More than three decades after Frank Zappa died of prostate cancer, Adrian Belew still vividly remembers the final time he saw the musician who helped launch his career.

These days, Belew is preparing to head back out on the road with Beat, the quartet devoted to the 1980s music of King Crimson. Belew — who played in that era of King Crimson alongside Robert Fripp — will join Steve Vai, Tony Levin and Danny Carey for a European tour that launches on June 7 in the U.K.

But in a recent Instagram post, Belew found himself looking much further back — to the final months of Zappa’s life. The guitarist recalled visiting Zappa shortly before his death in December 1993, a meeting he says left him deeply shaken.

“My last time seeing Frank Zappa face to face was just months before his death in December 1993,” Belew wrote. “I went to the Zappa abode for a short visit. He looked like the picture [in his Instagram post below], which was a shock.”

“Frank was obviously ill, his voice a whisper,” he continued. “There was an older man. Only 52, but seeming very weak and tired. In place of his usual habit of chain-drinking espresso, he was sipping orange juice freshly squeezed by his maid.”

Belew said Zappa spoke briefly about a new project before tiring and excusing himself to rest.

“Our interlude was over,” he wrote.

The guitarist’s connection to Zappa dates back to the late 1970s, when he was playing with the Nashville covers band Sweetheart. Zappa reportedly spotted Belew performing in a local club, and after a lengthy wait finally brought him in for an audition. Belew would spend roughly a year in Zappa’s band, appearing on the 1979 album Sheik Yerbouti and in the concert film Baby Snakes.

Though the stint was relatively brief, Belew has often described it as a formative experience.

“It was the first and only time that I’ve ever had serious instruction,” he once said of working with Zappa.

But Belew says the memory he prefers to hold onto is not their difficult final visit, but an unexpected exchange that happened about a year earlier.

“I prefer to remember a different ending,” he wrote. “One night in late 1992, I woke up from a vivid dream.”

In the dream, he and Zappa were laughing together and talking about music “like a friendship.” Unable to get back to sleep, Belew went downstairs and decided to send Zappa a fax describing the dream and thanking him for everything he had done for him professionally.

At the time, Belew said, he had no idea Zappa was gravely ill.

“Later that afternoon, I got a call,” he recalled. “It was Frank — what a great surprise! He said to me, ‘That was sweet’ — not a word you would normally associate with the acerbic, edgy satirist.”

The two then shared what Belew described as a warm, meaningful conversation — one that closely mirrored the dream itself.

“And that’s the way I remember Frank.”

Belew has been dealing with his own health issue. The guitarist said he required surgery on his left hand for carpal tunnel syndrome following the last Beat tour. The strenuous performances threatened to detail performances.

“It would get numb,” he says. “And during part of the tour, it would stay numb from the moment that I woke up, all the way until sometime during soundcheck.

“It was a little scary,” he adds. “I’d be like, ‘Oh, boy, you better wake up soon!’”

Hopefully non such problems await him as Beat return to the road.

How difficult is it to perform the guitar parts from King Crimson's 1980s' catalog?

Apparently very. Adrian Belew said he required surgery on his left hand after performing the group's music on his recent tour with Beat, the supergroup featuring guitarist Steve Vai, bassist Tony Levin and Tool drummer Danny Carey that performs Crimson's 1980s music.

Their tour saw the quartet honoring the prog legends’ trio of ‘80s albums, Discipline (1981), Beat (1982), and Three of a Perfect Pair (1984), and the challenge of the material was not lost on the two guitarists.

In the build-up to the road show, Vai revealed that the “relentless” picking patterns of the Discipline track "Frame by Frame" were particularly difficult, especially in light of his 2021 shoulder surgery. Several dates into the tour, King Crimson founding guitarist Robert Fripp recognized Vai's struggles and emailed valuable tips to help him master the song.

Post-tour, however, it was Belew who was left nursing his wounds. He had to have surgery to combat the bout of carpal tunnel syndrome that plagued his left hand as the tour made its way across the US.

“It would get numb,” he tells Guitar World. “And during part of the tour, it would stay numb from the moment that I woke up, all the way until sometime during soundcheck.

“It was a little scary,” he adds. “I’d be like, ‘Oh, boy, you better wake up soon!’”

Fortunately for Belew, his co-guitarist could sympathize with him, having suffered two cases of carpal tunnel in the past.

“Steve Vai was able to walk me through the process since he’s had it done twice,” he explains. “He reassured me that it was a simple operation and that it was not something that was going to go wrong. And on top of that, he introduced me to one of the best surgeons in the United States, who had done this work.”

The surgery, as Vai had predicted, was a success. “It’s perfect,” Belew says of his hand now. “This was an easy recovery and an easy operation.

“I’m back to full use of my left hand. While recovering, you can’t do much with it, and it’s a little tender,” he continues. “And then, you finally work back up to tempo. Now, I’m playing as I always did, except that there’s no more pain.”

Although having a shared lineage in Frank Zappa's band, Beat is the first time Belew and Vai have worked together. Seeing the man who fronted King Crimson for just shy of two decades, night after night, left Vai gobsmacked.

“I would say Adrian is underrated in the echelons of guitar,” he said earlier this year. “Nobody plays like anybody else, nobody can play like me, but they can get sort of close. Honestly, there’s no one close to Adrian.

“There’s a special way he’s crafted his own dimension of sounds,” he extends, although his oddball, MIDI-propelled Parker Fly guitar, which he dusted down for the Beat shows, certainly helps him with that.

A BEAT live release, “BEAT LIVE”, is due for release September 26th via InsideOut Music. The first track to be lifted from it, “Neal and Jack and Me” shows how the Vai-Belew guitar tandem is walking the tightrope between faithful renditions and thoughtful reimaginings.

“This isn't a cover band,” Vai exaplined while preparing for their maiden show. “We're reinterpreting some things. My style and sound will flow into it, because it will be coming out of me.

“I'm trying my absolute best to respect every note that Robert wrote, it's just how I perform it might be a little different.”

In related news, Fripp’s somewhat controversial comments about Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton have resurfaced. The guitarist is currently recovering after suffering a heart attack earlier this year.

And hopes of a new King Crimson album have been dashed. Jakko Jakszyk had said that work on a new album was underway, but the band's management has since reduced expectations, calling excitement “premature.”

Steve Vai says he had underrated Adrian Belew’s “brilliance” before teaming up with him in Beat, the prog-rock supergroup devoted to performing King Crimson's 1980s output.

Crimson’s music has always been defined by intricate guitar partnerships between Robert Fripp and whoever his counterpart happened to be. Vai knew that to make the Beat tour a success, he needed a sizzling chemistry with co-guitarist Adrian Belew.

It was never going to be an easy task, thanks to the sheer complexity of the music at hand. Belew himself has admitted he struggled to lock in with Fripp when he joined in 1981 while Jakko Jakszyk has spoken of how their knotted polyrhythms could quickly turn into a “car crash,” if someone slipped up.

However, Vai is full of praise of Belew, telling Music Radar that he “can't say enough about Adrian,” who gave him a small dose of inferiority.

“I knew about his work with Zappa, but that didn’t show me all of his brilliance,” he waxes lyrical. “You need to hear him flexing his muscles in different situations to discover the breadth of the man’s abilities.

“There are his contributions to David Bowie and Talking Heads,” he adds, “but what he did on those ’80s King Crimson records was monumental.”

“I would say Adrian is underrated in the echelons of guitar. Nobody plays like anybody else, nobody can play like me, but they can get sort of close. Honestly, there’s no one close to Adrian.

“There’s a special way he’s crafted his own dimension of sounds,” he maintains. “To see him play this complex polymetric music while singing at 75 is unbelievable. He still hits the notes with that silky voice. He’ll talk and joke around while I have to keep my head down. The man is a marvel!”

He’s also spoken fondly of the partnership they have forged, stating: “Together we’ve merged our sounds in a way that creates a really dynamic show.”

The Beat tour hasn’t been without its teething problems, though. In the much-covered build-up to the tour, Vai admitted that, in the wake of shoulder surgery, playing “Frame by Frame” had proved particularly challenging.

Then, several nights into the tour, he received an email from Robert Fripp, offering him some sage bits of advice to improve his playing on that song, and it made all the difference.

Having trailed across North America last year, Beat will tour South America in April as the King Crimson love-in continues, with Vai still in awe of his bandmate.

Vai is also set to tour with Joe Satriani as part of the SatchVai Band, having tapped up Pete Thorn as a rhythm guitarist.

Two dates into 2024’s headline-grabbing Beat tour, Steve Vai received some helpful advice on how to play a King Crimson song. It came from a reliable source: Robert Fripp.

Vai has of course made no bones about the size of the task he accepted when he signed up to play Fripp's parts in Beat, the all-star King Crimson tribute band featuring Adrian Belew, bassist Tony Levin and drummer Danny Carey. The “relentlessness” of Fripp’s picking style was the biggest mountain he had to climb as he prepared for last year’s 65-date tour.

Belew, who joined King Crimson in 1981 and recorded six albums with the group, was sympathetic to Vai's woes, having experienced similar struggles himself.

“It took me quite a while to be able to lock in with him,” he's said of working with Fripp. “Robert told me I don’t hold my pick correctly. Which is true. I never concentrated on that. There are other things about the instrument that I preferred.”

While Belew was forthcoming with tips and tricks for his new guitar partner, Fripp had left him to his own devices. Until two nights into the tour, that is.

“We get to our second show and I get an email from Robert,” Vai says in a newly released mini-film made by Sweetwater to document the tour. “He was commenting on some of the clips he saw, which was very nice and constructive. And then he said at the end, 'Can I make a suggestion for 'Frame by Frame'?’”

"Frame by Frame" is one of two songs Vai described as the biggest challenges in the set ("Elephant Talk" is the other). It proved especially difficult for Vai due to shoulder surgery he had in 2021, and Fripp had seen something in a video of the show that he didn't like.

"He said, ‘Why don’t you hammer 'Frame by Frame'? Grab the initial notes and then improvise on it. Then go to the next chord and do that.’

“This was something I kind of thought of in the beginning, but I thought it would be so far from the original that it was maybe crossing a line,” Vai explains. “But here it is; he's recommending it.”

The suggestion was spot on. “I did it that night at the show, and it worked beautifully," he told Guitar World. "It’s unique to me — yet it was birthed by Robert and Adrian.”

Vai will reprise his Beat role at a show in Chile this May before embarking on a tour with the SatchVai band.

From his time with Frank Zappa through his work with David Bowie, Talking Heads and King Crimson, Adrian Belew could be spotted onstage with a battle-scarred sunburst-finish Fender Stratocaster. Given its history, that electric guitar may be one of the most storied Strats in the history of avant-garde rock. How it came to play such a vital role in Belew’s career is a tale in itself, one that began in the 1970s, when the guitarist was still a young unknown from Covington, Kentucky, who was suddenly dropped alongside Frank Zappa, an unflinching perfectionist guitar virtuoso.

As Belew reveals to Guitar Player, his Stratocaster was certainly not the prettiest or most expensive example — just one that he could afford. And he rode it all the way to his breakout success as one of the premier Strat-slingers in history. Here, the guitarist talks us through his history with the Strat.

How did you come to own your first Strat?

I was in a band and had been playing drums, but I was starting to play guitar again. I’d always wanted a Strat, so I bought one with a natural wood finish at [Chuck Levin’s] Washington Music Center [in Maryland]. I drove up from Nashville and bought it off the rack — the plainest, simplest, cheapest Stratocaster that I could buy.

This was the same Strat you went to California with when you auditioned for Frank Zappa?

It was. I took it to California and auditioned with Frank. After I got the job, I used it during our three-month rehearsal and then on a two-month tour of the United States. But that Strat never returned to my house; it was lost in the shuffle. It’s out there somewhere.

How did you go about replacing it?

At the time, I was living here in Nashville. I went down to a little music store, and in the back they had a kind of really ugly Strat hanging on the wall. It was a brown sunburst, and it didn’t have a case. But that was okay, because with all the travel we were doing, I knew I would get a serious road case for it. I paid $285 for the Strat.

