Adrian Belew interview, full text...

Adrian Belew Power Trio - Slim's - 2.23.2008

This is the full, unedited text of the interview I did of Adrian Belew. The edited, published version is posted here:

Adrian Belew interview
February 19, 2008

GC:  The first thing I'd like to comment on is you surviving the tornadoes in Tennessee last week. Does that give you any thoughts about fate, and destiny? Where I'm leading to with this is what did you want to do when you were a child, what did you want to become when you grew up.

AB:  Well first of all, I think the tornadoes missed us by a good distance, you know. It's a fairly big state (chuckles). I wasn't much aware that they were happening. I remember that evening when I was laying in bed there was a lot of commotion, you know, outside and it sounded like a bad storm. We live in the bottom of a cul-de-sac and I've got a feeling that we're a little more protected than most people would be if there were a tornado in our area, and there was one a few years ago just a few miles from us that tore up a big part of the property which is called The Hermitage, which is President Andrew Jackson's estate, that is open to visitors. Tore up a whole bunch of that. Horrible. Looked like a war zone. And in fact, the property that I live on was once owned by Andrew Jackson.

Now when I was a child what I think I wanted to do was I thought I wanted to be a teacher. I would maybe liked to have been a lot of different things. I was really attracted to maybe being a railroad engineer because I loved trains (heheh). I wanted to design cars or do voice-overs for cartoons because my hero was Mel Blank who did a lot of those voices. As I came to an age, where I'm in school and are thinking, "What am I going to do when I get out of school?", I was in the school band at the age of 10, and I obviously looked up to my band manager as a kind of father figure in my life. So I thought I might want to do that. I thought it would be great to know how to play all the instruments and teach other people how to do that.

GC:  I actually know a fourteen year old that is going through that process. He can play about seven different instruments right now and he wants to become a music teacher. But he is really good as well.

AB:  Well my main point is that I didn't want to take the time to read little dots on paper (laughs). So I guess I would have made a pretty lousy band director after all. I liked the idea of working with kids and marching around at football games. As it turns out I did teach myself to play lots of instruments and I'm still known to pick something different up and try to make acceptable noises out of it.

GC:  I saw a band perform the other night called "Sleepytime Gorilla Museum"...

AB: Who?

GC:  Sleepytime Gorilla Museum...

AB:  Nice name.

GC:  Half of the instruments they had on the stage were home designed. They were instruments that nobody else had.

AB:  Huh, kind of a Charles Ives approach to music.

GC:  There you go... yeah, it was a very, very strange musical performance. So did you ever learn to read music?

AB:  Well, I started in the school junior high school band, I was a drummer, and so they did teach me how to read rhythms, you know, as a drummer you don't even have to bother with the notes on a scale. The bass drum is all on one line and the snare is on another. I don't remember hardly anything about it. And I spent three years doing that, but more interested in marching cadences and parades, and the whole social aspect of it. Then after three years my family moved to a different part of northern Kentucky, only ten miles away but it was like a whole different universe at the same time, that was the year that The Beatles came out, so my focus shifted entirely from being in the school band to being in a rock band and with any luck I was playing drums in my first band and wanting to be "a Beatle".

GC:  Wow, amazing. And how old were you at that point?

AB:  Well, let's see, I was thirteen; fourteen the year that I joined my first band. Thirteen when The Beatles came out and when we moved over that summer. So when I started school again I didn't know anybody, I didn't bother joining the school band again, they were full up with drummers. Didn't seem to need any drummers (laughs). But within not too much time I met and befriended all the local musicians, you know, teen musicians and ended up being invited to be in the best band in the whole Cincinnati area, probably the best band at doing Beatles songs in the Cincinnati area. For three or four years, the band called The Denims was locally, regionally favorites of everyone. And we almost played nothing but Beatles music, so we didn't bother with much else. You know, The Kinks and a few other things, mostly Beatles, heheheh. We wore the military outfits and had the vox amps and the whole bit.

GC:  Wow, beautiful! How many years did you play with The Denims?

AB:  I think it turned out to be four years. And by that time The Beatles had evolved to a point where you couldn't really play their music anymore, heheheh. You know, you needed an orchestra.

GC:  So when did you shift from being a drummer to learning to play guitar?

AB:  Well, right around my junior year, I got sick for two months. I had mono-nucleosis.  Which is not much of a sickness, but it means you have to stay quiet, at least sit quietly, you can't have any activities for at least two months, stay at home and be tutored. And so I borrowed a guitar, an acoustic guitar from one of the guys in The Denims, and I taught myself to play over those two months. I even wrote five songs. Just figured it out on my own. When I went back to, and so the next couple of years I spent as the drummer for The Denims until they broke up after we all left high school, the band discontinued and at that point I switched to guitar.

GC:  Okay...

AB:  By then I was interested in the guitar as more than just a writing tool. I started playing because I wanted to write songs which I couldn't do when I played drums. By the time The Denims broke up in 1967 or 1968, um, the guitar was a whole different vehicle. All of a sudden you had Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton burning up the world, you know...

GC:  Right, right...

AB:  So I wanted to do more with guitars and thats when I started taking it as my first serious instrument.

GC:  Okay. Was it long after that when you started to experiment with the sounds and noises you could get out of a guitar?

AB:  It was a few years, because really you have to put a few time into the mechanics of an instrument. I learned a lot of styles. I could finger pick American style, I could play blues like a lot of players, I could imitate Hendrix or Jeff Beck. You know, I could play a lot of different things and then at some points in the early 70's I realized I just sounded like a lot of people. That is when I started, in 73 or so, 74, trying to find my own voice on guitar and what I forced myself to do when I caught myself playing someone else's lick I would try to find something else to substitute it with. A difficult process but what I eventually forced myself to do was to come up with my own ideas. One thing that I really, really liked was the idea that you could make the guitar sound like things. No one really seemed to be interested in that. I liked that idea, that you could kinda make it sound like an animal, or a car horn. And that became the beginnings of my being interested in using it for more than just playing solos and notes and chords.

GC: Uh-huh, ok. Well you've certainly become the grandest master of making the guitar sound like other things that I've ever heard of at least.

AB:  No one else still wants to do that!

GC:  Well good, you can still be The Captain then. So around 73, umm, when did you first hear the music of King Crimson? When did you first meet Robert Fripp? I know a little more about your time with Frank Zappa and Bowie and other people but Crimson is what interests me more.

AB:  Ok, well I have to tell you that my best friend growing up was in the junior high school band with me and later when I moved he moved too! A year later his family moved to the same school too. So our friendship resumed. His name is Kenny Nevilles.

GC:  Oh, that's wonderful.

AB:  Kenny Nevilles was the guy who brought me over, in 1969 to his house and said, "Listen to this!" , and he put on Court of the Crimson King. He had actually seen the band live in Miami, Florida at a festival and so he was the first and only person that I knew who knew King Crimson music. He started me down the path of enjoying their music and they quickly became our favorite band, second only to The Beatles. So I became kind of a fanatic about King Crimson's music. All those early records are what I listened to when I wanted to listen to music. And I was never in a band that played that music or anything because it was a bit beyond, over our heads really. But we thought that's just the greatest band, the players are so good. And the integrity of it is just so high. So that was in 1969 right off the bat and I right off the beginning of the band, I thought that myself and Kenny Nevilles was the only two people on the planet who even knew about the band. It seemed like a band that no one had ever heard of, you never heard of them on the radio or anything, but since I had no idea that they had achieved some success in other parts of the world... if you fast forward a long time, because I, naturally I spent the next fifteen years trying to figure out how to get myself on a different level in the music business and then was discovered by Frank Zappa in 1977, but I first met Robert in 19800, I'd say it was, and I still was working with David Bowie -- it was at the end of our relationship the first time around. David and I were in New York City at the Bottom Line and watching a guy named Steve Reich and we were watching his performance; the end of the show, the lights came on, I looked over and David said, "Hey, look, that table over there, that's Robert Fripp." So, I walked over and introduced myself, he was very nice, and he wrote his name, I mean his number, his hotel phone number on my arm in indelible ink, which I couldn't get off for years. and so I ended up going, calling him over the next couple days and we went out for coffee a couple of times and that was my initial meeting and befriending with Robert. What really happened in the long term was, eventually, he took his band out on tour of the mid-west and I took my band on tour of the mid-west, and we became their opening act for five shows, and during those five shows, in Cleveland and Cincinnati, Columbus, OH and places like that, I think that's when Robert realized that, "oh, this guy's more than a stunt guitarist, he's a song writer and a singer and a front man," and I think that's when he developed the idea of maybe there being another King Crimson with me involved and later that year, in 1980, is when he called me and asked me to join. Of course, it wasn't called King Crimson for the first couple of months, but eventually it was.

