Month: November 2006

In the late 1980s, the Pixies’ unique brand of punk, pop, and guitar rock almost singlehandedly created the alternative music movement that flourished in the early ’90s. Its sound served as the blueprint for a host of new artists including Nirvana, and was cited as a major influence on more established artists, including U2 and David Bowie.

When asked by Rolling Stone about the inspiration behind “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Kurt Cobain said, “I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off The Pixies.”
The Pixies were formed in Boston in 1986 by guitarist/songwriter Charles Thompson and lead guitarist Joey Santiago, who recruited bassist Kim Deal and drummer David Lovering. Thompson then assumed the pseudonym “Black Francis” and the group assumed its name after flipping through a dictionary.

Francis’ often brilliant songwriting employed extraordinary dynamics – they practically invented that “soft verse/loud chorus” technique – and vivid imagery, and his guitar playing was tight and focused. Santiago’s inventive and unconventional melodies were refreshing amongst the slew of hair metal players of the day, making him a sort of “anti-hero” guitar hero.

After quickly gaining a cult following on the local level, the Pixies were signed to 4AD Records and released the EP Come On Pilgrim, in 1987. The following year, the Pixies released their first full-length album, Surfer Rosa, produced by Steve Albini. The album’s international success caught the attention of Elektra Records, who later went on to release their three biggest selling albums.

In 1992, after the group released the hard-rocking Trompe Le Monde and opened for U2 on its 1992 Zoo TV Tour, the Pixies broke up. During this period, bassist Kim Deal worked with the Breeders, and Black Francis worked under Black’s other assumed name Frank Black, and Joey formed The Martinis with his wife, Linda Mallari. Drummer Dave Lovering went on to join Cracker, then spent time working as a magician, opening for several rock tours (including Black’s).

As with all good rock and roll breakups, reunions seem inevitable, and in April of 2004, the Pixies got together for the first time in more than a decade for a critically acclaimed world tour.

VG recently caught up with Francis and Santiago, both of whom are big fans of vintage instruments.

Vintage Guitar: Your reunion tour has you playing together for the first time in more than 10 years. How does it feel?
Black Francis: It feels like it did before, basically. No lie. There’s a lot of muscle memory involved in playing music, and when you go back to old songs, it looms larger than poignant thoughts. It’s a more gut-level thing.
Joey Santiago: It felt good. The anticipation was exciting, and when the actual playing was happening, I felt pretty much like “Just don’t f*** up!” (laughs).

Your guitar styles are very different, yet work well together. When developing a song, do you consciously plan parts, or do you sort of weave them together?
BF: I hate to dumb it down too much, but basically I’m the guy who just shows up with the chord progressions. So, obviously, I’m going to play the chords, many times chunky, as they typically are in rock music. And Joey is the “lead” player, so he’s gonna play higher and more single-note stuff. Sometimes he does a solo, sometimes a repeated riff, a motif. So we start from a sort of Joe Blow place… I’m the rhythm guitar player “chugga chugga chugga” and he’s the lead player “reeneeneeneenee.” You can reduce it all to that. That’s not to say that we play in a conventional way, although sometimes we play a combination of really conventional stuff and oddball stuff. That’s probably true about the Pixies in general. It sounds kinda normal, but there are subtle oddities going on (laughs). Joey is the unsung hero of the Pixies… maybe not now, but in the earlier days, a lot of magazines were personality-driven and wanted to talk about the grouchy lead singer or the drunk bass player, and what’s going on between those two… so the guitar player got left on the back burner.

I think there are several things that Joey does, though, that have made his style stand out. He’ll play something that’s seemingly very simple, and his whole subtle touch just sort of makes it sound classy and makes it pop out.
JS: Back in the old days, I’d just record Charles on his acoustic, or the practices with a cassette tape, remember those things (laughs). Then I’d take it home and practice, and come up with my stuff.

How has your songwriting changed since you started?
BF: When I started out, I was very much into abstraction and very short songs, and a certain type of surreal thing in my songs. If I’ve changed one thing, I’ve tried to adopt more styles into my songwriting, like doing some classic things like love songs or singer/songwriter kind of stuff, trying to expand. When you’re young, you tend to try to be a more avant-garde type of guy, and when you do it long enough, you want to go where others have gone before, and hold your own. You’re not as embarrassed to embrace formulaic or highly stylized things. When you’re young you’re trying to avoid horrible clichés and mediocre music, so the last thing you want to say is “Hey, let’s do a country and western song”…you’re all about breaking everything up. You do things for awhile, and you’re less conscious of people thinking you’re dorky. I think you learn respect for some of the forms of music that will live on.

The first Pixies stuff represents my earliest songwriting, and as they say, you have your whole life to write your first album, and six months to write your second, so the first two Pixies records represent a lot of the writing that started when I was a teenager.

How has your technique changed since you began playing guitar?
BF: I probably have changed, but can’t properly analyze how. Initially, I learned so much on the guitar, and then just didn’t try too hard to break out of that, so I’ve just learned little things through time, like new fingerings. Especially from watching people who have original styles. You work hard at things like songwriting or rehearsing for a tour, but really don’t put the effort into the learning curve… I just try to let that happen on its own – that’s how you develop your own style.
JS: Mine hasn’t (laughs)… I’m trying to change it, but I can’t! Technique-wise, I hope I’m a little better now. But Charles has a style of his own, too… his rhythm playing is to die for – it’s really, really good.

When did you start playing?
JS: I started playing in junior high, and never really took it that seriously. But then, around high school, I started getting more interested in it. I used to plug my electric guitar in at parties and we’d all get s***faced (laughs).

To many, your music was unlike anything that came before it, and doesn’t sound derivative of earlier genres. What type of music did you listen to as a kid?
BF: I would say Neil Young’s Decade album was a huge influence on me. That was probably the first record I heard as a teenager that made me think about the artist, it got me into a lot of different types of material and it gave me a good sense of him. Before Neil, I would say that I was big into Bob Dylan and The Beatles when I was really young, and Donovan. I was a huge Leon Russell fan, and still listen to him. I also used to listen to a lot of ’60s stuff when I was a teenager. I wasn’t really into the current stuff or the punk stuff that was going on in the ’70s. In the ’60s, there were these “rock family trees” and I used to work my way through them. I listened to Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, The Yardbirds, and a Christian rock guy named Larry Norman, whose heyday was the early ’70s; a folky guy who was too rock and roll for religious people and too religious for rock and roll people.
JS: I was into the usual suspects – Hendrix and all that. I really liked the Beatles, too.

Do you remember your first good instrument and amp?
BF: I had an EMC amp that worked okay, and played a Guild acoustic electric through it, which I started playing in high school. That was my first setup with The Pixies, and I played it for a lot of the early Pixies gigs. The amp didn’t make it too far, though. It stopped working, so we got a butter knife to open it up and see if we could fix it (laughs). And of course, we couldn’t! So the EMC was not revived (laughs). Then we both got into Peavey amplifiers, which worked for him.
JS: The first good instrument I had, my mother bought for me, just after junior high. It was an Ovation Viper. Remember those? It was a good guitar, too. It had the full 24 frets, and was made for someone with tiny hands, so it would sit in my hands every night, and I liked it. I tried a more expensive Les Paul and it didn’t fit as well for my hands. For an amp, I got a Peavey Special.

I got my first Les Paul when we formed the band in Boston. I actually initially wanted to be the Tele guy, but Charles already had one, so not to be redundant, I went with the humbuckers, something totally opposite of what he was playing.

I believe it was Brian Eno who said “Only about a thousand people ever bought a Velvet Underground album, but every one of them formed a rock and roll band.” Something similar could be said for the Pixies, whose impact perhaps belies its popularity. What was it about your music that attracted fans?
BF: Oh, I don’t know. I suppose enough people found what they wanted to find in it. In other words, people were looking for something that was kind of pop or aggressive were able to find it in the music. Other people who were looking to find something humorous and not taking themselves too serious, even a bit nerdy, were able to find that, as well. Some wanted music that was sort of quirky, arty – dare I say avant-garde – and were able to find it in our music. Different types of people were able to focus on different elements.
JS: I’d say that it was unique at the time. I don’t mean to sound like an old fart, but that was when “alternative” was actually alternative. We didn’t consciously rebel against the norm; I think it was just a natural thing for us to be alternative. This was in the days of hair metal. I remember going through Electra Records offices, and looking at their posters on their wall, and thinking “They’ll really like us…”

