When I am in some chain store, big or small, cool or cool’s opposite, and I see that woman or man who looks older than the rest of the crew­—like maybe pushing 30 while everyone else is dabbling with 20—I wonder how they got there. I mean, how and why did fate deposit them here, cashing me out for my purchase of dog biscuits and underwear? And if I perceive them as a musician (sometimes the hair gives them away, sometimes it’s the ‘artist pheromone’), I wonder if it is the dream that has placed them on the smock and nametag side of the counter, or is it the dream’s demise? And then I think, there but for the grace of Zappa goes Adrian Belew.

If you do not know who Adrian Belew is, I could say forget everything you know about rock guitar because Belew has turned the medium on its truss rod. But you can easily find examples of his genius in the work of David Bowie (the albums Lodger and Stage, and the tours for Heroes and Sound + Vision), Talking Heads (Remain in Light, both the album and the tour, which resulted in the second half of live album The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads), Nine Inch Nails (The Downward Spiral, The Fragile, Ghosts I-IV), and the seminal prog-rock band King Crimson, which he has fronted since 1981. But it was the aforementioned Frank Zappa who plucked Adrian from the precipice of Kmartyrdom.

While my recent hour-long conversation with Belew left stones unturned, he is a fascinating artist and a humble rock guitar revolutionary. The following is Part I of that conversation.

Crawdaddy!: I want to talk about your new Parker Fly guitar, but first let’s talk about you.

Adrian Belew: Sure, I’m connected to the guitar at the hip anyway, so it doesn’t really matter!

Crawdaddy!: You are! I’ve seen you try to pull the thing away and it just won’t go, so…

Belew: I sleep with it, it’s my baby.

Crawdaddy!: You were a drummer first and a guitar player second, is that right?

Belew: That’s right. I started in the junior high school marching band. I wanted to parade around at halftime and have a snare drum. It was a load of fun. I did that for three years, and then I joined my first rock band, which was a Beatle cover band called the Denims.

I played with the Denims from the age of 14 through 17. I started playing guitar when I was 16. I was in high school and I got mononucleosis, and they told me I had to stay home for two whole months and wouldn’t be allowed to play any shows. I had to be very quiet and docile, so, no drumming. So I borrowed an acoustic guitar and decided I would teach myself to play. I had a lot of songs in my mind and I couldn’t explain them to anyone as a drummer. So I just figured them out and I would sing the note that I wanted and then would figure out what the harmony would be and then [added] another harmony to that and that would make my chord. And so when I went back and showed my friends in the Denims the first five songs I had written, they said, “What the heck are those chords?” [laughs]

Crawdaddy!: Did you ever take lessons, not counting your time with Zappa?

Belew: I never took any lessons. Even in the marching band, I just learned to march, I didn’t learn to read music. I was, as you mentioned, in Frank’s band, and I was the only non-reader in that band. At that point in my life, I was 27, and I asked Frank, “Should I now learn to read music?” and he said “no” and I took his word for it.

Crawdaddy!: What was your first guitar?

Belew: My first guitar was a Gibson Firebird, which was, at that time, a pretty futuristic-looking guitar. It had a very odd shape and the tuning keys came out of the back of the headstock—they’re called banjo keys. And I was just drawn to the look of that guitar. I bought it from the local music store for $170. I paid 10 dollars a week on it!

Crawdaddy!: Do you still have that guitar?

Belew: I don’t. A few years after the Denims broke up, times got rough and there were no jobs, and I met two guys who wanted me to play drums in their Holiday Inn band. I was really destitute, so I sold my Firebird for $300 and I bought a drum set for $300. I sold it to a guy named Dave Martin. He became a guitar collector, wouldn’t you know it. He still has that guitar and it is for sale! But I don’t think that I could afford it!

Crawdaddy!: Would you own it again if you could?

Belew: I would. Dave has said to me he would like me to have the guitar, but of course the price is about 20 times what it used to be, so I don’t want it that bad. [laughs]

Crawdaddy!: Your early influences were the Beatles?

Belew: Oh yeah, absolutely, as a drummer and a singer and a songwriter, and then as a guitarist as well. They were, for me, the whole library of [music] education. I studied their records so hard, from a production standpoint. You know—why did they use these saxophones and what are the harmonies they’re using here, and what is that bass part there and why is this there? It was more than just enjoying them, but of course I enjoyed them too.

Crawdaddy!: Do you have a favorite Beatles album?

Belew:Revolver remains my favorite because that’s the first one where I felt that they stepped outside the normal four-piece band and started experimenting in the studio. That album introduces a lot of things that are firsts. Things like Indian music and orchestras playing with the band and backwards guitar, a lot of things that I still really love.

Crawdaddy!: It’s interesting that you are a big Beatles fan, because your writing and playing is often so avant-garde.

Belew: Well, you know, in King Crimson for example, there are very defined musical rules that we follow for what we can and can’t do. I always use the analogy that if we bought a box of 24 crayons we would use six and throw the other ones out! So the Beatle influence didn’t really come out for me until I started making my solo records and thinking, “Well, this is the music that I loved, and I know how to write some of this.” And so, I explored that a little bit. I went through a period where I made three or four Beatle-esque records. You mentioned the Bears and that was based entirely on the idea of doing another kind of pop band, just writing good, succinct, three-minute songs.

Crawdaddy!: Your playing style kind of turns pop on its head.

Belew: Well, the idea [in the Bears] was not to write just another 10 or 12 pop songs. We looked at a specific area of, I guess, what would be called avant-garde pop, which the Beatles did. Our examples were songs which were a little more off the wall than the straightforward ones—the “I Am the Walrus” and “Strawberry Fields” or any number of songs that the Beatles did once they really cut loose and began to explore. They were very experimental themselves.

Crawdaddy!: Yeah, I’ve always felt that the Beatles became the first successful prog-rock band. I don’t think many mainstream Beatle fans feel that way, but some of the White Album stuff, and Magical Mystery Tour—it’s very proggy for its time, in my opinion.

Belew: Yes, there is so much in their music that is very avant-garde. Experimental songs, which first began as 20-minute jams, that a prog-rock band might do. I’m thinking of “Helter Skelter”, which I just read was originally a 27-minute jam! They edited that down to a three-and-a-half minute song!

Crawdaddy!: I know you’ve told this story before, but it’s a great one, so if you don’t mind, t
ell the story of how you began working with Frank Zappa.

Belew: Well, I moved here to Nashville back in the mid-’70s to play with a particular band, a regional band that did a lot of work and was well-known, called Sweetheart, and they wore 1940s authentic vintage clothing everywhere. If you were in Sweetheart, you had to wear your 1940s three-piece suit with a fedora, even if you were just shopping at Kroger’s at two in the afternoon. They were a very good cover band and they did songs that were not your normal fare—a lot of Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder, McCartney and Wings—stuff that you wouldn’t be ashamed to play. Anyway, Frank Zappa played Nashville, and after his concert, he had a chauffeur and a limo, and he asked the limo driver, whose name was Terrance Pugh, where would he go to hear some good rock music. And Terrance said, “Well, my favorite band is playing over here in this little biker bar called Fanny’s,” and Zappa said, “Okay, let’s go.” So I was standing on stage playing, and suddenly I saw Frank Zappa with his big bodyguard, John Struthers, and [drummer] Terry Bozzio. They walked in and listened to us for 40 minutes, then Frank came up and shook my hand while we were playing “Gimme Shelter” and he said, “I’ll get your name and number from the chauffeur and when my tour is over, I’m going to audition you.”