GC: What was it called?

AB: Originally, it was called "Discipline", his idea for the band name was "Discipline", and that was good to have and good for Bill Bruford, but not for me and Tony, Tony Levin and I, the two Americans of the band thought the rod "discipline" was a bit ugly. I guess maybe we were spanked too often when we were kids ! I really never thought the name was a good name for a band, its a great name for other things, and obviously we named a record that and now Robert's record label is called "Discipline", so a few weeks into rehearsing, writing, and being close together for the few weeks we started, one day, Robert said, "you know, whatever we call this band, it has the spirit of King Crimson," and I said "well, why don't we call it King Crimson, then?" For me, that made it an entirely different apple, to call it King Crimson, now you were dealing with a certain tradition, a musical history, and an integrity and something to be proud of, rather than starting another band with a different name.

GC: Right, right. Lemme backtrack a little bit. So during the years between, what '74 and '81, was that when Robert did his solo work? That King Crimson was kind of put on hold ...?

AB: Yeah, I think that King Crimson, the original King Crimson lineup, which there was never more than, I mean each record was a different lineup, basically, but I think they lasted through '74? I might be wrong about that...

GC: '74 was when "Red" was recorded, yeah...

AB: Yeah, "Red" was the last one, then Robert took the next seven years before he decided to have another band at it. What he did in the meantime, I'm not sure. He made one or two records with Brian Eno, I think he did a solo record, he kind of laid low. I didn't really follow his career that much once King Crimson was over because it was really the whole band King Crimson that attracted me, not Robert. It wasn't his guitar playing or something, it was the entire band -- frankly(?) I was in love with the drummer . So all those records had kind of a mystique about them, and, of course, Robert was a big part of that. Once the band, King Crimson, ended in '74, I kind of lost track of what all the members did.

GC: Yeah, there were a lot of different projects going on around the place during that time period. That was the time, well the late 70's, when I first got exposed to the progressive rock music genre and started following all those guys. Okay, lemme bring you back to focus a little bit -- when you started to play, then, with King Crimson in '81, the music took on a whole new sound. Was that from your initial influence, or was it a conglomeration of all the new minds working together, because the sound that was in those first three albums carries onto what you do in your solo work, so I'm just wondering if you were the kernel of what... do you know what I mean?

AB: Yeah, sure, I think it would be fair to say it was everyone. It would also be fair to say that the writing of it was Robert and I. It was the two of us developing the song writing aspect of it and then giving it to the whole band to deal with it, but it was also, you know you had these very strong unique players blended together, you know, Tony and Bill and all of us had new tools that no one else had tried to work with. Robert and I were the first guitar synthesizer players that I had ever heard of, Bill was the first electronic drummer, Tony was the first Stick player. So, we had new instruments, new technology, and we had this blueprint that came from the songwriting area that Robert and I were developing all the time, so maybe that's why it carries on into my solo work so much, because, well, at the basis of all that, it's songwriting and, primarily that was Robert and I. Tony and Bill mostly wrote their own part, of course, added their own parts like anyone does, but I think the development of the basis for what the music is came from the pens of Robert and Adrian.

GC: Yeah, okay, good, good. It would be hard to pull Robert out of the middle of that I think from any of the incarnations along your history. I think that's enough of what I wanted to know about King Crimson, at least right now. I want to shift over, then, to your current project with the Power Trio, with the Slick kids. You guys have made such a storm of excitement with the last tour that you did. How is this tour going to be different than the last tour or are you going to have a new set list, or...?