Obviously, Kurt Cobain was greatly influenced by the Pixies.
BF: It’s unfortunate for Nirvana that they got so hot so fast. That’s exactly the sort of thing that makes me not want to listen to a band or makes me not want to see a movie. So there’s stuff I’ve missed over the years, because if it’s like “Everybody’s going to see that movie,” guess what I’m not going to see? I tend to have a problem with things that become that popular.
So you consider yourself a contrarian?
BF: Yeah, that’s a good way to describe it. I mean, I hear Nirvana at places like the grocery store now, and they were good and they were talented and all that, but it’s hard to talk about something that’s so huge for so many people. I hesitate to really analyze their music.

The Pixies have used Marshall amps for years. When did you first get into them?
BF: We were opening for Soul Asylum at the original Blue Note nightclub in St. Louis, and they had some that sounded really good. So when we got home, we went down to the music store and bought brand new Marshalls, and have used them ever since.
JS: Yes, from that point on we’ve used Marshalls. Mine is a 50-watt JCM 800. I always liked them, but since we had to lug our own gear around, I was like “What? Are you crazy, I’m not gonna lug that big thing around.” So I stuck with the Peavey until we had some help (laughs). I really like the JCM 800s, but don’t like the 900s. For the studio, I have a blackface Fender Vibrolux reverb.
BF: When we got bigger, we went with two Marshalls each. I do have some old Vox AC30s that I used in my solo band, but went back to Marshalls when we got back together.

Do you collect guitars?
BF: For a while, I was really into ’60s Teles, and then a few years back, a bunch of them got stolen. So to sort of “celebrate,” I went out and bought my first ’50s Tele – a ’57 – which initially felt weird, but eventually became my main guitar up until last year, when my brother showed up at a gig in L.A. at the beginning of the Pixies tour with a ’53 Telecaster. He just gave it to me at the gig, and it sounded, actually, too intense. But eventually I started playing it, and now it’s my main guitar.

As far as other guitars, in the early days I played a bunch of these ’80s Japanese-made Fender Tele Specials. We had a well-known guitar tech named Toru, who stripped them, took them back to Japan, and dried them in some barbeque thing, which made them lighter. He then put vintage-style pickups in them, kept the whammy bridge on them, and cut some old-style saddles.

For the reunion, I could go back to Marshall amps, but not back to the ’80s Teles. Nowadays, I play just the ’53 Tele, and if I break a string, I’ll pickup my ’57.
JS: I like Les Pauls because they’re the easiest guitars (to play). I have a bunch of them, and my favorites include a black Custom that sounds like your run-of-the-mill Les Paul, and then a nice old goldtop that sounds super, super crisp. I just bought a ’52 Guild Aristocrat with soapbars. It’s a very nice guitar that I am dying to record with. It’s less forgiving than a Les Paul, though.

One of our crew, Myles Mangino, had a great super-light Gibson Melody Maker that I loved and wanted to buy, but he just traded it for a drum set. I was like, “Why didn’t you tell me?” I’ve also got a ’65 ES-345 with a Gibson vibrato, that’s a really nice guitar, too. I do prefer vintage guitars; they feel more worn-in, and if it has lasted that long, it must be worth the money (laughs). I’d like a ’50s Les Paul, though.

Joey, on Surfer Rosa, you had some amazing clean tones. What did you use on that record?
JS: I was playing a Fender Twin Reverb on that that Charles used to own. In the studio, I plug straight into the amps.
How about live? Are you using any effects?
JS: Live, I do use pedals, including a ZVex Super Hard-On, a DOD wah, Boss Fuzz pedal, a tremolo pedal, and an Electro-Harmonix Memory Man, which I love, and an SMF Mr. Echo, which is also a fun pedal.

Your style alternated from an almost updated surf rock to extreme hard rock, as on your final studio album, Trompe Le Monde, in ’91. Was there a conscious move to a heavier sound?
BF: We did listen to a lot of surf music, and we did play loud, but you just kind of make up a bunch of songs, and they come out like they come out. We’re not real visionary in that sense. We don’t have a game plan.
JS: I’ll play something a bit heavier if the song is harder-sounding. When I did those hammer-ons on that album, they were sort of a joke – a metal joke – everyone was just laughing when I was recording that.