And that’s the guitar you ended up recording with while with Frank and beyond?

Yes. That’s the Stratocaster that I played on Frank’s records. And then I played it on David Bowie’s Lodger and toured the world with David with it. Then I played it with the Talking Heads, did the Remain in Light album with them, the Tom Tom Club album [with Talking Heads drummer and bassist Chris Frant\z and Tina Weymouth], Jerry Harrison’s solo debut, and so many other things.

Was that the same Strat you used in the 1980s with King Crimson?

It was. I played it with King Crimson on Discipline, and on my first solo record [Lone Rhino]. And then I finally switched to a guitar synthesizer. So that Strat has an amazing amount of history. It’s on a lot of records, and it only cost me 285 bucks!

What were some of the mods you performed on it?

When I first had one in the late ’70s, I put a [Alembic] Strat-o-blaster [preamp] in it. That really helped, but before that I just plugged the guitar straight into the amp. That’s the Stratocaster sound. It doesn’t have everything in terms of richness, overtones and sparkle... Well, maybe it does. It would depend heavily on the amp. But I’ve always gone into a compressor first, and that helped bring those sparkly notes and added sustain.

You found two winning Strats in succession in the 1970s. Is that indicative of the quality of older Stratocasters?

If you want to go right into the piece of wood called a Stratocaster, they’re different. You might pick one up and it seems flat sounding, but then you might try the one next to it and decide that it’s the one you should buy. I don’t know why that is. They’re made to the exact same tolerances, but they’re not the same.

What’s the key to finding the right one?

I think this is true for any guitar: It’s not about the sound coming off the guitar alone; it’s about how it feels under your fingers. Sometimes you pick up a guitar and it just feels right. I think that’s the Stratocaster you should have. For me, a Stratocaster is a fabulous tool. I think Leo Fender got it absolutely right, but there are other ways to go about it now and other improvements that have been made.

Do you prefer the depth of rosewood necks or the spank of maple?

I always loved rosewood necks. Recently I had some guitars made for the Talking Heads shows that I’ve been doing [Remain in Light] and I wanted to go back to Strats and get whatever was the best now. For example, I found a wonderful new tremolo to put on, and I went with a maple neck, thinking it was brighter for me. But I made a mistake; I think I’m a rosewood guy. I love the guitars, but if I had the chance to do it over again, I would have stuck with the rosewood.

You mentioned amps a moment ago. You’ve long championed the Roland Jazz Chorus. Is that what you’d choose to pair with a Strat, especially since it’s a great pedal platform?

Oh, gee. A Strat sounds great through a Fender amp. Now, with pedals… I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t play guitar — except acoustic guitar — without first putting it through a compressor. But that’s just me. Some people don’t like that sound. It seems to make the guitar hum a little better, and the notes have more sustain. I’ve always liked that.

But in general, Strats are really something. Once you have a good one and a good amp, you have 90 percent of the battle won. From there, it’s down to personal taste.

Throughout his wildly eclectic and adventurous career, Adrian Belew has continually pushed the sound of the electric guitar to new heights. And if you think he’s reached his limit for experimentation, think again. “I’m still totally intrigued by the guitar,” he says. “There’s so much left for me to explore on the instrument. I’ve always gravitated toward new sounds, and I don’t think that will change. Each month there’s cool new pedals and devices to check out.”

Funnily enough, these days the man who found fame by making his Strat sound like jungle animals is finding just as much joy from playing an acoustic. “As much as I love gear and gadgets, there’s no substitute for what you can do with your fingers,” he says.

Belew has also been setting the bar higher for himself by learning Chet Atkins songs and classical pieces. “There’s even some challenging songs from my own catalog that I’d like to go back and relearn,” he says. “There are certain songs I play in concert a lot, but there’s others I haven’t touched in a long time. It gets overwhelming sometimes trying to remember them all, especially when they have complications like tunings and what not. Just recently, I went back and tried playing my song ‘Tango Zebra,’ and boy, it’s a tough one.” He laughs, then adds, “My goal is to sit around a campfire and play my songs on an acoustic guitar. Some of them are simple; most of them are not.”

Interested in taking your own playing somewhere different? Belew has some ideas for you (and he’s even provided some visuals).

TRY A NEW TUNING

“One way to push yourself into doing something you otherwise wouldn’t is by using an alternate tuning. And guess what? You can do it right now, and it won’t cost you a thing.

“I like alternate tunings that are simple to work out. For example, on my early solo records of the ‘80s, I sometimes tuned my G string up one step to an A. It's only one string, but being in the middle of the neck it changes everything. From the time I first taught myself how to play, I tried to make my own tunings. I’ve written many songs with one tuning I created way back when.”

TRY TUNING YOUR GUITAR TO D A D E B E

“Tune the low E a whole step down to a D. Then tune the G string down a third to an E. This will sufficiently screw up all your go-to licks and chords and will hopefully break you out of habits while inspiring you to play something new.

“Let's try a few chords with this tuning. If you play an A sus shape like this [see diagram 1], it now sounds like this [diagram 2]. The beauty is in the voicing, which cannot be played in standard tuning. The same is true with this [diagram 3], which is a common Bm shape but now sounds like this [diagram 4] impossible voicing of an E9. Try this one — it’s a beautiful passing chord [diagram 5]. Or just play the harmonics on the 12 fret and listen to the richness.

“You can do all kinds of things with different tunings. For the song ‘Twang Bar King,’ I detuned the top strings to be very loose and floppy, and that's how I played the springy solos in the song. Tunings are only as good as the inspiration they give you.”

LEARN A PIECE OF MUSIC THAT'S OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE

“I recently stumbled upon a YouTube clip of Chet Atkins playing his first hit single, ‘Mr. Sandman,’ on a TV show from 1954. It's a completely different way of playing from what I'm used to, but it’s a style I have always admired. I was home on a two-month break between tours, so I decided to challenge myself and try to learn how to play it. I have to admit, it’s been very difficult, but at the time it’s also been fun and engrossing trying to learn the picking style the song requires.

“As though that weren’t enough, I also took on figuring out learning a Beatles piano song, ‘Martha My Dear,’ but I played it on guitar using the same thumb picking technique as the Chet Atkins piece. In addition, I tried to learn a classical guitar piece, which is very a very new area for me.

“Many times throughout the day I practice these pieces, and the rewards are considerable as I feel my execution improving. Right there is proof that there’s always something new to discover on the instrument.”

GOOGLE!

“If you're of a certain age — that is, if you’re very young — you may not appreciate all the gift progress has given us. Believe it or not, there was a time when the only way you could learn how to play something was by listening to records and trying to figure out how to mimic what you were hearing.

“Not anymore. What a gigantic advantage the internet has been. I know that's an obvious statement, but sometimes I'm still amazed at the continual wealth of knowledge and information we have at our fingertips. Who knew how much incredible music the world has created? I jump in the deep end of the internet pool as often as I have time for, perhaps too often, and I nearly always find something of interest.”

TRY A NEW PIECE OF GEAR OR NEW TECHNIQUE

“One of my favorite things search for on Google is new pieces of gear. YouTube makes the experience so much better because, without even leaving your home, you can hear what almost any piece of gear sounds like. Most manufacturers routinely offer demonstrations of their products online, and there are many sites that do so as well.

“Perhaps you’re like me in that the sound of a guitar is just as important as the notes being played. To that end, I search for new sounds or techniques as a source of inspiration.

“Finding a new sound or technique doesn't necessarily have to be expensive. For years I have had a starter guitar for kids called a Loog. It's cheap, very plain and small, and comes unassembled in a few pieces. You’re supposed to put it together with your child. It has three unwound high strings, one lipstick pickup and one wooden knob. The Loog had been languishing in my studio closet for a few years until one day I started messing with it.

“I tuned all three strings in unison to a high D note. Then I plugged it in, picked up a drumstick and started rolling the stick across the strings, kind of like I was bowing it. With a bit of delay added and the type of flourishes I played, it suddenly sounded like some sort of unknown Indian instrument. It was a gorgeous sound and a proper example of what I'm talking about. In fact, you can hear what it sounds like at the end of the song ‘The Power of the Natural World’ on my recent solo record, Elevator, available on Bandcamp.”

WORK ON YOUR MINDSET

“I think it’s important to ask yourself, ‘What does guitar playing mean to me? Am I happy with where I am as a guitarist? What purpose does guitar playing have in my life?’

“If you're someone who plays for your own enjoyment, you probably need to do nothing more than continue to enjoy. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

“If you're someone who plays guitar for a living but has yet to achieved the status you desire, I would suggest you continue to practice and learn. Take whatever may be relevant from my comments, and from what you read, and never give up. Stay focused on the music you love as much as possible, even if it's not what you play for your livelihood. Try to stay true to yourself.

“If you're fortunate enough to be employed as a studio player, touring musician, gear demonstrator or recording artist, always appreciate the position you have. Don't abuse it. Don't ever get jaded. Be humble. Clean your instrument and cherish it. And above all, love and respect your fans.”

Adrian Belew has admitted it took “a lot of hours” of rehearsing with Robert Fripp to lock into his atypical approach to guitar playing.

He played alongside Robert Fripp in King Crimson for 18 years across two stints in the band and is currently celebrating that legacy with the band Beat. But speaking in the new issue of Guitar Player, Belew has opened up about the challenges he faced upon first entering the band.

“It was very difficult for me,” he admits. “I had to adapt my playing to that style, because it was not at all what I do. It took me quite awhile to be able to lock in with him. Robert told me I don’t hold my pick correctly. Which is true. I never concentrated on that. I’ve never really tried to be a fast-picking guitar player.

“There are other things about the instrument that I preferred,” he expands. “So I had to rehearse with him a lot of hours, every day. You get it to the point where we call it being ‘in the body.’ That means you can do it without really having to think about it all the time.”

Likewise, Steve Vai faced similar challenges joining Beat, which sees him stepping into Fripp’s shoes – with the prog legend’s blessing – to play the band’s trio of ‘80s albums alongside Belew, Tony Levin, and Danny Carey.

“His style is so specific and refined, it's not something I could just jump into,” Vai says. “There are a couple of things that are a little difficult. Elephant Talk is a peculiar kind of thing. Plus, this isn't a cover band, we're reinterpreting some things. My style and sound will flow into it, because it will be coming out of me.

“I'm trying my absolute best to respect every note that Robert wrote, it's just how I perform it might be a little different.”

He's also mentioned how Fripp's relentlessness provided a stark early challenge, citing Frame By Frame as an example.

“The thing about Robert’s parts is not necessarily the complexity; it’s the relentlessness,” he says. “If you take something like Frame by Frame, the riff itself is hard enough – you have to have a particular picking technique in order to be able to play it. But what makes it so excruciating is the relentlessness. It doesn’t stop. It’s fast and it’s hard and incredibly difficult. [You] need for bulletproof attention. He is highly disciplined. It’s the only way you could achieve the kinds of things he achieved on the guitar.”

Despite his struggles – ones Belew can no doubt sympathize with – he’s said that Vai was the only man he had in mind when it came to putting the new band together.

For Belew, the Beat tour has provided him an opportunity to dust off his signature Parker Fly guitar, an instrument he’s often seen playing when not wielding his Seymour Duncan-“relic’d” Fender Stratocaster.

The original Parker Fly was designed by luthier Ken Parker and pickup guru Larry Fishman in 1993, with Belew's highly spec'd signature coming 18 years later, with Belew convincing Parker to bestow the guitar with MIDI integration.

As such, his signature model comes with a 13-pin out for MIDI-synth connectivity and a 25-point knob to reconfigure the instrument's tones to mimic everything from a Fender Telecaster to a sitar.

The band kicked off the tour earlier this month, with Vai reflecting on a successful but stressful opening night by saying, “You can rehearse until you're blue in the face, but once you hit the stage and the lights go out, all bets are off.”