AB: This is just a continuation of it, well, first of all, what we're going to do on this tour is going to continue, this is not(?) an entirely new set list, in fact we're going to play a lot of the same things, but one of the things that I think makes this band exciting is the fact that we improvise and change constantly, even material that we are doing. We're going to add in, as time goes by during this tour, some new material -- I've written three new pieces that eventually we'll be attempting to play. I've incorporated a few new songs from the catalog that were never played, but the problem that we have with this tour -- it's not a problem, but I think it's something that people might want to understand, is there is no rehearsal time. Our pace is -- Julie has been in audio school for her last semester and she was only available two days ago and, by then, our equipment was all gone and we couldn't even rehearse, so we're appearing tonight in Seattle, in the Triple Door, for the first time in, what, three of four months, and we're going to walk on stage and play without a single note of rehearsing ! That shows how confident I guess we are, or maybe how stupid -- I'm not sure, but I think over the course of this tour which has 21 shows, as often as we possibly can, at sound checks and otherwise, we're going to incorporate new material.

Now, to back up on your question a little bit... what is it about this band? Every now and then, something happens, call it chemistry or something undefinable..., and this band has that. I could explain it to you from the way I see it, I'm not sure if its the true, full explanation, but... Eric and Julie grew up in Philadelphia, playing together in their parent's living room surrounded by their father's collection of bass guitars and 5000 vinyl records, and with the total encouragement of their parents, they basically from age eleven on, did nothing but play music, and the music that they played which was guided by their parents, was the music that I've been involved in all my life. They learned a lot of the King Crimson catalog, a lot of the Zappa music, some of my solo works, David Bowie, Talking Heads,... they grew up on that stuff and those were the challenges that they faced, and that's the music that the know, just in the same way that I know how to play all the Beatles music, you know? So, magically, somehow, you've got this twenty year old drummer and twenty one year old sister playing bass, and, first of all, they played together for so long that they have a kind of chemistry and unspoken way of playing together -- they just look at each other and they know what they're going to do, and then, secondly, they're so well educated at the music and the ideas behind it, that I bring to the table, that it just makes for an incredible combination and, you have this energy level that comes from their youthfulness and their purity, because they really are kind of pure as musicians. They haven't been doing this a long time, they're not jaded, they don't do drugs, they don't have problems, they're not alcoholics, they don't have mortgages, car payments, child... alimony -- their focus is totally about the music! and so it's all those things kind of put together and the effect that it's having on me, well, this is exactly what I wanted to have happen. I wanted to have a trio, a power trio, meaning all three players are virtuoso in their approach, they can play everything, and they can almost overplay because they have to fill in every little gap, you know? I wanted to have a power trio like this so I could develop the ideas I had, new ideas, a lot of what have been on these solo albums, Sides One, Two, and Three. But also because it would give me the freedom that I've wanted as a guitarist and a front man, I mean, it forces me to play more and do more, and that's exactly what I wanted, but I really didn't think that I would get a trio this special. I mean, there's really something special. So, there you are, and that's where we are, and we're probably going to record every live show and we've got the new live record out so people can hear the evidence of where we were one _year_ ago at this time, because that record was recorded _last_ February, and we'll see where it goes. Like I said, I'm writing new material specifically for this trio, and we've got King Crimson -- that's just about to start again, at the beginning of April, so I've got these two really nice irons in the fire, let's hope I don't get burnt!

GC: So it sounds like, I just heard among other people that I chat with about our own speculations about the Trio, we kept thinking, "well, he's gonna, you know, you're kind of trying to nurture them for future great things for themselves, but it sounds like you wanna hold onto them for as long as you can because of this unique energy you've got together.

AB: Oh, of course, nurturing them for future things for themselves is just the by product of this. I'm sure they both have a great future in music, but I do hope that it's with me for as long as is right for them. I fully expect that some day someone else will tap them on the shoulders, but I feel that right now, we'd all be fools not to continue down the path we have because it's only just beginning and there's a lot of stuff there and it's a great relationship, and musically it's one you rarely hear which is one of the reasons why I try to impress upon people to come out and hear this because it may not be here forever and it certainly is rare. It's been my experience that bands aren't getting better. Most bands are not as good as the bands that I grew up with. I think this band could go toe-to-toe with the best, so I'd like to see this grow and change and what's so wonderful about it for me, I suppose, is it's all about the music for once. So often, in the music business now, it's about the music business, it's about money, it's about schedules and timing and so many other things besides the joy of music -- this is about that. And we've got a great little group of people here, we've got a great little crew and my wife managing the whole thing, and it's really a rare little occurrence, like things lined up properly.