Are there plans for the Pixies to record a new album?
BF: We don’t have any; we’re sort of hesitant on that. I think we’d like to, but I don’t think that’s what people are interested in right now. Maybe some of our

Considering his lengthy resumé, one might expect Irish guitarist Vivian Campbell would have released a solo album long before September of 2005. And Campbell’s efforts in bands such as Dio, Whitesnake, and Def Leppard might create a stereotype among listeners about the musical direction of the guitarist’s new album, but Two Sides of If (Sanctuary) is a surprise, genre-wise, in that it’s a blues tribute rather than a hard rock effort, and features contributions from ZZ Top’s Billy F Gibbons, vocalist Joan Osborne, and drummer Terry Bozzio

VG spoke with the affable guitarist while he was on the road with Def Leppard, discussing guitars, influences, and his new album. Campbell is originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, and we inquired if one of his earliest influences was fellow Irish guitarist the late Rory Gallagher (see feature in this section).

“Rory was my first guitar hero, the first concert I saw, and his live album was the first 12” record I owned. I got into him when I was about 12, right around the time of Irish Tour ’74. I wanted a Strat bad; I had a Strat copy, but I was working weekends, trying to save up money. My father finally bought me a Fender, and surprised me with it. He opened up the trunk of his car, and there was a Telecaster (Thinline) – the one with the two humbuckers and an f-hole. That was my first real guitar.”

“Then I really got into (Thin Lizzy guitarists) Brian Robertson and Gary Moore,” Campbell added. “They were Les Paul cats, and by the time I got into Sweet Savage, I was a Les Paul guy.”

Campbell refinished his first Les Paul more than once and played it on the first album by singer Ronnie James Dio’s self-monikered band following Dio’s departure from Black Sabbath. Campbell was 19 years old when he got the Dio gig. By the time of the second Dio album, Campbell had acquired a couple of Charvel Strats from Grover Jackson. After departing Dio, he joined mega-group Whitesnake at the height of that band’s popularity in 1987, and he was an endorser of the Kramer Nightswan model, which had two humbuckers and a reverse headstock. Campbell later formed a short-lived band called Riverdogs, which “made one record that totally fell between the cracks.” He had also attempted to start a solo album in the early ’90s.

“Musically, it was going to be very different for me,” he explained. “I grew up very much a guitar guy, and was writing songs for Dio that were guitar-based. But after doing it for a couple of years with that band, I felt very conflicted, and for the first time in my life I started to listen to soul and pop singers, and I started vocal lessons.”

The guitarist’s shot at a solo effort was abruptly halted when he got a phone call about joining Def Leppard following the death of guitarist Steve Clark in 1991. His first performance was at the Freddy Mercury memorial concert in ’92, followed by tours to support Leppard’s Adrenalize album. He’s been with the band ever since and these days is back to favoring Les Pauls.

As with a lot of original blues recordings, Two Sides of If was done live in the studio. Moreover, blues is typically associated with older guitars, so we asked Campbell if he’d made a conscious decision to use vintage instruments on the album.

“I have a few Gibson reissues,” he said. “So they’re not ‘old’ guitars. I was jamming in a lot of clubs around L.A., and the guitar I was using most was a ’56 Les Paul reissue with P-90s, and I used that a lot on the record. I also borrowed some guitars from Gibson – a dot-neck 335, and an L-5 Custom, a big-bodied jazz guitar of the sort I’d never played before. They all sounded beautiful.
“I put a list on the CD of what gear I used on each song,” Campbell noted. “And the real surprise guitar, for me – the one I used most of the album – was a great-sounding new Yamaha with a Bigsby (vibrato). I also took that guitar to jams around L.A., and people would come up and ask me about it. It turned out to be the shining star of the record.”

Two Sides of If has 12 tracks, including two tributes to Gallagher. “Calling Card” gets particularly close to Gallagher’s tone. “I’ve got to say that comes more from my style of playing, but Rory’s definitely the primary influence, and I did pick up a lot of his habits; I definitely attack too much with my right hand. But I’m particularly pleased with the way the guitar sounded on that song; that was the Yamaha, and I used a Fender tweed amp that (Leppard guitarist) Phil Collen’s guitar tech modified. I think that tonally, that’s probably my favorite song on this record.”