The latest issue of Guitar Player sees David Gilmour gracing the cover, and discussing the stories and gear behind his new solo album, Luck and Stange, inside. There are also interviews with Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson, Doug Gillard, Luther Dickinson, and many more.

Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

As the BEAT tour kicked off last week, all eyes were understandably on Steve Vai as he deputized for Robert Fripp in the new King Crimson-adjacent outfit.

However, Adrian Belew, playing alongside Vai, his former King Crimson bandmate Tony Levin, and Tool drummer Danny Carey, has quietly caught the eye in his own way.

The guitarist, whose glittering career has included spells in Talking Heads, and with Frank Zappa and David Bowie – not to mention an accidental number-one hit with Mariah Carey – is himself an illustrious player, known for his wholly unique tone.

While he is most synonymous with playing Fender Stratocasters – when he isn’t setting fire to them – his signature Parker Fly guitar has thus far proved a vital companion during the BEAT tour. A new rig rundown with Premier Guitar has explored its origins and why he’s become so fond of the intriguing-looking six-string.

The guitar was first designed by luthier Ken Parker and Larry Fishman, today better known for his futuristic active pickups, in 1993. After some initial teething problems, he couldn’t be happier with how it plays.

“I felt like Ken Parker had taken 20 years to eliminate all the things that normally happen with electric guitars,” Belew believes. “All the problems you have, the tuning, the neck, the frets wearing out, just everything that normally can go wrong with a Fender or Gibson. He figured it all out.”

Strangely, it took Belew years of touring with his model to identify what tweaks were needed to take the guitar from great to perfect for his strange experimentations.

“I called Ken Parker and I said, ‘You know, I've really been wanting to use your guitar. I love it so much, but I need a synthesizer guitar. Is there anyone [or] any way we could do something about [that]?’ I need a MIDI guitar, is what I said.

“He said, ‘Well, that's funny, because when we first brought it out, it was supposed to be a MIDI guitar. It was built to be that.’”

Despite its launch as a product a step away from the original template, it won over some notable players including Grand Funk Railroad’s Mark Farner, thanks to its light weight and versatile piezo pickups.

It took Parker and Fishman four years to bring the Fly to fruition, so there was a little reluctance from them when Belew asked them to revive their plans for MIDI integration. Eventually, he got his way.

“I said, ‘I just want the most modern things we can have now.’ So I was only changing the sound parts, not the guitar,” Belew continues.

Belew got his signature model 13 years ago, and adorned it with a fair raft of gizmos. Its whammy-stocked tremolo could be pushed and pulled, with the synth and guitar lovechild bestowed with a 13-pin out for MIDI/synth connectivity, and Line 6 Variax components.

This includes a 25-point knob on the body of the guitar for delivering 25 types of guitar sounds, ranging from 12-strings and acoustics to a sitar or a Telecaster. Gadgets have always proved to be inspiring for the guitarist.

“I love technology,” he tells Premier Guitar. "It always excites me to find something I could never do before and inspires me to write new music. Right back when I first started making animal noises and I made a rhinoceros-snorting sort of sound, I thought, ‘You've got to have a song to put that in, otherwise it's just a goofy gimmick.’”

That would become the premise for his 1982 solo album, Lone Rhino, and he'd continue that experimentalism with his Parker Fly some years later.

The signature guitar also featured three pickups: DiMarzio and Sustainiac humbuckers, and a Fishman piezo.

The result is a guitar that perfectly matches Belew’s needs and playing style.

“I swear this guitar never goes out of tune,” he says. “[It] plays beautifully. I play better with the [signature] Parker Fly. I can't explain it better than that.”

The 65-date BEAT tour started on September 12, with the band performing a 19-song set of King Crimson’s best ‘80s material – and one song from its ‘70s canon.

One of Adrian Belew’’s most famed Stratocasters wasn’t relic’d through years of touring like you'd think – it was a DIY cosmetic job to fix what the veteran guitarist deemed to be an ugly guitar. 

Speaking in the new issue of Guitar World, the former King Crimson guitarist explains how pickup maker Seymour Duncan essentially abused its now-adored relic’d finish out of the 1969 Stratocaster after he’d bought the instrument for a bargain price. 

“I went to a local used guitar store and was poking around,” Belew remembers. “And in the back they had this kinda ugly Stratocaster hanging on the wall – like a brown sunburst. I said, ‘How much for this one?’ They said, ‘It doesn’t have a case, so we’ll give it to you for $285.’ A pretty good buy, I thought.”

The guitar would later star, alongside Belew, on the front cover of Guitar World magazine, but not before Duncan helped fix its less-than-desirable brown finish in a slightly brutal fashion. 

“I called up Seymour when I was back out in California, and I said, ‘What am I gonna do? I have this ugly-ass guitar.’ He said, ‘I know what to do.’ He got in the trunk of his car and took out all these things – files and a screwdriver and spray paint and lighter fluid.

“He laid it on the lawn, and before I could say anything, he took the lighter fluid out and squirted it on the face of the guitar and set it on fire,” Belew continues. “I said, ‘Well, I guess I’m committed now!’

“Then he went to work. He dragged it through the grass. He sanded the back of the neck and put motor oil on it. He took screwdrivers and things and chipped some of the stuff off of it. I did the spray paint – a few bits here and there.”

“This is what I used on Zappa’s Sheik Yerbouti, Bowie’s Lodger, Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, and in my early days with King Crimson. I’m holding it on the cover of Lone Rhino,” he later told Guitar Player of the “beat to heck” Strat.   

Relic’d guitars have become highly sought after in recent years, with a number of off-the-shelf guitars imitating road-worn finishes. 

Fender has meticulously recreated Joe Strummer’s time-ravaged Esquire, and Monty's Guitars has even made a wax to help relic unfinished bodies and fretboards as firms jump on the trend. 

Gibson's Murphy Lab unveiled its first round of relic'd guitars in 2021, and, most recently, recreated Jason Isbell and Ed King's 'Red Eye' Les Paul for a limited, relic'd run. 

Still, as impressive as those creations are, there’s something more appealing about the idea of creating body blemishes and beyond yourself. 

Rory Gallagher’s Stratocaster wouldn’t be the same without its relic’d body, but it also wouldn’t have been the same if he bought it from a guitar store in that condition – the guitar has personality and history.    

Belew seems to echo that sentiment, adding: “I’m gonna be bold and say that might be the first relic’d guitar, and you can thank Seymour Duncan for that.”

This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no foolin’ around! Actually, it’s going to be one hell of a year-end hootenanny when Talking Heads luminaries Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew bring their wild revelry to San Francisco's Warfield Theatre.

The two have been celebrating their seminal work on the Heads’ iconic 1980 album, Remain in Light – and the rest of the band's killer catalogue – to glowing praise, and they’re capping off 2023 out west with a four-date Remain in Light New Year’s Eve run – along with X – in the Golden State. The mini-tour starts in San Diego on December 28 and culminates in Napa on December 31. Guitar Player is proud to partner with Goldenvoice to welcome them to the City by the Bay on Saturday, December 30.

Belew is über familiar to the Guitar Player readership from his storied tenures playing and singing with Frank Zappa, David Bowie, and King Crimson, as well as from oodles of solo efforts and, of course, his celebrated stint with the Talking Heads. Mostly associated with Stratocasters and Parker Flys, the “Twang Bar King” is also a perennial favorite of freak guitar zealots around the SF Bay who have frequented multiple shows of his we’ve presented in the past. 

We’re looking forward to the pleasure of hearing him teamed up with the multi-talented Harrison, who's a fantastic guitar player in his own right, and a creative keyboardist and capable vocalist, to boot. 

A large and talented backing band – featuring Julie Slick from Belew’s band on bass as well as members of the disco/funk band band Cool Cool Cool – will be on hand to back Harrison and Belew. 

“A joyful show of Talking Heads songs you know and love performed by a hot, eleven-piece ensemble,” says Belew, “You can’t help but dance and go home with a smile on your face.”

Harrison adds, “Remain in Light is a high point in my career. Adrian and I had often discussed the magic of the 1980 tour and the sheer joy it brought to audiences. It is such a delight to see and bring that joy once again.”

Read GP’s in-depth feature with Harrison and Belew. 

Adding further intrigue to the evening is an opening set by SoCal punk legends X, featuring the rockabilly-on-steroids guitar style of Billy Zoom. 

If you’re planning to be around the San Francisco Bay Area over the holidays, make sure your stay includes the evening before New Year’s Eve, December 30. Holler at a few friends and tell them to make plans for Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew’s Remain in Light show at the Warfield Theatre, located on Market Street right in the heart of San Francisco. Don’t miss this “once in a lifetime” opportunity to ring in the New Year with tons of fun six-string cheer – get your tickets here now. 

Win Tickets

For a chance to win a pair of tickets to see GP Presents Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew’s Remain in Light in San Francisco, e-mail gp@jimmyleslie.com and put “Remain in Light” in the subject of your email. Include a sentence about yourself and why you want to go. Phone contact is greatly appreciated for confirmation. 

Winner must provide their own transportation to the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco, California, on Saturday, December 30 and have their own accommodations in the Bay Area. Best of luck!

Event Details

GP Presents – Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew’s Remain in Light, plus special guest X 

Saturday, December 30 8 p.m.: The Warfield Theatre – 982 Market Street, San Francisco, CA

Free GP magazines, Martin strings

Buy tickets here

The following interview with electric guitar great Adrian Belew was originally published on guitarplayer.com in 2005. In it, Belew tells the story of his nerve-wracking and unconventional – but ultimately successful – audition for Frank Zappa and his band.

“I was playing in a little Nashville club called Fanny’s, and I had just begun sneaking noises into the cover songs we did,” recalls the affable Adrian Belew. “All of a sudden, you’d hear the sound of a car horn, and you’d wonder where it was coming from. Ironically, the place is now a parking lot!

“Frank Zappa played a show in town one night, and he was looking to check out a local band after his gig, as he often did. Frank learned from the chauffeur that his favorite band was playing at Fanny’s, so Frank showed up with a large entourage that included Terry Bozzio. It was obvious to everyone that Frank Zappa was there.

“It was a special night and I lit up – playing and singing my best. Our band did covers by Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan, and other stuff like that. Forty minutes into the set, while we were playing Gimme Shelter, Frank reached up, shook my hand, and said, ‘Hey, do you want to audition for my band? I’ll get your name from the chauffeur and I’ll call you.’ 

“It generated a big buzz with the local musicians at the time, but then nothing happened for six months. About the point where I’d forgotten about it, he called me for the audition.

“Frank gave me a list of difficult songs from several different records, and his instructions were, ‘Figure out how to play and sing this the best you can, however you can.’ The music was pretty complicated for a guy who was just playing in a bar band. I had never played in odd time signatures, and I didn’t read music, whereas the rest of the Frank’s band did. And I was so poor at the time that I didn’t even buy the records. I borrowed them from my friends, because I didn’t know if it was going to work out anyway.

“The audition was pretty brutal, and I didn’t do very well. It was like the chaos of a movie set with people moving pianos around and so on. And there’s little me standing in the middle of a room with a Pignose amplifier and a Stratocaster trying to sing and play lots of Frank Zappa songs. 

“I was so nervous. I remember doing Andy, and Wind Up Working in a Gas Station. I thought I did poorly, and I had nowhere to go. I had just flown in, and was driven to his house, so I sat there all day watching everyone else. 

“I watched some really tough auditions, especially for keyboard players and percussionists. I didn’t see any other guitar players, but I was later told that he auditioned 50 guitar players.

“At the end of the day, when it all calmed down and people were finally leaving, I finally got my time to speak to Frank again. I said simply this: ‘Frank, I don’t think I did so well. I imagined this would have happened differently. I thought you and I would sit somewhere quiet, and I would play and sing the songs for you. And he said, ‘OK, then let’s do that.’

“We went upstairs to his living room, and we sat on his purple couch. I placed my Pignose amplifier face down on the couch so I could get a little bit of sustain, and I auditioned all over again. At the end of it, he reached out his hand and said, ‘You got the job.’ We shook hands, and that was an absolute turning point in my life.”

