Adrian Belew
Late 1970s popular music was a bipolar era, with the decadence of the polished studio sounds of disco, jazz fusion, what we now call classic rock and album-oriented rock (viz Village People, ABBA, Al DiMeola, Steely Dan, select Frank Zappa, Blue Oyster Cult), and on the other the DIY ethos of punk and early new wave (viz The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, Television). In spirit the two movements are the antithesis of one another, but those musicians who entertained a sort of musical doublethink are the ones who survived the era, and made the most lasting music.
The case in point is Adrian Belew. Discovered by Frank Zappa playing in a barroom in the Southeast, Belew was invited by Zappa to audition for his band, and toured with Zappa for about a year or so. Belew can be heard singing on the song “City of Tiny Lites”, recorded on the road circa 77 or 78. Zappa was a musician whose depth of musicality and breadth of influence was impressive: from the proto-punk albums of the late 60s with the Mother of Invention, to the genre-defining jazz fusion release “Hot Rats” in 1969, to the R-rated guitar-heavy pop rock and his own twisted style of progressive rock in the mid-70s. Zappa’s catholic approach to music resembles Belew’s — genre is the least of their concerns.
After his tour with Zappa wrapped up, he was invited by David Bowie, who had seen a performance of his with Zappa, to join his band. Bowie was another musical chameleon of the 70s. Starting off as an unworldly folk-singer-songwriter in the late 60s, then experimenting with blues-rock, glam-rock, soul, and disco in the mid 70s, he started to make insular art-rock in collaboration with ex-Roxy Music member and ambient pioneer Brian Eno in the late 70s. Bowie put out his “Berlin Trilogy”, so named because of where the albums were recorded. They reflect a paranoid, tension-filled state of mind, appropriate for the site and situation. Belew can be heard on the last album of the trilogy, “Lodger”.
Through Eno, Belew was invited to play on the Talking Heads 1980 release “Remain in Light”. The Talking Heads started out in the NYC punk scene, but made off kilter, subtly humorous music that had a nervous energy that wasn’t in step with the distorted, palm-muted power chords and constant-downstroke-strum of the bands typical of the scene. As their sound evolved, they started incorporating the polyrhythms of African musics into their sound, culminating in “Remain in Light”.
Another guitarist called in by Eno to play on “Remain in Light” was Robert Fripp, guitarist of the at-the-time defunct progressive rock band King Crimson. In keeping with the pattern of impressing any new musician he met enough to have them invite him to join their band, Belew not only impressed Fripp enough to have him join his band, but Fripp reformed his band in order to do it. King Crimson’s 1969 release “In the Court of the Crimson King” was a seminal progressive rock album, and Crimson continued to be at the cutting edge of avant-prog rock, incorporating modernist classical influences such as Bela Bartok and heavy distorted guitar riffs into their sound in the mid 70s. As a result, their following never expanded to a wider audience, but their albums such as “Red” and “Starless and Bible Black” were heavy influences on grungy, sludgy metal acts that became popular in the 90s such as Tool and Kyuss. Had either of these two mid 70s releases of Crimson’s come out twenty years later, they may well have received radio play and garnered Crimson a wider audience, considering the abrasive rock music that was topping the charts at that time.
However, the reformed 80s Crimson stands in sharp contrast to their earlier music. With the “Remain in Light” sessions fresh on their minds, Fripp and Belew decocted the polyrhytmic elements of the Heads’ sound and the minimalism popular in classical music at the time (Steve Reich, Phillip Glass) to make a unique trilogy of albums – 1981′s “Discipline”, 1982′s “Beat”, and 1984′s “Three of a Perfect Pair”.
During the early 80s Belew found some time to begin release solo material, on which he generally played all of the instruments. His first two albums had a country western influence, but later albums for the most part were straight ahead Beatlesque pop songs. This is a particularly catchy one from his 1989 album “Mr. Music Head”:
