A big DGMLive Happy birthday goes to Adrian Belew today. 

Back in 1971, Crimson founder Ian McDonald said "If you've got Bob Fripp in a band you just don't play guitar."  Ten years later everything had changed.  How Crimson would be viewed by both old fans and new ones turned on by the release of Discipline in 1981 hinged upon the arrival of Adrian Belew.

picture by Roman Sokol

He bought into the group an infectious exuberance and a style of playing and singing so different to anything that had ever gone before under the Crimson banner. At first glance his extrovert style seemed at odds with Fripp’s more measured and controlled excursions when you listen to his pre-Crim work with the likes of David Bowie and Zappa.  What attracted Fripp to the young guitarist?  "The energy” Robert told me in 1999.  “I saw Ade first with Bowie at the Madison Square Garden on the "Heroes" tour I didn't play on (I was offered the gig) and we met personally at The Bottom Line (a club in NYC) when Ade went with David Bowie to see Steve Reich, and I was there to do the same independently. Ade introduced himself and we arranged to have tea." 

picture by Roman Sokol

Robert Stephen Belew (the name Adrian wasn't adopted until the 70s) was born on December 23, 1949, and grew up in the city of Covington in Kentucky.  Even as a small child, Belew was something of a performer, singing along to Hank Williams and Elvis Presley records on the jukebox in a small bar across from his parents’ house.  He joined the local marching band as a drummer and two years later, in 1964, joined his first group, The Denems, on drums and vocals.

When he was sixteen Belew fell ill with a blood disorder and during a period of convalescence taught himself to play the guitar.  Belew got to grips with the basics of the instrument fairly easily but was essentially keeping himself occupied during his illness.  However, it was the arrival of Jimi Hendrix on his musical radar which made him take the instrument very seriously and he then began an apprenticeship of playing in small town groups. 

Yet Belew went back to playing drums and really began to pay his dues, touring all over the country playing Holiday Inns and even at one point ending up backing an Elvis wannabe.  By 1975, Belew was in Nashville, back on guitar and playing with a covers band called Sweetheart.  Two years later Frank Zappa saw the band play and took a shine to Belew, shaking his hand while the band performed a version of the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" and inviting him to audition for the Zappa band. 

picture by Roman Sokol

Belew headed off to an audition, which he passed with flying colours.  "I liked working with Zappa a lot.  It was very educational for one thing, he's got all this folklore to pass on and I learned a lot about putting music together, arrangements and orchestration, that sort of thing.  He was very strict but we still had fun."

When Zappa's band rolled into Germany, Brian Eno was impressed with what he saw, calling David Bowie and telling him to come and see the young guitarist.  "So David came to Berlin and I remember at one point in the show I looked over and saw David and Iggy Pop standing next to the monitor," Belew told Melody Maker's Ian Pye.  During one of Zappa's extended solos, Belew walked over to the side and struck up a conversation with the strange-eyed boy from Brixton to say how much he liked his music.  Belew was astonished by the singer's response. "He said 'Well howdya like to play in my band!' You know I just couldn't believe it."  The deal was consummated over cocktails in a 1920s transvestite bar and Belew soon found himself touring the world for a year and a half, playing among other things the searing guitar line which Fripp had only recently laid down on “Heroes”. The gig with Bowie having come to an end, Belew returned to Illinois, putting a new band — Gaga — together and tried without success to hustle a record deal.

 
However, his network of connections paid off however when the support slot for Fripp's League Of Gentlemen came up and Fripp asked for Gaga to open for them.  On the last night of the tour, Belew benefited from meeting Brian Eno, Jerry Harrison and David Byrne, who were in town to say hello to Fripp, who had played on Talking Heads' Fear Of Music album the previous year.  Like Zappa and Bowie before them, the Heads were impressed and the very next day Belew was bound for the Bahamas to take part of the Remain In Light sessions.  Thereafter, the guitarist suddenly found himself playing to crowds of well in excess of 70,000 as Talking Heads toured with their world-beating blend of quirky, angst-driven funk.

Belew's ear for detail and his astonishing capacity to create elliptical solos of unorthodox and ingenious ferocity were all factors which would lead to Fripp calling the guitarist a year later offering him a job in a new band he was forming.  Belew said he'd think about it.  After all, he had a lot to think about.  Life in Talking Heads was very good for Belew.  The band was at the peak of their popularity and Belew's enthusiastic, can-do attitude endeared him to many.  He was regarded in such high esteem that while in Nassau recording with Heads off-shoot Tom-Tom Club, Islands Records’ head Chris Blackwell gave Belew a contract for a solo album. 

picture by Roman Sokol

When Talking Heads came to the UK, Fripp seized the opportunity and rang Belew once more renewing his offer.  "The Heads had just got to England and we were celebrating being in Europe by going to a Russian restaurant.  We drank all these hot vodkas and the next morning I was in pain, you know," Belew told Melody Maker in 1981.  "Well Robert called me up real early, saying that he knew I wasn't the sort of fellow to go out drinking late so he knew I wouldn't mind being woken up!"

It was now or never time for Belew as Fripp needed an answer quick.  Having just secured his own solo deal he was initially reluctant to join what sounded like a session musicians’ "supergroup".  Recalling the fate of the short-lived Blind Faith, he was also wary of having to subsume himself within another group with another dominant personality ruling the roost.  However, Belew recognised that working with Fripp was a great opportunity to work with one of his musical heroes.  Even better, the band included Bruford who the guitarist cited as his favourite drummer, alongside Ringo Starr.  Belew also understood that the scope for his own material in Talking Heads was severely limited and the internal politics of the band were becoming tortuous – he was offered David Byrne’s job in Talking Heads by Tina Weymouth who was contemplating ousting the TH main man.

So, a compromise was struck: Belew would join the band providing he was able to spend a good portion of the year attending to his own career. For Fripp, that was good enough. Belew was in.

 picture by Roman Sokol