Regarded as one of the most inventive guitarists in rock, Adrian Belew has worked with a host of stellar musicians including Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Talking Heads and King Crimson.

Having toured and recorded with Zappa (Belew appears on his 1979 Sheik Yerbouti album) he was recruited by Bowie for his epic Isolar II – The 1978 World Tour, a.k.a. The Low/Heroes World Tour.  

Consequently, Belew is credited as lead guitarist on Bowie’s 1978 live album, Stage.

Released in 1979, Lodger is the only Bowie studio album featuring Belew. Following 1977's Low and “Heroes” LPs, it is the final instalment in Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy recorded in collaboration with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti.

In 1990, Belew returned to the Bowie fold as musical director for the Sound+Vision Tour.

In this fascinating interview, the King Crimson virtuoso recalls how Bowie’s encouragement “to try wild and unusual things” assisted his development as a guitar player.

Brian Eno had an unusual idea for your parts on Lodger, where you didn’t get a chance to hear a song before you played on it, and he took elements of what you played and rearranged them into new composite guitar parts on the album. Do you think, with hindsight, that if you’d had the chance to hear the songs first, you could have come up with something you might have preferred, or thought was better?

I definitely think I could have come up with different things if I’d had the time to learn the songs and really work on them.

I do quite like the way that they turned out though because it was very unusual. In a way, it started me down that road of people thinking that that was how I played. So I did. [laughs]

When you heard the finished tracks played back to you, did you think it sounded like they might be a bit tricky to play?

I figured I could do it. [laughs] The funny thing is that they did something similar with [Robert] Fripp’s work on "Heroes" on a couple of songs, but when I joined the band, nobody told me that.

I managed to figure out a way to play those parts which the band thought were impossible to play. [laughs]

I have a theory that Eno wasn’t particularly a fan of the guitar, so he sought to undermine guitarists by taking them completely out of their comfort zones.

I don’t know if that’s his motivation, but he does think completely outside the box about things.

He does like to come up with ways to trick you into doing things that you wouldn’t ordinarily do. I like that though.

Why didn’t you do any further studio albums with David?

It was really a matter of circumstances and scheduling. I was trying to get my own record deal and then I had the offer to join Talking Heads on their world tour which took up a year anyway.

King Crimson came after that, so there really was no time to do much else. We reunited for the Sound+Vision Tour in 1990 which was a major undertaking. It was a world tour with the intention to play the massive catalog of hits for the last time.

He made me the musical director of what turned out to be a very small band, so we used a lot of samplers on that tour. We had to cover all kinds of orchestrations and line-ups, so it was a huge task. We did 108 shows which was a fantastic experience.

How long would you spend in rehearsal for a tour of that magnitude?

A lot of time was pre-rehearsal with me and Rick Fox, the keyboard player, where we had to work out how to cover all the bases on the songs with a four-piece band.

Once we actually started rehearsing, that’s when David would join in. He’d maybe suggest key changes or different arrangements for some songs but mostly he was kind of standing outside looking in and cheering us on.

He let me have my way, which I think is what he wanted – someone trustworthy to make it happen.

Did working with David change the way that you played and approached music?

I think, especially in 1978 and 1979, those tours were extremely important for my development as a player.

Prior to playing with David, I was playing with Frank Zappa, and in Frank’s band, you didn’t need to be creative – you needed to just play his music consistently correctly.

David was quite the opposite. He wanted someone to throw lots of color at the canvas and he just turned me loose. He told me that he just wanted me to go wild on the guitar.

That gave me the impetus to do exactly that, and I carried that over into Talking Heads and King Crimson.

I think David’s encouragement to try wild and unusual things really helped me to do the things that I did on the guitar.

Order David Bowie's Lodger here.

So many guitarists of the late ’70s and ’80s were using the Roland stereo chorus in the studio that it’s sometimes difficult to parse if the sound was coming from an amp (such as the JC-120), a pedal (like the CE-1, CE-2 or CE-3 Chorus Ensemble) or a Dimension D rack unit.

Regardless, “that sound” is all over countless classic recordings from the era.

When used in the studio, the JC-120 provided a meatier rendition of the tone that players had previously achieved by DI’ing their tracks.

As noted by Steve Levine, producer for Culture Club, China Crisis and others, “In the right hands it’s quite a tone palette, you can do a lot with it. It does bridge the gap between being a regular amplifier and a kind of DI’d monster.”

Billy Duffy of the Cult and other projects derived the clean, chorused element of his signature tone from a JC-120, often used in combination with a Marshall JCM800 or other tube amp.

Although the Cult hit “She Sells Sanctuary” has a heavy feel that helped lodge it as a classic rocker amid the British New Wave boom of the mid ’80s, the guitar tone on the song is clear and clean, and slathered with JC-120 chorus.

“The signature sound of the first two Cult albums was the Gretsch and a Roland JC-120,” Duffy explains on BillyDuffy.Com. “The Roland is great for the early, chimey stuff, because of that chorus sound – which I can really only get out of the combos. Some guys get a great sound with just one amp, but I’ve never been able to do it.”

Johnny Marr’s use of chorus with the Smiths was generally pretty subtle, but also an essential ingredient of his sound on many classic tracks.

“The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” and “I Don’t Owe You Anything” from the Smiths’ self-titled debut album reveal a nuanced chorus tone that might have been JC-120, CE-1 or Boss CE-2, while the swirl is a little thicker on songs like “The Headmaster Ritual” and “I Want the One I Can’t Have” from the 1985 follow-up, Meat Is Murder.

Marr turned to that sound again for his latest solo album, 2022’s Fever Dreams, where we hear it prominently on “Receiver,” “Ariel” and other tracks, shining through what is otherwise a denser mix than heard on early Smiths records.

“For this album, I also dug out my old Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus amp,” he told Rod Brakes in Total Guitar magazine. “Transistor amps have a sonic presence that puts the sound right in your face. It’s sort of an Ennio Morricone sound.”

While Andy Summers’ seminal swirl on early Police hit “Message in a Bottle” is purported to be a combination of pedals, he is also a long-time devotee of the JC-120, and often had one in his touring rig with the band.

“The Roland JC-120 has been a staple in my collection of amplifiers for as long as I can remember,” he told Roland.com, “probably from the day it came out! I have used it on many recordings for its distinctive clarity of sound and always-superior chorus. If I am playing away from home and amps have to be supplied, my first choice is always the JC-120. It is a no-fail amp in just about every situation.”

While it might sound counter-intuitive, heavy metal icons Metallica have often turned to the JC-120 for the clean tones tracked by guitarists James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett.

Several songs on 1988’s …And Justice for All feature the amp, likely heard most prominently on “To Live Is to Die,” but also apparent in the mellower passages of “One” and the intro to the title track.

It’s no surprise, however, that a creative sonic sculptor like Adrian Belew might have fallen in love with the JC-120’s sound, as he did from the very first listen. “I first heard a JC-120 at a casual party in L.A. in 1977,” he told Roland. com. “Someone was playing some chords and noodling around – not very well in fact – but the sound mesmerized me.

“I had never heard an amp sound so pristine and beautiful. There was a shimmering clarity to every note. Then the player turned on the actual stereo chorusing. Wow! What an incredible sound. I nearly fell off my chair! I sat there speechless until I finally asked if I could play through it. Within the first two notes I played, I was madly in love with the JC-120.

“To me, the stereo chorusing and vibrato were the single most beautiful guitar sounds I’d ever heard an amp produce. I was in L.A. at the time rehearsing with Frank Zappa, my first big break in the music business. I told Frank about the amp, and the next day one showed up for us to investigate.

“Frank liked it enough to advance me the money to buy my first JC-120. I still have it ensconced in my studio. I still love it and still record with it.”

Belew’s first prominent use of the JC-120 appeared on the 1978 Zappa classic Sheik Yerbouti, but he also plastered the amp – with and without chorus and vibrato effects – on several tracks of David Bowie’s 1979 album, Lodger, the seminal Talking Heads super-group affair Remain in Light from 1980 and King Crimson’s 1981 smash, Discipline, which reveals that crystal-clear shimmer on Belew’s tour de force “Elephant Talk,” “Frame by Frame,” “Thela Hun Ginjeet,” “The Sheltering Sky” and others.

Visit the Roland website for more information on Jazz Chorus amps.

Click here for info on Boss chorus pedals.

On the Mothers of Invention’s 1969 Uncle Meat, you can hear Frank Zappa exhort keyboardist Don Preston to climb up to the Royal Albert Hall’s majestic pipe organ and belt out the riff to “Louie Louie.” Now 90, Preston was part of the all-star tribute band the Grandmothers of Invention, a touring group of alumni from various eras of the Mothers’ life.

“Musicians, guitarists mostly, often come up to me and ask, ‘How do I play like Zappa?’” Preston explains. “I say, ‘It’s simple – just listen to all the music Zappa listened to!’”

Like most teenagers growing up in California in the ’50s, Zappa loved doo-wop, R&B, blues and early rock and roll. But his adolescent musical imagination was truly set alight by Ionisations, a piece of percussive avant-garde music by French-born composer Edgard Varèse.

This gave him a taste for 20th-century modernist composers, from Charles Ives to Igor Stravinsky.

“He’d listen to that stuff like other kids were listening to the latest rhythm and blues song,” Preston remembers. “That music, the complexity of it, matched the complexity of his own mind. In the opening phrase of [Stravinsky’s] Petrushka, the flute is in 5/8 and the orchestra is in 2/4. On ‘Little House I Used To Live In’ on our Burnt Weeny Sandwich album [1970], the bass and drums are playing in 11/8 and the melody is in 12/8.

“One of the things that made him a genius was that he could play experimental music and get it over to the audience by throwing in doo-wop or pop music. He’d use real popular music to play real unpopular music.”

If there’s one thing that unifies the extraordinarily pluralist catalog Zappa created over his lifetime, it is this combination of “popular” and “unpopular” music. From the Mothers of Invention’s 1966 debut, Freak Out!, to landmark titles like Hot Rats, Apostrophe (’) and Zappa’s best seller, Sheik Yerbouti, he would create a progressive musical universe where every style – from rock to reggae, from surf-rock to Schoenbergian serialism, from free jazz to musique concrète – was up for grabs.

“When you’re adopting or adapting a style in order to tell a story,” the late composer once said, “everything’s fair game. You have to have the right setting to the lyric. The important thing at that point is to tell the story.”

His lyrics also reflected his complexity. Drawing on sex, deviance, politics and social concerns, Zappa would satirize, parody and mock pretty much everyone. His absurdist universe was populated by fake hippies, charlatan gurus, corrupt politicians, dental-floss farmers, dumb groupies and dumber rock stars.

If his overarching quest was a search for truth, he did it by exposing and taking the piss out of its opposite. Jon Anderson contends that progressive music began with Zappa. “It was a combination of things,” the founding vocalist for the prog-rock group Yes contends.

“If you listen to Zappa, the Beatles, Vanilla Fudge, Buffalo Springfield, and Charles Mingus and Roland Kirk, there was such a plethora of interesting music around the mid ’60s, and that all inspired me when Yes started to do long-form music. His music was really meticulously put together, and he was a comedian at the same time.”

Freak Out!’s blend of chart-friendly tunes (“You Didn’t Try to Call Me”), outré psych-rock (“Who Are the Brain Police?”), experimental jazz (“The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet”) and social commentary (“Trouble Every Day”) pointed the way.

Keyboardist/guitarist Mike Keneally played in Zappa’s band for his last-ever tour, in 1988, but was still a child when he first heard Freak Out! “Half of it is easy to get hold of, the other is absurdism,” Keneally says. “Frank was combining things in different ways.

“He was reading the zeitgeist nicely and expressing attitudes that a lot of people felt. It was surprising to see an artist who was of the scene but also apart from it, and commenting on it so acidly.”