Singer Joan Osborne contributes vocals on a cover of Cream’s “Spoonful,” and the redoubtable Billy F Gibbons wrote and performed on “Willin’ for Satisfaction,” and trades guitar licks with Campbell on a version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Like It This Way.”

Summing up the album, Campbell noted, “I’m really satisfied with the way it turned out. A lot of people wouldn’t expect it. My wife has always been a blues fan, and she told me 20 years ago ‘You play guitar like a blues guy, and you’ve got this rough voice, so you sing like a blues guy. You should make a blues record.’ It finally happened, and nobody knows me as a singer, and some people who think they know me as a guitar player will be surprised, as well. I’m not the same guitar player I was 20 years ago. I’ve come a long way since then.”

J.J. Cale is the last person you’d expect to get the up close and personal “Behind The Music” treatment. Interviews with him are rare, and for years most of his fans only had a vague idea what he looked like, since he toured sporadically and was seldom pictured on albums. Of his 1971 debut, Naturally, he laughs, “Ironically, we were selling records with no interviews, no photographs, no publicity. But that was another time.”

In 2004, he released his first studio album in eight years, To Tulsa And Back. “The reason I did the tour was because Eric Clapton asked me to do the Crossroads Festival,” he explains. “If I got to saddle up and get a band, might as well play some other gigs. Ended up being seven weeks.”

When he granted German filmmaker Jorg Bundschuh permission to film some dates, he says, “I thought it was just going to be a promo thing, like 10 minutes long. I didn’t know we were doing a ‘This Is Your Life’ kind of thing.”
The resultant video, To Tulsa And Back: On Tour With J.J. Cale (Time-Life), is a rare treat, with concert footage (including his first show in his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 25 years); informal acoustic performances; family album pictures spanning his lifetime; and interviews with bandmates (some of whom first played with him nearly 50 years ago), his biggest supporter (and beneficiary), Eric Clapton, and – best of all – Cale himself.

In one segment, drummer Jimmy Karstein refers to Cale as “the most unaffected person ever in the music business,” as anyone who knows him can attest. Talking about himself is not Cale’s favorite thing to do. “It was a real surprise to me,” he admits. “That’s really not my kind of thing. Then they wanted me to promote it – like, ‘Will you go to a record store in L.A. and do like a book signing?’ I said, ‘Of course not.’ So they said, ‘Will you sign some sleeves if we send them to you?’ ‘Yeah, I’ll do that.’ ‘And will you do some interviews?’ I said, ‘I’ll do two.’ So you’re one of them.”

At the time the tour was filmed, John Cale was 65 years old. He explains how, after he moved to Los Angeles, the owner of the Whiskey A Go Go renamed him J.J. Cale, because there was another John Cale, in the Velvet Underground. “I said, ‘If you give me a job, you can call me anything you want.’”

After years of working as both guitarist and recording engineer, Cale was broke as the ’60s drew to a close, and sold his Les Paul for a ticket home. Then Clapton cut J.J.’s “After Midnight.” His whole world changed, although by all accounts Cale stayed the same. When his first album yielded the hit “Crazy Mama,” he was offered an appearance on “American Bandstand” – sure to help the single climb the charts. When he found out he’d have to lipsynch, he passed – and the record dropped down several notches.

Pianist Rocky Frisco, who formed a Tulsa band with Cale in 1957, pinpoints one of Cale’s unique qualities. “He’s got a fairly simple musical style, compared to a lot of great musicians. But when his style impinges on the styles of great musicians, great musicians start to play like John Cale, rather than the other way around.”

Clapton, who calls Cale “an incredible inspiration,” credits him with making “some of the most significant American music.” The guitar hero seems in awe of Cale’s minimalist style, marveling, “It’s all about finesse.”