GC: That's so great. I'm gonna have to be selfish for just a moment and tell you a little story about what seeing you, I saw you in November of 2006 in San Francisco, I took a couple of pictures of you with my cell phone and I sent them to my blog. Well, the next morning I got an email from Robin Slick and she was raving about the pictures I had taken and I said, "lady, those pictures are crap, I took those with a phone, not a camera." She said, "well, you might have something to do, this could lead to something..." and I said I did have a camera at home and if I could see them again, I would go and take some more pictures...

GC: ...and, um, she got me onto the guest list for your show in Santa Cruz, and I took some pictures and, um, they came out a lot better, but they still weren't great because it wasn't a great camera, but it went on to inspire me to get a better camera, start going to a lot more shows. Over the past year, I've shot maybe, I don't know, 20 or 30 different concerts and my, um, my photography skills have really improved in that time. She also inspired me to -- I'm a writer as well, and that was another thing we got talking about -- I was working on a novel at the time, which I still am, but she said, well you should write reviews about the concerts that you're going to... so anyway, it's turned into, from seeing you that one night with my little cell phone camera, it's turned into... I'm not making money at it yet, but I use the title "music journalist" right now and I write for two different online rock and roll zines and, um, I don't wanna say I'm in demand, but I, I really, I got a career out of that night of seeing you guys that night...

AB: ...well isn't that great, that's fabulous, I'm really glad to hear that, you know, that's what it's about, it's inspiration, it's a bit of what it's about and I'm hoping that this band does that for people, especially for younger people who, you know, they need some inspiration, they need "there is something great still happening out there and it's not just all the mainstream crap that's being forced on you", it's... you know, and I think that's another part of having Eric and Julie, they're young and so, they're more apt to be listened to and inspired -- they're more apt to inspire young people, um, and you mentioned Robin and their father Gary, they're just exemplary people, you know, we love them, my wife Martha and I think a lot of them, they're... the evidence is in, of course, in the Slicks themselves, but that's a nice story, I'm glad to hear that.

GC: Yeah, um, and to wrap it up a little bit more, this ties back to what my desire of what I wanted to become when I first left high school, was I wanted to become a concert photographer, and I ended up having to... my parents wanted me to go to law school... and I ended up getting married and having a kid and having normal jobs... well, I got through all that now, I'm gonna turn 50 this year, my son is living independently and now is like, that old desire has come back to me and I'm getting to do it.

So, yeah, I think, what you were saying at the very beginning about the chemistry, about the sense of kismet, that there's timing, we're in the places we're meant to be in and meet the people and have the feelings we're supposed to have at the times we are meant to and, um, great things can happen.

AB: I actaully have the feeling, you know, that we're entering another cycle, and, you know, things do go in cycles in the world of music and other things and I've been saying this for a while, but I'm starting to see that it's coming -- it's starting, it seems to be coming true for me, that people are getting back to the idea that they wanna hear great music, but played by people who've devoted themselves to it, and they want, you know, art in their lives again, they want culture, they want more than just the shallow stuff that's been around and been so popular... I might be wrong and maybe it's just the crowd I'm hanging out with, but I do notice, in my little world, that people are coming back to that, and it makes sense to me because that's how things go. I mean before the Beatles came along and got music creatively again, it was pretty shallow, and I'm not saying that any of us are going to do anything on the scale of the Beatles, or anything like that, I'm just saying things tend to do that in life, you know, for you, you just said you had to go through a bunch of other things to come back to your original dream! This is kind of my original dream, too. To, you know, just have a great band and write great music hopefully that people would like, you know, or maybe not even great music, but at least music that a lot of people would investigate and feel the same way about that I felt about other music.

GC: Yeah, yeah...

AB: We're getting all mushy now and it's only noon here...

GC: That's okay...

AB: We're starting to sound like a bunch of old girls now, so I guess we'd better...

GC: Okay, yeah, I think we've covered all the questions that I had for you, so um, and you've given me so much more, um, just a great feeling that I...

AB: Are you coming out to any of the shows this time around?

GC: Well, I had been talking to a friend about going down to see you down in Long Beach, but, I'm not sure if the timing's going to work out for me, so I think San Francisco's pretty much going to be it...