The Mothers borrowed from the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s cover for 1968’s We’re Only In It for the Money, ridiculing the prevailing hippie scene on the hilarious “Who Needs the Peace Corps?”

“That album is Frank’s greatest and most sustained piece of social commentary, and a startling musical and technical achievement,” Keneally says “But he was using naughty words too, and there were sped-up voices!”

With its advanced multitracking and production techniques, 1969’s Hot Rats became a jazz-fusion landmark and contained one of the composer’s best-known works, the opening track, “Peaches En Regalia.”

Zappa disbanded the first Mothers lineup that year, and over the next decade his sound benefited from his evolving production smarts and growing reputation as a grandstanding, idiosyncratic guitar hero.

Over-Nite Sensation, Zappa and the Mothers’ 1973 release, features some of his best-known songs –  “Camarillo Brillo,” “I’m the Slime” and the absurdist masterpiece “Montana.” Zappa’s own Apostrophe (’) from the following year proffered “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” and “Cosmik Debris.”

Both albums featured progressive orchestrations and virtuoso playing from drummer Aynsley Dunbar, keyboardist George Duke and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, but they also showed Zappa’s increasing, censor-baiting fondness for bawdy, scatological lyrics.

“Oh, he’d go for the jugular,” Anderson says. “A lot of time as a writer it’s difficult to say exactly what you’re thinking. I would use metaphors all the time, but Zappa didn’t give a damn. He just said what he thought.”

Zappa recruited newcomer guitarist Adrian Belew for the concerts that produced 1979’s Sheik Yerbouti. Belew recalls that the band had a show in Cincinnati, where his mother, a Sunday school teacher, was living. “She was so pleased for me, but I told her I didn’t want her to come to the show because of the things I’d be singing.

“She said something that shook me to the ground. She said, ‘Is it really true he’s got a song called ‘I Promise Not to Come In Your Mouth?’ I said, ‘Yes, Mom, that’s true.’ She didn’t go to the show.”

While accessible, Sheik Yerbouti tracks like “Broken Hearts Are for Assholes,” “Bobby Brown” and the disco-pastiche “Dancin’ Fool” feature knotty musical ideas. Yet the seemingly cold misanthropy of the lyrics might deter the fainthearted.

“I asked him about it once,” Belew says. “He said he just reflects the craziness around him. He’d see other people go nuts and then write about that. There’s a part of the audience for whom that is the appeal – that he’s really putting it out there with radical tunes like that.”

Zappa encouraged Belew to play in unusual time signatures. “Without that I don’t know how I’d have made it into King Crimson,” he says. “A lot of our stuff is based on polyrhythms and odd time signatures, me singing in one and playing in another. He taught me how to be a professional musician and drew out of me that I could play more complicated material. He challenged me.”

As for Zappa’s proggiest moments, Mike Keneally goes back to 1973’s One Size Fits All. “‘Inca Roads’ is the quintessential Zappa tune,” he offers. “The subject matter [aliens landing in Inca times] is cosmic, but it’s not social commentary, it’s not cynical or sexual, and the music’s a multipart suite that goes through endless time and key changes.

“The sound of George Duke’s keyboards is very prog, and the playing on there is virtuosic and exciting. For people into Henry Cow or Canterbury, Uncle Meat is ground zero. I think it was a huge influence on Fred Frith and Chris Cutler. Burnt Weeny Sandwich too. For Frank, that’s almost pastoral. I can see Genesis fans getting into that.”

In a 1992 interview, The Simpsons creator and lifelong Zappa fan Matt Groening asked the composer if he thought music should make progress, if a composer should do things that hadn’t been done before.

Zappa argued that, rather than be progressive, it was more important that music should be personalized. Music, he said, “should be relevant to the person who writes the music. It has more to do with the composer than with the style of the times or the school that might have generated the composer.”

By that time, Zappa, in failing health, had come full circle, throwing himself into contemporary orchestral music with Civilization Phaze III, which would be released posthumously in October 1994. An ambitious work composed on the then-cutting-edge digital sampling system, the Synclavier, it was complex, socially charged and, yes, fearlessly personalized.

It would be the last artifact from a seemingly inexhaustible imagination that offered up more than 60 albums over nearly three decades.

“He will eventually be remembered as one of the great composers of our time,” Belew contends. “Civilization and The Yellow Shark [Ensemble Modern’s 1993 release of Zappa’s orchestral works] are beyond anything anyone else has done. His use of Synclavier to create a new universe of sounds was incredible. He had so many sides to him, and the orchestral stuff is my favorite part of Frank’s work.”

“He’s very well respected,” Anderson agrees. “I did some shows with [youth orchestra project] School of Rock, and they’d just come back from doing a Zappa festival in Germany. These 30 kids could play Zappa music at the drop of a hat.

“Young people dig what he did.”

The purpose of the Celebrating David Bowie show is simply that – to praise Bowie’s music and rejoice in the joy of listening to some of his greatest songs in the rock canon.

The band is assembled from fans and former Bowie band members, who play with passion and verse as they aim to capture the essence of what made his music so iconic and influential.

The show has been put together by music business veteran Miles Copeland and guitarist Scrote, who has a long track record of producing shows celebrating landmark artists, including the Beatles and Miles Davis.

While the Bowie show has toured sporadically since 2015, this year sees the first full tour of North America and features the unique talents of Adrian Belew, who not only played on Bowie’s 1979 album, Lodger, but also toured extensively with him, acting as musical director for his global run in 1990.

Longtime Bowie admirer Todd Rundgren also features in the show, which covers material from the artist’s earliest days to the end of his career.

While all three guitarists are about to release new albums – Scrote’s Magnificent Bastard, Rundgren’s Space Force and Belew’s Elevator – and commence on intensive rehearsals for the Bowie tour (see clip below) they were happy to speak to Guitar Player about the project’s background and what audiences can expect from the upcoming shows.

What was the initial spark behind the idea of doing shows to celebrate the work of David Bowie?

SCROTE: I’ve been putting shows together for many years, working out of L.A. as a musical director.

Back in 2015, I was doing some dates on my own with some of the guys who played on David’s last album, Blackstar, and we actually heard that he’d died when we were in the break between sets at a show.

The next day I started talking to people about David’s passing, and they were suggesting that, given how much of a fan I was of his work, maybe I could put some kind of show together.

I reached out to a few people who’d worked with David, and the first show started to evolve, which ran at four hours with 70 performers. [laughs]

That project was so successful that I realized there was a lot of interest from Bowie fans for us to do more.

We did another really long show a few months later, and then I came up with a plan for 2016 to take the show on the road to seven cities around the world that were significant to Bowie.

In 2018, we lined up more dates around the world, including Iceland. Adrian came onboard after the second show, and Todd joined us when we went to Iceland.

TODD RUNDGREN: Yeah, the trip to Iceland was my first involvement, but originally it was only supposed to be that one event.

After that, I didn’t carry on with the rest of the tour, so I guess I wasn’t a permanent member of the entourage. But then, with the project kicking off again post lockdown, I’ve got back onboard.

ADRIAN BELEW: I first worked with Scrote on an event celebrating the Beatles. I watched the way that he put everything together, which seemed kind of haphazard at the time, but then it turned out to be really well planned, and I really enjoyed being a part of it.

When he told me about the Celebrating David Bowie idea, I knew he’d be able to put a great show together, so I really wanted to be a part of it.

Todd, I know you didn’t work with Bowie, but did you cross paths with him much over the years?

RUNDGREN: Yes, a few times. I actually met him on his very first American tour with the Spiders and then on various occasions over the years.

Ironically, just at the time that I moved from upstate New York to California, he moved to about a mile from where I’d been living, so I guess we’d have seen a lot more of each other if I’d stayed in New York.

I never really ever thought seriously about us working together. I know he had a core of people that he spent a lot of time working with.

I actually had a lot more contact with Mick Ronson, who also moved to upstate New York at the same time that I was living there, and I still see his wife, Suzi, occasionally.

BELEW: When I first met David, he was very different from all of the preconceptions that I had about him. I thought of him as an untouchable superstar. I was surprised to find that he was real down to earth and a fun person, with a great self-deprecating sense of humor.

He was always so interested in so many different things, not just rock music. We got on like a house on fire.

Todd, you and David both had very theatrical stage shows in the ’70s. Was there an influence going on there in either direction?

RUNDGREN: I had a permanent costume designer who traveled with me who would come up with weird ideas all the time, and I think his inspiration was what informed the theatrical things that I was doing to a degree. I know he was looking at things that David was doing and re-interpreting some of them for me.

I have no independent correlation of the fact that people David worked with may have taken some ideas from things I did, but it’s a possibility when you’re working with stylists and designers.

Adrian, were you already familiar with Bowie’s work before you first toured with him in 1978?

BELEW: Very much so. I’d been in a lot of cover bands, and I’d played a lot of his material.

A funny story is that I remember hearing “Heroes” for the first time when I was driving my broken-down Volkswagen. And then 18 months later, I was playing it live with David.

Given how many great guitar parts there are on Bowie’s records, is there much competition for who gets to play what?

SCROTE: Before Todd came onboard in Iceland, it was divided between Adrian and me, and things seemed to work themselves out naturally.

When Todd joined us, it was interesting, as I’d never worked with him before. He just naturally gravitated toward certain songs, but there was no ego from him or anyone else.

The whole set list is deliberately very guitar-centric. I think that Todd is kind of Mick Ronson meets Earl Slick, I’m kind of Reeves [Gabrels] with maybe a little Ronson and some Adrian.

And Adrian is Adrian too. [laughs]

Who’s Robert Fripp?

SCROTE: That’s a tough one. Maybe somewhere between me and Adrian.

RUNDGREN: Mick Ronson was such a great guitar player. I love to play some of the things that he did, and he was a really skilled arranger too. I think he’s always been very underrated.

I don’t think I’ll be doing a whole lot of shredding with Adrian in the show. [laughs]

David was a connoisseur of guitar players, so there’s certainly no shortage of great guitar parts.

BELEW: I really liked Mick’s playing too. I always thought David’s material was great for guitar players.

Are there any particular songs that you earmarked for yourselves?

RUNDGREN: I got turned onto David a little earlier than a lot of people, who probably picked up on him when Ziggy Stardust broke, but I’d been spending a lot of time in England before that and was already very familiar with Hunky Dory and “Changes” being on the charts in England.

That means that my leanings are very much toward the earlier stuff, and I get to do a lot of that, like “Life on Mars” and “Changes.”

I do some of the later songs as well, but I definitely have a soft spot for the earlier material. I really enjoyed the way he would change his sound from song to song.

SCROTE: I try to think of the show as a package and who suits what songs best. I don’t have songs that I have earmarked for myself as such, but I do like a lot of the material from the “Heroes” era.

RUNDGREN: I could take a pretty good stab at the Stevie Ray stuff. I started out as a blues guitarist, so I might make my case for “Let’s Dance,” although I’m not sure it’s in the set yet. [laughs]

BELEW: I tend to play a lot of the things that I was involved with when they were recorded, but Scrote will often make suggestions that turn out really well.

We have a lot of different singers and instrumentalists in the show, and we’re all very happy to share vocal duties or different parts.

How do you come up with the set list when there are so many great songs to choose from?

RUNDGREN: I think we’re not far from the set we did in Iceland. Scrote seems to have his finger on the pulse of what the fans want to hear.

It’s not like we’re going out there to deliver a college lecture or be comprehensive. We just want to do the stuff people want to hear, which is the guiding principle. There are songs that you know you have to play, so a good two-thirds of the set is pretty obvious.

BELEW: Scrote has a vision as the producer, and I have a lot of faith in his ideas. We work together quite closely, and we’ll suggest things to each other.

We have done some obscure things on previous shows, but I think we’re sticking to the more well-known songs for this tour.

What guitars are you using on the tour?

RUNDGREN: Things have been in a tizzy for me because my favorite guitar, Foamy, has disappeared. I’d just finished a Beatles tribute tour and was about to start rehearsals with Daryl Hall and the guitar just vanished somewhere between Missouri and Connecticut.