Cale, who refers to himself as “semi-retired,” says, “I was always afraid I’d be old and poor. Seems like I have more work now than I used to have, and I turn down more than I take. There’s so much business connected with work now. It ain’t just me playing my guitar and singing my songs and, ‘Hi folks, how are ya?’ In the old days, the record company had the advertising and promotion department. You didn’t do all that; they did. Nowadays, the companies don’t do any promotion; they put it out so you can go promote it. That’s probably the most drastic change in the record business. In the daytime I’m doing interviews or promoting the record on the radio; by the time I get to the club, I’ve done so much talking, the gig is almost secondary.

“But that’s the problem,” he smiles. “I love to do it.”

Bleeps, squawks, and other sounds emanate from the guitars of Adrian Belew, who has gigged with the likes of Frank Zappa and Talking Heads, not to mention his quarter-century association with King Crimson. Belew also has an offshoot band known as the Bears, and is constantly working on solo material. His most recent solo effort, Side One (Sanctuary), was released in late January, and participants included bassist Les Claypool and Tool drummer Danny Carey.

Belew was born in Covington, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati. He resides in the Nashville area, and recently spoke with VG about his past and present efforts.

Vintage Guitar: Did your unique guitar style evolve from playing a particular instrument and/or specific influences?
Adrian Belew: Well, early on I studied everything I liked – everything from Les Paul to Chet Atkins to Segovia to current heroes at the time; people like Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, George Harrison. I just learned anything I could from anybody’s records. I suppose that after years of doing that, and playing in a variety of bands, I realized that I could sound like a lot of other players, so I decided to sort of stop whenever I caught myself playing someone else’s standard lick, and I’d try to replace it with something of my own invention. And I realized that I loved making “sounds” with the guitar.

One time, I saw a comedian named Morey Amsterdam play a cello – I think it was on the Johnny Carson show – and he made the cello sound like seagulls and other things. He was just kind of goofing around, but I took it seriously and said, “I bet I could do things like that with a guitar.” So I started trying to imitate things – car horns, animal sounds – then I found ways to put that into my playing, which led to a niche I could work in.

Was there any particular brand or model of guitar that helped you get such sounds?
Mostly, that comes with hand techniques or effect boxes more than any particular guitar, although early on I realized I favored the layout, balance, and feel of a Stratocaster. When I started out, I bought a Gibson Firebird, which was an interesting, modernistic instrument, but my friend, Seymour Duncan, kept doing things to it for me. We eventually realized that what I was trying to do was make it into a Stratocaster! (laughs)

I sold the Firebird when the disco era was in full swing to buy a set of Ludwig drums, and I got a job in a (lounge) band. I couldn’t stand the music we were playing. When I went back to playing guitar professionally two and a half years later, I bought a Stratocaster.

You also have things like a highly modified Fender Mustang with multicolored pickup covers.
These days, my guitars are usually modified to different specs that I like, and I’m using a set of three Custom Shop guitars Fender built for me, and what’s usually custom about them is the synthesizer, the Roland GK-2A pickup and its controls, which are under the pickguard. They have Kahler tremolos, which I’ve always favored – I’ve developed so many hand techniques with the Kahler, I don’t know how I’d do them if I ever had to use another tremolo! The company hasn’t fared well, but I think their products are excellent. I started using Sperzel tuners a long time ago, so my guitars stay in tune quite well without a locking nut.

The guitars also have Lace Sensor pickups; I like the sound of single-coils but like something to be as quiet as possible. The bass pickup has a Sustainiac. I do have a vintage Strat, which has my favorite neck, and they replicated that for these Custom Shop guitars.

Talk about your experience with Frank Zappa.
I played with Frank from ’77 to ’78. The main record we made was Sheik Yerbouti, which was the all-time best-selling Zappa record, and we made a film called Baby Snakes, which also turned into a record called Baby Snakes, and there are some live recordings. I’m on two volumes of You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore.

What about your association with Talking Heads?
The first thing I did with them was Remain In Light, which was in 1980 – an excellent record. I played on tour with them for a year, and also played on all of their solo records. The big record of that period was Tom Tom Club, which was drummer Chris Frantz and bassist Tina Weymouth from Talking Heads. They had a huge hit called “Genius of Love.” I also did Jerry Harrison’s solo records, David Byrne’s The Catherine Wheel, and a live double set from the band, so quite a lot of material came out of that period.