AB: Oh, San Francisco, great. Slim's is a great place, one of the best in the country, I really like playing there.

GC: It's one of my favorite places...

A: Obviously the San Francisco audience is a notch above because they really are music devotees, they know the music and they love it and they, uh, so that's a good one to come to... heh, so I don't know how much new stuff we'll have cooked(?) up, you know they don't give them the time at the sound checks, that's unfortunate, but I'm just relying on the fact that different things happen every night anyway...

GC: ...sure...

AB: ...and people are not tired of hearing what we do yet, I don't think, so for me, I plan to improvise even more, I've got some new tools, some new sounds, some new little tricks in my bag, and I think it'll be worth it even if you've heard the band a few times before, to hear it one more time this way. By this time next year, who knows where we'll be. I mean, I would expect that, by then, we'll probably be playing a whole new round of material...

GC: ...right, right. Well, good, good, I had a great conversation with Eric a few weeks ago, we did an interview and, um, well you gotta tie that boy down a little bit. He plays with so many other people... you need to lock him up in a room with you so you guys can concentrate... he has so many ideas about music he wants to write...

AB: Well, good! I wanna encourage all of that, you know. I certainly want to encourage that because, really, in the world that exists today in music, you need to have a lot of different things going on. You know, it's no longer one of those times where you're just in one band and you do that band twelve months a year. It's been, for me... I have other aspirations, too, and this will take up a portion of what I do, and maybe the main portion I hope, cuz I don't think King Crimson is going to be able to do what it did in the past and tour for six months. My schedule is the same, in a way, as Eric's is. I'm going to be doing a lot of different things, but, of course, we can all come back to this one thing that is kind of the centerpiece.

GC: You know, I did have one other question for you. It's a little philosophical, and we can finish with this if you want. How do you deal with distraction?

AB: Ohh, you know what? That's a very good question. Distraction is... I think there's so much of it now... it's kind of in the air...

GC: ...yeah...

AB: ...between the media and all the different outlets that you have, you know, for people... it just seems like there's a lot of distraction. How do I deal with it... I kind of turn if off as much as I can. I find myself, at this point in my life, I like to get up in the morning and sit quietly, listen to the birds outside, and I kind of... that's me. I mean, my wife, Martha, likes to get up and listen to the news, you know, different people accept that stuff different ways(?!?), but for me, I deal with the distraction by trying to be quiet, to be a bit more introspective, um, get off and play a lot. Cuz, really, when you're playing, if you're a musician, when you're playing there is no distraction. That's when the rest of the world goes away. And that is when the creative thing takes over and you get lost in there. You know, and that's what I try to get as much of as I can. I'm pretty much turned off by what goes on in the outer world, I mean, I don't care that much about Iraq and I'm sorry to say that, and I don't mean to be crude, but really, I just don't, that stuff is not my life. My life is what's around me...

GC: ... exactly...

AB: ... my wife is looking at me making fun of me now as I'm saying all of this stuff, that's why I'm stammering, because, I'm not saying this well,... basically, the way I deal with distraction... I play music... She was trying to distract me, she said ... she did a great job! She's really distracting when she wants to be...! Um, yeah, you know, that's what I think you have to do, focus on, well, if you're in something creative, a) you're way ahead of the game, b) you just put yourself in that as much as you can, if you're a writer, a photographer, you're any kind of creative person, ahhh, I think you have to drown yourself in that and close yourself off from the rest of it, cuz... it's too much, really. I don't require that much information anymore. It used to be I wanted a lot of information and now, I guess, you turn a corner at some point in your life and you start feeling like "I got all the information, I just wanna do something with it" .

GC: right, right, yeah...  I completely agree with that. Okay, Adrian, let's let that be it, and I'll look forward to seeing you on Saturday night, I really look forward to it, and I'm gonna bring as many people along as I can, I've got about six people so far that have all shown interest in it...

AB: Well, great, I appreciate all your effort and stuff in this, too, you know, because that's the thing, I really think it's a growing process right now, we need to get a lot of people to check this out and I think that most people will find something in it that they like, so there you go. I appreciate you writing about, so thanks a lot, man. See you Saturday night!

GC: My pleasure. Thanks Adrian, take care, bye bye.