FedEx traced it and said it should have been delivered, but I haven’t found it. I suppose I can assume that it was stolen, but I can’t definitively say that. Maybe it will turn up at some point.

I was supposed to start rehearsals in Chicago, and I had to go to the store and make an emergency purchase of a new guitar. I ended up with a Schecter, which was laid out in the same way that Foamy was, which was one of my primary considerations.

Foamy was made by P-Project and given to me by the company in Japan many years ago. The Schecter has become my main guitar, but I think I might also take a vintage Telecaster that I spent a lot of money on as well.

I’ll probably also take my replica of the SG that I used to have called The Fool that I auctioned off because I owed the IRS a lot of money. [laughs]

SCROTE: I think we’re all thinking of traveling kind of light when it comes to gear. I’ll be taking a custom-made thinline Tele, a Les Paul with P-90s for the Slick/Ronson territory, a 12-string acoustic guitar and maybe a Strat, although Adrian has the Strat thing covered.

BELEW: I’ve had three new Stratocasters built for me by the [Fender] Custom Shop, so I’ll be taking those.

My live rig is very simple and fits in one case. It’s the first Axe-Fx built by Fractal. I’m not sure what the model’s name is. Other than that, it’s a couple of pedals and a Mastermind MIDI controller.

For a tour like this, where I’m playing the early music before I had the more complex equipment, I think it makes sense to try to use similar things.

What were your favorite albums from Bowie’s catalog?

RUNDGREN: Hunky Dory was the first record that I knew and one that I still really love, but there are so many great albums.

SCROTE: That’s a tough one. I guess I’ve always kind of leaned toward “Heroes”, but I also really love Hunky Dory.

BELEW: I really like Young Americans and “Heroes”.

There are going to be songs that Bowie never actually played live himself in the show, aren’t there?

SCROTE: Right. I don’t think he even toured for many years before his death. To do Bowie’s songs justice live, I think we need to bring everything to the table and cover as many bases as possible, to replicate things that happened in the studio.

There are no backing tracks anywhere; everything is live. We have a real pool of talent in the show, and everyone is really at the top of their game.

There’s a certain relaxed camaraderie, both personally and musically, with Adrian, Todd and the rest of the band that I’ve rarely found in anything that I’ve ever done before. It’s a real great fun hang when we’re together.

There’s a beautiful spirit about the show, and to be able to celebrate the genius of David’s work in such great company is a genuine gift.

BELEW: Everything is done on a much bigger scale than the tours I did with David, particularly in 1990. Whereas back then, we had to find ways to cover parts and even leave some things out, now we have the ability to reproduce everything.

It’s a lot easier for me these days, that’s for sure. I no longer have to try to sound like a saxophone or something. [laughs]”

Browse the David Bowie catalog here.

Visit the Celebrating David Bowie website for tour dates and tickets.

The recording of the Talking Heads’ epochal 1980 album Remain in Light marked a dramatic difference from how the band had previously operated.

On prior long-players, singer-guitarist David Byrne, guitarist-keyboardist Jerry Harrison, bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Franz began album sessions with fully or mostly finished songs.

This time, the quartet, with producer Brian Eno, spent weeks in Compass Point in the Bahamas creating loops out of improvisations without knowing what the arrangements would ultimately become.

“It presented challenges for David when he wrote melodies and lyrics,” Harrison says, “because there weren’t many chord changes to help him go somewhere. It really was a new way for us to record. And for any band, I think.”

When the Heads returned to New York City to finish the album, they reached out to a new friend, guitarist Adrian Belew, and asked him to play on the tracks. “All of my parts were done in one day,” Belew recalls.

“They basically said, ‘Go into the studio and wait around till you think there should be a guitar solo.’ I played and I could see everybody all excited in the control room. So I thought, What the heck? I’ll play a second one. All in all, it turned out quite well.”

Over the past four decades, Remain in Light has been hailed as not only the Talking Heads’ definitive musical statement but also a groundbreaker in terms of its fusion of African polyrhythms, funk, art rock and new wave.

It’s been nearly 25 years since Harrison played live on stage with Belew, when the guitarist was part of the Talking Heads’ expanded 1980-’81 Remain in Light live lineup.

But on September 29, the two musicians reunited for the Remain in Light celebration concert at the Wiltern in Los Angeles, where they performed music from the album and discussed the Talking Heads’ legacy.

Joining Harrison and Belew were members of the Brooklyn-based funk band Turkuaz, along with Julie Slick on bass and Yahuba Garcia-Torres on percussion.

“Jerry and I would run into each other over the years, and we would talk about how great the Remain in Light tour was,” says Belew.

“Finally, we talked about it enough ’til we said, ‘That’s it, we’ve got to do this.’ Jerry was producing Turkuaz and found them to be the perfect band for this. Otherwise, it might not have happened.”

When you hatched the idea for this show, did you consider Chris and Tina?

JERRY HARRISON: I talked to them about it, but they just couldn’t do it. They get offers to do Tom Tom Club shows, and there were some other conflicts.

Besides, once we had started going with Turkuaz, we realized half of that band wouldn’t work. And the great thing about Turkuaz is that they already did a number of Talking Heads songs in their set. We were one of their big inspirations.

Let’s talk about the recording of Remain in Light. Jerry, you play both guitar and keyboards. What specifically did you play on those original tracks?

HARRISON: Because these weren’t initially songs in the traditional sense, I would play a part for four or five minutes, and then the next person would go out and do something. The record was basically composed by using mute buttons on the console.

At what point was the decision made to bring Adrian in?

ADRIAN BELEW: I’d met Talking Heads on the Fear of Music tour. You guys played three shows in Illinois. I went to all of them.

I was just jumping around backstage when you were about to do your encore, and you guys said, “Come on out with us and play ‘Psycho Killer.’” I said I didn’t know the chords, and you guys said, “That’s okay. Just come out at the end and freak out like you do.”

HARRISON: Which you did. And then, when we got back from recording at Compass Point, I remember going to a club in New York, and I saw you there.

BELEW: Yes. I remember we were in a stairwell, and you were with David, and you both asked me to come play on the record. I had to tell my band they would be hanging out in New York an extra day.

But yeah, I went to Sigma Sound and jumped right in. I was super excited by the music. I was like, Wow, this is great. I can’t wait to play on this!

Let’s talk about some songs. “Born Under Punches” has a bonkers solo.

HARRISON: That’s David. He’s using a Lexicon Prime Time delay and working the hold button. You could record little bits and mess with how fast it played back. It was done piece by piece. But Adrian could pull it off live.

BELEW: Well, I didn’t do it exactly like the record, but I did similar things while playing it live. I used a similar effect on one of my songs, “Three of a Perfect Pair,” with a synthesizer guitar. You push this button and trap a tiny portion of the sound, and then you manipulate it.

You do play the solo on “The Great Curve” though.

BELEW: Oh, yeah. That’s me.

HARRISON: I consider that to be one of Adrian’s finest solos on any record.

Were you using a Roland guitar synth?

BELEW: Oh, no. I didn’t have one yet. I got one soon after, when the Talking Heads toured Japan. I came back from that tour with a GR300. I think I was the first person in America who owned one. Then we formed the new King Crimson, and Robert [Fripp] got his own guitar synth, and away we went.

But on “The Great Curve,” I’m using my battered old Strat through a Roland Jazz Chorus 120. I had three or four pedals. I think it was a Big Muff and an equalizer that I used to boost the midrange.

Also, my Stratocaster had a Strat-o-Blaster that really upped the output. I had an Electric Mistress, too, so when it starts doing all the crazy, weird sounds, that’s just me stepping on that and introducing it into the chain.

What’s going on in “The Overload”? The whole song is a sustained series of growling guitar atmospherics.

BELEW: That sounds like something I would do. It was so improvised. I remember when we were putting the live set together, we said, “This one won’t work so well because we’re trying to keep everything so upbeat.”

Adrian, beyond your solos, did you play any rhythm parts on the record?

BELEW: I don’t think so. I didn’t do anything on “Once in a Lifetime.” I think I played on “Crosseyed and Painless,” and I did some solo stuff on “Listening Wind.”

I used the Electric Mistress and bent the sound up and down while working a delay and the volume control on my guitar to make certain notes drift up and down. It’s a very interesting sound.

Adrian, seeing as your parts took one day to record, were you surprised when you listened to the final album?

BELEW: Oh, of course! You know, I considered myself a sideman at the time, so I had no idea how the record would turn out. Same thing with Lodger by David Bowie – I was very surprised at how he used my guitar.

Both of those things, of course, are connected to Brian Eno. He had his own taste and liked to use what I did. He was a big supporter.

The album was seen as being revolutionary. How do you two rate it within the band’s body of work?

HARRISON: Of course, I love them all, but I would say I take Fear of Music and Remain in Light, if I had to pick two.

Fear of Music is the culmination of the four-piece, and Remain in Light is the switch to when we thought about having an expanded format, and all of the influences that had begun with “I Zimbra” on Fear of Music came in. So I don’t quite go to one album; I go to those two.

BELEW: I agree with Jerry about those two. I’ve been fortunate to do a few albums in my career that have been called groundbreaking – Discipline, Graceland, The Downwards Spiral – and I put Remain in Light high up in there. I loved making it. I loved playing it live, and it’s still a record that stands up today, very, very well.

Browse the Talking Heads catalog here.

Happy birthday to Todd Rundgren!

Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last year, Rundgren has performed numerous roles throughout his colorful career.

Recognized as a talented multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer, multimedia artist, engineer and producer, Rundgren first rose to prominence as a guitarist in the late ‘60s as a founding member of psychedelic rock band Nazz.

In the early ‘70s, Rundgren turned his hand to producing records while simultaneously striking out on a solo career.

Appearing in 1970, his debut solo record, Runt, was the first in a catalog of highly original and experimental releases spanning well over five decades.

“My latest record, Space Force, is all over the place,” Rundgren told Guitarist. “It’s another album of collaborations, so every song is different in terms of instrumental make-up and who’s playing on it. 

"I’m doing something of a ballad with Adrian Belew.”

In addition to their recent studio collaborations, the much-lauded Celebrating David Bowie tour featuring Belew and Rundgren is due to kick off again this fall with numerous dates scheduled across North America.

“This is Major Todd to ground control. I’m stepping through the door,” commented Rundgren. 

“In 1973, I met David Bowie and one of us ended up crying.

“I met David several times after that. Some of our phases, like glam, coincided. David had more of that Andy Warhol kind of sensibility, a pop sensibility.”

Speaking of Rundgren’s astounding fretboard prowess, David Bowie and the Cure guitarist Reeves Gabrels recently told Guitar Player, “Todd is strangely underappreciated as a guitarist.”

Referring to his guitar solo in the track “No. 1 Lowest Common Denominator” from 1974’s Todd album, Gabrel’s went on to say, “He conjures up a surreal sonic landscape whose visual corollary, for me, would be Dali’s The Persistence of Memory.

“Are psychedelics bad? Let Todd offer his opinion.”

Order the Todd Rundgren: Live in San Francisco DVD here.

Browse the Todd Rundgren catalog here.

A new documentary on the history of prog-rock titans King Crimson, In the Court of the Crimson King, has been announced.

Directed by Toby Amies, and set to make its world premiere at the 2022 SXSW film festival in Austin, Texas, the film follows the band on their 50th Anniversary tour in 2019.

Far from looking exclusively at the present-day King Crimson though, the documentary also explores the band's past – which is as knotty and complicated as the band's music – via interviews with a number of the group's prominent former members. 

You can watch the movie's trailer below.

First formed in 1968, King Crimson have experienced a number of drastic musical and personnel shifts over the last 50+ years, with the sole constant member being electric guitar player Robert Fripp. On more than one occasion, King Crimson have disbanded, only to reform years later with a dramatically different lineup. 

In the Court of the Crimson King's trailer fully explores this bumpy history, with Fripp at one point quipping “This is the first King Crimson where there’s not at least one member of the band that actively resents my presence, which is astonishing.”