That has to be you on the intro to the live album’s version of “House in Motion;” there’s a noticeable vibrato squawk.
Well, when they put me in the band, they didn’t have someone who could solo, and they didn’t have someone who could color the songs with all the effects they had done in the studio, when they’d brought in Brian Eno, me, and other players. So when I came into the band, those were my responsibilities. A fun job! (chuckles)

Considering the phases King Crimson has been through, is it fair to say that the incarnation that debuted with Discipline in 1981 introduced the third phase?
Yeah, that’s the third real lineup of the band. I’ve been in the last four.

Reportedly, the third incarnation was slated to be called Discipline instead of King Crimson.
When we first got together, there was no real talk of a name, and eventually Robert (Fripp) said he liked the name Discipline. We kind of chewed on that for a while; I don’t think Tony (Levin) and I really liked it – it sounded too unfriendly. Robert finally said, “Whatever we call this band, in spirit, it is still King Crimson.” Then Tony and I said, “Then let’s call it King Crimson.” I grew up with King Crimson being one of my favorite bands, and that name carried a sort of respectability and history that I was proud to be a part of.

And there was a mixed reaction among the older (King Crimson) fans, because they tend to want you to stay right where you are. They liked the 1969 version or the ’72 version. It’s kind of like buying a new car and wishing it still looked like an old one! (chuckles) Mostly, though, there was a lot of enthusiasm for the new ground the band was tackling. There were now two Americans with two English players, and more importantly, we had a whole new box of tools to work with. Bill Bruford was on the cutting edge of electronic drumming, Tony was playing a Chapman Stick, and Robert and I had guitar synthesizers. Naturally, we created a different style and sound, but that’s what King Crimson has always been about anyway. I think there was also something to be said for an American singer doing American-style vocals. Now people look back on Discipline as being a very important King Crimson record.

How would you describe the differences between King Crimson and your offshoot band, the Bears?
I would say the Bears are about edgy pop songwriting, in particular. The Bears have four songwriters, so you get four styles. But everything we feed into the grinder comes out sounding like us. It’s a band that has a long history among old friends, so there’s a certain chemistry.

Robert and I have an even longer history with King Crimson, and while we’re the two main songwriters, King Crimson is more about experimentation, and the music is pretty complex. It usually has very little to do with pop music. We’re more inclined to play in odd time signatures, to do a lot polyrhythmic things… a more intense musical experience.

Side One features Les Claypool and Danny Carey on the first three tracks. As with some of your guitar playing, listener’s may ask of Claypool’s bass playing, “How did he do that?”
There are three records, Side One, Side Two, and Side Three that were done over the last four years, whenever I could find spare time in the studio. In making those recordings, I realized the material was separating itself into categories. The first record would be power trio-type material, but the second one doesn’t sound anything like the first. (The second) has more drum loops, long-evolving synthesizer, more of a deejay style of music.

I always play everything on my records, if I can, or I at least make a demo of what I want to do. Making a demo of those first three songs, I realized I wasn’t the right player. I really needed an adept, more powerful drummer, and a unique bass player. When you have a trio, you have to have people who are charged up and almost overplaying. I immediately thought of Les, because he’s one of the most unique character players. He has taken bass playing into other realms, and is very inventive; sometimes he’s slapping, sometimes he’s playing with his thumb.

Les and I discussed who the drummer should be, and Danny was the obvious choice. I went to San Francisco, to Les’ studio. I took my guitar and vocals tracks to them, and we learned the songs. But when it came time to record, we just recorded their tracks; I didn’t re-record my parts. That made it a little simpler, but it was also a bit of a challenge. We also had a lot of fun jamming and doing a lot of other things. They’re also going to be on two of the tracks on Side Three, and I think in the future we’d like to do a separate project, when all of us have time.

What instruments did you use?
Mostly, I used my custom Strats or my Parker Fly. Those are the two guitars I really felt most comfortable with, and I still do. It hasn’t been announced yet, but I’m working on a Parker Fly Adrian Belew signature model. We were hoping it would be ready to announce at the (January ’05) NAMM show, but the guy who was putting it together had a car accident. He’s okay, but it’s been delayed a bit. It’s going to be an unbelievably cool guitar… but there aren’t any vintage Parkers yet! (laughs)

Speaking of vintage, one would probably have expected you to run through effects and into the board instead of through old tweed Fender amplifiers.
In the last few years, I’ve come to rely on a pair of Johnson Millennium Mark 50 amps because they have a lot of interesting effects built into them, and they sound somewhere in the area of a Matchless with Celestions. And I have a Matchless, so I can compare them. Recently, I’ve been turned on to the Line 6 Vetta II.

