MK: Was there even an attempt made to release a single or video from Inner
Revolution?
AB: There was no attempt to even market that record at all,
to my knowledge. I actually have a lot of fans who don't even
know about that album. People who say "you haven't put out an
album in five years"! And I say "well, that's not true,
actually..."
MK: That's tragic.
AB: I'm much happier in the situation I have now. My deal is
two-sided: my pop albums come out on Caroline proper, and I
also have an imprint label called Adrian Belew Presents,
which is what I'll use to do experimental guitar music, and
any other specific brands of serious music that wouldn't fit
so well in the pop mainstream.
MK: Since this is for Frontline, there's probably someone over there that would
like to know what Fender instruments you used on the new album.
AB: Well, if you saw my rack of guitars, you'd see almost
every one of 'em is a Fender. But what I mostly use are the
three custom ones that they made for me a couple of years
ago. What's unique about them is they have my favorite
vintage neck. I have a vintage Stratocaster; I sent them the
neck from it, and they replicated that neck as closely as
they could. They also have all the hardware on them that I
prefer, they have the Lace Sensor pickups...they have strap
locks...
(both laugh)
... and they're really beautiful guitars. I guess the most
unique feature about them is the fact that they have the GK-2
Roland Guitar Synthesizer pickup hidden inside the body. The
design that I made just allows for one volume control, so
there really isn't much in the way of knobs sticking out of
the guitar. It's a very clean look. I'm really happy to see
that recently they've started putting out Fender Strats that
have GK-2s built into them, so everybody can now enjoy what
I've had for the last couple of years.
MK: I was pleased that the new album had more of a marriage between synthesized
guitar tone and natural guitar tone, both electric and acoustic. It doesn't
seem quite so synthesizer-heavy, or at least it's done in a more organic way.
AB: That's true. And what I've been doing recently is, rather
than having three different guitar parts, I have one guitar
part with maybe three different guitar sounds. You get a real
nice big guitar sound, but it's not muddying up the
arrangement with too many different ideas.
MK: The guitar arrangement on "Survival in the Wild" is very successful.
AB: "Survival in the Wild" has an interesting Fender guitar
thing in it that I love: it's a little black Santa Rosa
guitar. I don't know if Fender has really pursued tha guitar,
but I love that little guitar. It's kind of a semi-acoustic,
a small-scale guitar with beautiful white binding around it,
and what's so unique about it is it has built-in, almost
acoustic-sounding pickups, and it's very sensitive. It
catches every little noise you make.
MK: Is that the guitar you used for the kind of mosquito-y sounding solo on
that song?
AB: Yeah! I'm planning on using it in King Crimson, and I've
got high-string tuning on it. It's like the top end of a
12-string, all 9s and 10s. It makes very unusual voicings.
MK: It's real vivid sounding. The way that pops out of the arrangement is
startling.
AB: I'm happy that you like the album.
MK: I listened to it twice last night, thinking "Boy, this is great". And then
I woke up this morning and put it on and said, "Jesus, this is gorgeous!" To me
Inner Revolution was---to use an XTC analogy---Oranges & Lemons, something that
just jumped out at me and grabbed me and destroyed me. This album is more
Nonsuch, a little more subtle, something that's going to be more richly
rewarding over time.
AB: I'm getting such nice feedback over this record, and
combining that with kind of a fresh start, with a new record
label and all the support you get from that...I just have an
extremely positive feeling about this. It doesn't mean it'll
sell millions of records (laughs), but it means that I'm
happier with the situation.
MK: You certainly have reached a point in your career where you deserve to have
a record company that believes in you.
AB: Well, I've got a nice support system all the way around.
Say, for instance, with Fender; they've always been extremely
nice to me, and let me try things, and do special things for
me like customize my guitars, and when you get to that point,
it's a nice place to be.
MK: W I'll let you get back to demoing for Crimso.
AB: By the way, say hi to Dweezil and all those guys for me.
MK: I will. I'll be seeing them tonight.
AB: You know, I think about the Zappas an awful lot these
days.
MK: I'll bet.
AB: I'm sure you do too.
MK: I've been working with Z during the week. We're making another album, and
we're using Frank's studio. I never worked in the studio with Frank like you;
all the recording I did with him was on the road. So, actually being there in
the studio and seeing his stuff all over the place-- I gave him a present for
his last birthday, or the last birthday that he was here for; it's a red rubber
replica of this monster that he talks about on the album Roxy and Elsewhere.
It's sitting on one of the speakers. So I keep seeing that in there and looking
around and not seeing Frank, and it's very strange.
AB: It's very strange not to have Frank in this world. I
never realized how important he was for me all these years.
Because he's such a great role model, and such a brilliant,
wonderful, terrific...astounding person...
MK: (laughs)
AB: ...that you miss him, you know, in a way that's really
strange. I miss him like he was my dad or something. It
shakes me up a lot. People ask me about it, and I can't put
it into words, but...at least I had some time with him. There
are things I regret: I didn't stay longer, I didn't make more
of it...things you would regret because, you know...he's not
there now.
MK: I attempted to put it into words. I did a column about him in Guitar Player
a couple of months ago, and I got close (laughs), but there's no way to capture
all the feelings, and everything that he's done, both for people that he worked
with and people that were even tangentially involved with him.
AB: And just society in general. All the things that he
contributed...from parts of our vocabulary, to all the music,
to just a totally fresh, different way of doing things.
MK: He was amazing, and he was so casual about it.
AB: Yeah, absolutely. That's Frank. And I've got a little
movie of him in my mind that'll never go away, so that's a
nice thing to have.