Other members from King Crimson's past – including former drummer Bill Bruford and Adrian Belew, who spent over 10 years in total with the band as a singer and guitarist – also appear in the trailer to offer their perspectives on the group.

Bruford, for one, points to King Crimson as "the dream band viewed from outside," while Belew says, “When I came back from making some of that music, my hair had fallen out.” 

For more info on when and where In the Court of the Crimson King will be screened at the SXSW festival, head on over to sxsw.com.

We recently asked some of the best-known players in the guitar world to name their favorite lesser-known solos. In other words: no Hendrix, Clapton, Gilmour, Page et cetera. It can be fascinating to learn where artists find inspiration and sometimes it comes from the most unlikely of places.

Here, Stone Temple Pilots’ Dean DeLeo gives us his top five…

1) Trip the Witch | “Planet TD1” from ‘Trip the Witch’

GUITARIST: Tom Bukovac

“Any type of guitar or anything Tom Bukovac plays is so pure and tasteful, with incredible feel. Absolutely beautiful. Check out his solo on ‘Planet TD1’ and buckle up.”

2) Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West | “Bryant’s Bounce”

GUITARIST: Jimmy Bryant

“Jimmy Bryan surely knew his way around a guitar. He cut a lot of great stuff with the great Speedy West.”

3) Steely Dan | “Peg” from ‘Aja’

GUITARIST: Jay Graydon

“That is a fine solo. The orchestration, the choice of notes and the feel – really great.”

4) U.K. | “In the Dead of Night” from ‘U.K.’

GUITARIST: Allan Holdsworth

“Allan Holdsworth on ‘In the Dead of Night’ off the U.K. record with Wetton, Bruford and Jobson. Brilliant playing by all on this record. Mr. Holdsworth is exceptional… unearthly.”

5) Talking Heads | “The Great Curve” from ‘Remain in Light’

GUITARIST: Adrian Belew

“I love this solo, and I love how Adrian approached guitar in general, whether in Zappa, Bowie, King Crimson or his solo stuff. Always great to hear.”

Buy Trip the Witch's eponymous album featuring Dean DeLeo and Tom Bukovac here.

There's not much left to be said about Eddie Van Halen's impact on the electric guitar. Quite simply, he defined the modern cultural image of the guitar hero as we know it – techniques, showmanship, and all.

In a new interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Adrian Belew – whose credits include extensive work with King Crimson, David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, Talking Heads, and many more illustrious artists – recalled how, even before his band had been signed to a record label, it was clear that Van Halen's playing, particularly his trademark tapping, was a step above even his well-known contemporaries.

In the interview, Belew recalled how he and the Bears’ Rob Fetters were trying to master the then-largely unknown technique of fretboard tapping around the time Van Halen first started making a name for themselves in the Los Angeles club scene.

“I had just started playing this thing where you hold a note down and then you do this,” Belew said. “It’s called tapping, but back then we didn’t have a name for it. Rob Fetters and I were the only two guys we knew who were doing it. 

“It was on a Steely Dan record ["Kid Charlemagne," from 1976's The Royal Scam], and I figured out, that’s how [Larry Carlton] must have done it. I thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to start doing that.’ Rob started doing it, too.”

Before Belew and Fetters could become synonymous with tapping though, they ventured in to the famed Whisky a Go-Go club, where Van Halen were in the middle of a set.

“We walked in and there’s Van Halen, unknown, unsigned, no one knew them, playing like crazy on stage,” Belew said. “Eddie Van Halen is doing that all over the neck of the guitar. We looked at each other and said, ‘Hey, he’s doing that thing that we do!’ 

“We laughed, and we said, ‘And he’s doing it better than we do!’ Because he had already taken it and advanced it to the next level. Good for him.

"It became something," Belew said of the technique's influence, "that a million different young guitar players tried to do since then."

Should this make you hungry to capture some of Eddie's magic in your own playing, take a look at our primer on the technical and musical ingredients of his trademark soloing style.

The ’70s was a bountiful time for analog effects pedals. Among the great fuzz boxes of the era, the Foxx Tone Machine stands proudly as one of the most expressive and more extreme. The pedal was the flagship of Foxx’s lineup, which ran for a few years before vanishing in the latter part of the decade.

Appropriately for a fuzz pedal, its metal case was covered in tightly cropped red or blue flocking that made it feel as velvety as it sounded. And while the pedals are hard enough to come by, the Stars & Stripes unit from 1972, shown here, is among the rarest.

According to the Tone Machine’s inventor, Steve Ridinger, very few of these red-white-and-blue beauties were made. “My memory is just a few, not 50 pieces,” he says. “It was very laborious masking all the areas to get the different flocking colors.”

Ridinger created the Tone Machine in Los Angeles in 1971, when he was just 19 years old. The circuit within it (which would be used in other Foxx products) was a relatively complex affair that offered more control than the average Fuzz Face or Maestro clone, the likes of which constituted a large proportion of the fuzz boxes available at the time.

The Tone Machine used four transistors and had a very effective octave-up sound (misspelled Octive on the control panel, though corrected in the brochures) that was activated by the toggle switch on the pedal’s side. This was itself a major bonus that performed better than many other octave and octave-fuzz units on the market, underscoring the veracity of the Tone Machine’s name.

The core sound is a thick, textured, gnarly fuzz, but the versatile Mellow-Brite tone control takes it from warm and gooey to bright and razor-like. This knob gives the Tone Machine much more range than most two-knob fuzzes, and even outperforms many others with tone knobs.

While many other lesser-known and also-ran fuzz efforts often failed to hold their own alongside the established classics, the Tone Machine quickly found an enthusiastic following and remained a highly regarded variation on the fuzz theme for decades to come.

Unlike the traditional stompbox-style Tone Machine and its partner, the Phase III, which arrived a little later, the majority of Foxx’s notable products came in rocker pedals that better served their bonus features and put even more control right at the player’s feet.

Among them were the Wa & Volume, Fuzz & Wa & Volume, O.D. Machine, Down Machine (a bass wah-wah), Loud Machine (a passive volume pedal), and Clean Machine, which offered both mellow and fuzzy sustain.

The top dog was arguably the Fuzz & Wa & Volume, often considered the catch of the lineup. In addition to its three obvious functions, it had the useful Foxx octave-up effect and four voicing modes for the wah.

The pedal packed plenty of sonic sculpting power, but it exhibited a few drawbacks. The volume pedal didn’t work quite as it should, while further problems were occasionally caused by the pedal’s inherently original looks. The fuzzy flocking that covered the metal enclosures often worked its way loose and ended up inside the box, where it gummed up the workings of the wah-wah potentiometer and gear.

But of all the Foxx company’s pedals, the Tone Machine remains the one many players loved best, and it grabbed the attention of several star users during its run and after. To hear some of its more extreme sounds, check out much of Adrian Belew’s work, particularly the song “Big Electric Cat” from his 1982 solo album, Lone Rhino.

The pedal’s thick fuzz and octave sounds were also creatively exploited by countless other electric guitar players including the likes of Parliament-Funkadelic’s Michael Hampton, Peter Frampton, Trent Reznor, and Billy Gibbons.

Having created such a legend in just a few years, and at such a young age, Ridinger continued to excel in the industry. In the 1990s, he rose to become head of the Evets Corporation, which purchased the Danelectro trademark in 1995 primarily to use the brand on a range of budget-friendly, retro-minded effects pedals. (Remarkably, Danelectro’s reissue guitars only came along later, after much demand from customers.)

Given Ridinger’s experience in the pedal world, the fact that so many of these colorful and affordable early Danelectro stompboxes also sounded good becomes far less surprising. Among them, the French Toast was based on the original Tone Machine.

Several popular homages to the Foxx Tone Machine have hit the market over the years, including a Foxx-branded reissue in the 2000s. Unsurprisingly, given Ridinger’s history, the more recent Danelectro 3699 Fuzz has received high marks from many players (and an Editors’ Pick Award from GP in 2019).

It includes the bonus of a Mid Boost switch and a second foot switch to kick in the octave effect.

Incidentally, 3699 was the last four digits of the Foxx company’s randomly assigned phone number in the early ’70s (and it spells out “FOXX” on a traditional telephone keypad).

Other options include Warm Audio’s Foxy Tone Box, which goes for the vintage-correct format but in orange flocking, and the Fulltone Ultimate Octave and Stomp Under Foot Silver Foxx, both of which also add a foot-switchable octave.

Wherever you get it, the Foxx Tone Machine is undoubtedly a mighty shape shifter of a circuit.

Essential Ingredients

• Fuzzy flocked covering in red and blue or Stars & Stripes (very rare)
• Controls for volume, sustain (fuzz), and Mellow-Brite (tone), plus Octive (octave) switch
• Original four-transistor fuzz and octave circuit
• Thick, evocative fuzz sound with useful octave-up option

Bag a Danelectro 3699 Fuzz at Sweetwater here.

Thanks to Southside Guitars for showing us these awesome vintage pedals.

Adrian Belew’s two solos on this Talking Heads epic from Remain in Light are some of his wildest guitar moments on record, in a career filled with wild guitar moments.

Belew’s reputation began in the late 70s when he was poached by Frank Zappa after the moustachioed guitar god spotted him playing in a covers band in Nashville. He contributed rhythm and lead guitar to the 1979 Zappa classic Sheik Yerbouti, before David Bowie lured him into his band. 

(Belew tells a great story about how Bowie met the guitarist at a restaurant but hadn’t counted on Zappa also being there and Bowie’s attempts at small talk were met with a swift, “Fuck you, Captain Tom,” from an understandably protective Zappa). 

Belew then appeared on The Thin White Duke’s avant-pop album Lodger, and his career was set. He became the go-to guy for the eccentric and the super-musical: King Crimson, Herbie Hancock, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Paul Simon, Nine Inch Nails and, er, William Shatner, to name just a few.

Like we say: wild.

Back in 1980 he he was drafted in to work with rising stars Talking Heads. Like Bowie, the band had previously collaborated with producer Brian Eno, and their arty, imaginative edge called out for Belew’s highly experimental guitar playing style.

The solos on The Great Curve (at 1:53 and 5:28) are characterized by a searing fuzz tone, huge intervallic skips, and end-of-the-world dive bombs. On top of a frenetic funky afrobeat track, Belew’s six-string work changed people’s views of how a guitar could sound in a non-rock context. 

So where did that sound come from? Back in the early 80s, Belew’s bag of tricks included a Fender Stratocaster, a Roland JC-120 amp – the "king of clean" – and an effects palette that featured an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress flanger, Graphic Fuzz and Big Muff distortion, a Foxx Tone Machine fuzz, and an MXR Dyna Comp compressor.

Buy Talking Heads' Remain In Light Adrian Belew's new album Elevate is out now.

When GP spoke to progressive guitarist Adrian Belew in February 2020, he was gearing up for a tour – literally. He planned to play summer festivals with Jerry Harrison, performing the music of Talking Heads, and to that end was putting together a simple pedal-based system to replace the computer-based rig he used with his trio.  

Then Covid intervened, canceling the tour and laying Belew low. Fortunately, the guitarist beat the bug and employed his new pedals to record his new self-released album, Elevator.   

Was the new record conceived pre-Covid? 

Yes, in terms of writing, but then Covid came along and put in a long gap before I could get my engineer safely back in the studio. During that time, I was able to write 12 new songs.    

Did you take a different approach to songwriting for this album? 

For example, often you’ll retune your guitars. There are two tunings: standard, and a tuning I don’t have a name for. Starting with the low E, it’s D, A, D, E, D, E. It makes for some very interesting chord shapes. I would say half the record was written with that tuning, because it really inspired me. 

Any new guitar sounds? 

The guitar sounds are coming mostly through two miked Boss MG-10s amps with five-inch speakers. Those speakers cut out everything that a guitar doesn’t need. It’s different than my MIDI computer rig, but it records really well.

Which pedals made the cut from the live rig you were putting together? 