What I’m doing is pretty interesting, and still confusing, at times. (chuckles) I’m trying to use two different sets of stereo amplifiers, two pedalboards, two different sounds coming out. The combinations I’m learning are mind-boggling, even for me! Just about every time I sit down to play guitar, I’ll find something new. It’s a designed idea, and I’m trying to sound a little like Robert and I do, when we play our interlocking guitar lines.

As applied to the power trio idea, I would loop a guitar, then play through my own loops, which meant I could kind of be my own rhythm guitar player. For example, “Ampersand,” the very first song, is looped. All the guitar stuff in there was done at one time, with one guitar. That’s also true for “Walk Around the World” and “Matchless Man.”

You played bass and drums on “Madness” and “Walk Around the World”?
Right; “Madness” is a different kind of trio. The bass player’s goin’ kinda crazy, but I felt like the drummer should put a nice, swing groove in there, and I could do that; I liked what I already had and there was no need to get somebody else to play anything differently. I have a Fender Jazz Bass, and I think on “Madness” I used it through a Comp-Tortion – a combination compressor and fuzz box. If you bleed just a little of it in, it really compresses the bass, causing it to breathe kind of heavy.

It’s also the just-me trio on “Walk Around the World,” but that’s a very difficult track to play. I used a Fernandes fretless bass on it. There are other places on the records where I used a Zeta upright electric bass, and I really loved playing that, because it has a beautiful low-end sound. It’s a real challenge, but I’ve actually gotten my chops and intonation together pretty well. I played a bit of keyboard bass on the records at times, but most of it is going to be those three basses.

What’s the crackling sound on “Beat Box Guitar”?
That’s an old vinyl record we sampled. We liked that texture; we actually sampled about eight minutes of crackle from different records. My engineer, Ken Latchney, is really amazing with all of these different techniques, ‘coz I’m always throwing things at him! (laughs) It can be pretty fun around here, because we’re always trying to come up with new things.

Was the initial low-end riff on “Elephants” inspired by “Baby Elephant Walk”?
No, but I do know that song; I think they used to play it on a game show. Elephants and rhinos are kind of a motif throughout my work – a recurring theme – something I picked up from Frank. With him, it was dwarves and pumpkins; with me, it’s animals. Usually, they’re metaphorical for some sort of human condition. Once again, the riff you alluded to is a loop, and I just started playing guitar over it, and I felt like the guitar things had an “elephant attitude” – they were low, big, rumbling, and brazen. Then we sprinkled in some jungle sound effects.

You even did the cover artwork for Side One.
I started painting about a year and a half ago. I always told myself I’d take up painting when I got to be an old man, but decided to start a little early. Like my guitar playing, I’ve invented everything with my painting on my own, with no knowledge of how to do it correctly; I just picked up some brushes and a couple of canvases. It’s turned into an explosion of ideas for me, just like music has. Every time I sit down to paint, something totally different comes out. Each of the records will feature four, five, six paintings. I designed all three of the covers at once, not so they would seem similar, but so it would seem like they belong together. We’re looking at June for Side Two, and next January for Side Three.

What do you see in the future for King Crimson, the Bears, and your solo projects?
I see all of them as ongoing because in my life, there’s never been one thing that’s been satisfying enough. So, having two great bands and a solo career might seem like too much, but it balances out really well for me. I’m pretty good at focusing on something that needs to be done.

But I lead a pretty normal life; I get up at 6 a.m. to see my girls off to school, and get my thoughts in gear before Ken arrives at 11. We generally go to about 5 or 6 (p.m.), and it’s my dream come true to have my own studio where I can make my own music, and to be in the company of King Crimson, the Bears, and all of the other people I work with.

And after all these decades, do you think you’re still learning?
All the time! Although there’s too much technology to choose from, and it’s probably humanly impossible to keep up with it these days, technology still drives my imagination and my writing process.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s June ’05 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.