The guitar goes into the Keeley Compressor, my go-to forever. On my pedalboard is an Eventide H9. I still have the [discontinued] DigiTech iStomp box. You download whatever program you want and it becomes any pedal they have. One version I call the Impossible Pedal: Every time I step on the iStomp, it shifts the note back and forth between a third and a fifth. 

When I’m soloing and want to play something that sounds fast, I throw in some extra notes with my foot. I’m also using the Echosystem delay and Heavy distortion pedals by Empress, with the Xotic SL for less-distorted overdrive. The Strymon Deco splits my signal stereo. I move its pitch around a bit with an expression pedal.

Which guitars did you use? 

I used a new Fender Strat and an old red Parker Fly given to me in Tokyo when they first came out. It doesn’t have a MIDI pickup or sustainer, but I used it quite a lot. I also used a Strat that has a built-in switch to allow 35 guitar sounds. It can do some interesting out-of-phase sounds. I also employed an Epiphone Wilshire with a five-way switch for a variety of sounds, and, of course, my favorite Taylor acoustic guitar.

Was it easier for you in this circumstance because you can play all the instruments? 

I don’t use other players anymore unless it’s something I can’t do. I’ve played all the instruments and done the production on my 24 records. I’ve even done the artwork; Elevator will have five new paintings. I like my music to represent me and not have many other hands in it.

Were the song themes influenced by the craziness of 2020? 

A bit. It’s called Elevator because I hope the music elevates the listener. Over 2020, it got harder and harder to be hopeful and positive, but I steered away from any big statements. One song says, “If I never see a mask again, it’ll be too soon,” but I felt this is the time people need to get back to music that makes them feel good. These are 12 feel-good songs.

“I just love guitars,” says Adrian Belew. “Every one of them has its own temperament and personality.”

Best known for the wildly innovative guitar work he has done alongside Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Talking Heads, Nine Inch Nails, and many others; his role as the frontperson of prog-rockers extraordinaire King Crimson from the ’80s to the ’00s; and for his 18 eclectic solo albums, Belew has also acquired more than a few guitars over the years. His collection, which numbers about 60 instruments altogether, is as eclectic, unpredictable, and extraordinary as his musical career.

“I own way too many guitars,” he notes. “I’m going to thin the herd pretty soon. I still have almost all the guitars I’ve used in my career, and a lot of manufacturers have given me stuff—which I’m very grateful for. But I own about ten guitars that I’ve basically never played, and it would really be best to pass those along to someone else.”

Belew’s guitar collection resides in two climate-controlled rooms in his Nashville home—acoustics in one, electrics in another. Nearby is the so-called “magic closet,” which contains pretty much every amplifier and effects device he has gathered over nearly five decades of playing—all of them connected to a single patch bay for easy recording in his home studio.

“I’ve got my original Roland JC-120s in there, Fender Twins, Supros, Johnsons, and the Foxx Tone Machine fuzz box that I used to make the first sound you hear on Lone Rhino [his 1982 solo debut].”

When Belew goes on the road with Gizmodrome—a newly formed “supergroup” consisting of drummer/lead vocalist Stewart Copeland, bassist extraordinaire Mark King, and keyboardist Vittorio Cosma—he’ll be leaving most of his guitars at home as the band tours in support of its self-titled debut album. All he’ll be bringing are a few of the Adrian Belew Signature Parker Fly models he has played for the last decade—which are equipped with DiMarzio and Sustainiac pickups, Sperzel locking tuners, Line 6 Variax modeling components, and MIDI outputs.

“Parker made 50 of them during their first run in 2009,” he explains. “I have three production models, plus the prototype. They’re all amazing, but my original Adrian Belew model is the Ferrari of guitars. It stays in tune, it’s light, it resonates properly, and the neck is so thin you’d think it might break off the guitar, but it doesn’t. In fact, I’m told you could stand on that neck and it wouldn’t come off. I get pretty physical with my guitars, but I haven’t tried that!”

The fact that Belew will be playing onstage as a member of Gizmodrome is still something of a shock to him.

“I’m honest when I say that I was tricked into this project,” he says. “I thought I was coming in as a session guitarist to lay parts down for maybe four songs that Stewart and Vittorio had written together. Then, I got into the studio in Italy, and I noticed it was set up with all the players in the same room—not what you usually do for overdubbing. It turned out they had a whole cookie jar full of songs, and they wanted me to be in the band.”

Gizmodrome will be touring the world for a good part of 2018, whenever Belew isn’t playing with his own power trio. In addition, Belew will be continuing his work with the Celebrating David Bowie band—a group of former Bowie sidemen led by keyboardist Mike Garson that pays tribute to their late employer. It all adds up to an extraordinarily busy life, which makes it that much more refreshing when Belew returns home to his family and his dozens of guitars.

[Editor’s Note: Belew has recently been posting his own photos of selected instruments in his collection on his Facebook page, along with lengthy commentary. If you want to know more about any of the guitars pictured here (as well as many others), check out facebook.com/adrianbelew].

1969 Fender Stratocaster

“I beat this guitar to heck, and Seymour Duncan did the rest,” says Belew. “It was originally brown sunburst. This is what I used on Zappa’s Sheik Yerbouti, Bowie’s Lodger, Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, and in my early days with King Crimson. I’m holding it on the cover of Lone Rhino.”

1966 “Twang Bar King” Fender Mustang

“I switched from Strats to Mustangs in the early ’80s. I wanted something different, and I always loved Mustangs because they were very light and had a really springy tremolo arm. They’re hard to keep in tune, though, so eventually that tremolo arm became a Kahler. This is the first of two Mustangs that were painted by Mike Getz to match the cover paintings he did for Twang Bar King. I sold the other one to the Hard Rock Café about 20 years ago.”

Late-’80S Fender Custom Shop Strat

“Although I loved the Mustangs, they weren’t going to hold up for live work. So I had the Fender Custom Shop make me three identical Strats with Kahler trems, Sperzel locking tuners, Lace Sensor and Sustainiac pickups, and a big ugly plug for the Roland GR guitar synths. I repainted them in different colors for every tour I did—Crimson, Bowie, solo—and they were my main live guitars until the Fly came along.”

2004 Parker Adrian Belew Fly Prototype

“Here’s the very first signature guitar that Parker made to my specifications. One thing that sets it apart from the original production run of the Adrian Belew model is that the three knobs are spaced out differently, and the one in the middle—for the Variax—is silver. It’s in great shape, because it hasn’t been played all that much. Ken Parker isn’t just a luthier—he’s also a scientist. The Fly was the most revolutionary development since Teles, Strats, and Les Pauls.”

1985 “Lightning Bolt” Fender Mustang

“Fender made two custom Mustangs for Laurie Anderson’s 1986 concert film, Home of the Brave, and sent them to her so that she could hand-paint them. This one has some of the lyrics to her song ‘Blue Lagoon’ on the back. The other one is brown with a telephone painted on it. I sold it—along with the Mexican sombrero I wore in the movie—to a museum in Florida that’s putting together a collection of Laurie-related memorabilia.”

Late-’80s Dobro with 33S Body/Round Neck with 45S Inlays

“This was brand-new when I got it in the ’80s. I call it the ‘1967’ Dobro, because I wrote the song ‘1967’ on it. Dewey Bowen of Freedom Guitars in California gave it to me as a gift for playing a show there. I tuned it to D-A-D-D-A-D, with two strings in unison in the middle, and I played it like a regular guitar—no slide. I wrote so much material on this guitar in that tuning. It has a resonance that makes me think of an upright piano in a little rehearsal room.”

1962 Gretsch 6120

“I bought this old Gretsch from a dealer—Dewey Bowen again—and it’s in perfect shape. When I opened the case for the first time and tuned the guitar up, I started playing what became ‘Six-String’ on Op Zop Too Wah [1997]. It was like that song was just waiting inside it.”

1991 Taylor 412

“I have several Taylor acoustics, but this is my favorite. In fact, it’s my favorite acoustic guitar overall. Since I first purchased it in 1991, I’ve written most of my songs on it. It has a beautiful mahogany back with a dash of spilt candle wax to keep it real.”

1965 Galanti Grand Prix

“One of my latest obsessions is Italian-made electric guitars from the ’60s. They don’t sound much like the typical American guitar. Besides this one, I also have a 1964 Crucianelli PANoramic, which was given to me a few months ago by one of my Facebook followers. What a gift!”

David Bowie’s death from liver cancer on January 10, 2016 - just two short days after his 69th birthday - was a shock and a blow to the world’s music lovers. 

But perhaps missed by much of the culture at large was how epic his influence was on the guitar. Bowie worked with some of rock’s most transcendent guitarists, and he gave them the space to expand their techniques, tones, and creative concepts through his music - all while maintaining their individual imprints and approaches. A stylistic chameleon of the highest order, Bowie also gave us an opportunity to hear the guitar raging unfettered in a number of musical genres, from experimental to pop, new wave to industrial, R&B to funk, and beyond.

Getting the guitar story behind all of Bowie’s artistic shifts and evolutions was a rather significant undertaking, and we can’t offer enough appreciation and thanks to the guitarists who shared their memories of recording sessions, live shows, signal paths and gear, production concepts, songwriting, and more - even as they were grieving over losing a friend, peer, collaborator, and/or mentor, and were already being barraged by the mass media. I was so grateful to reach so many Bowie guitarists and superstar producers Tony Visconti and Nile Rodgers, while Michael Ross was able to talk to David Torn, as well as get a little more “Bowie info” from Ben Monder, who he profiled before the music legend’s passing in our March issue.

As our own small tribute to David Bowie, we’d like to treat this cover story as he typically directed his many exceptional guitarists by staying out of the way and letting the players do their thing. We hope you enjoy reading how this ever-curious, buoyant, and restless artist was aided by the players he trusted to interpret his work through six strings and ecstatic tempests of glorious noises.

“He Put No Limits on His Imagination”

By Tony Visconti

My job as a producer is to always interpret the ideas of my artistes. I love challenges. I work in a very unorthodox way—I start each new album as if it is my first. No presets. No assumptions. As my productions will be heard in the future, I think in the future.

David and I always had preproduction meetings to discuss new ideas, listen to records for reference, and sketch out the outcome we wanted to achieve. I was always consulted about the choices of guitarists. We would sit down and listen to a potential guitarist, but David and I were always on the same page when it came to session musicians. Some came from him, and some came from me. Because we worked with such talented guitarists, the basic process for album sessions was to let them come up with the first idea. Then we’d start bringing the player around to the way we heard things. I’m pretty good at dictating parts and calling out the notes by name. I rarely notate, because that makes the guitarist turn down (hardy, har, har). I never touched the amp settings on any of the guitarists—except for David—but I’m pretty good at describing what I want in very specific terms. We would also record lots of alternative parts that we would edit at the mixing stage—even back in the analog days.

I worked with a lot of great guitar players during my time with David. Here are some notes about each one…

MICK RONSON

Picking the guitarist kind of set the tone for each album. It started with Mick Ronson. When his friend, drummer John Cambridge, introduced us, and we had a jam with him, The Man Who Sold the World almost wrote itself. I can’t emphasize enough how much Mick was the missing link. He was a super rock-god player, and an aficionado of Jeff Beck - who was one of our gods, too. He also could read and write music - a bonus for me.

I also remember being completely free to do whatever we wanted on The Man Who Sold the World. We never saw an A&R man during the entire recording, so we let our imaginations soar - all of us. We were David’s session players. We were a band. And we played loud! We played heroically - as if it was a live gig. Mick’s three knobs on his Marshall were usually at 10, and he used his wah pedal as variable midrange EQ.

CARLOS ALOMAR

When Mick left, the vacuum was filled by Carlos. Like Mick, he brought something extremely new and important to the next major direction. Carlos is an all-around genius player. He plays every genre really well - he is probably David’s most versatile guitarist, comfortable from funk to the avant garde - and he was always at the forefront of guitar-pedal technology. David liked the guitar playing on a demo he was sent, and he called for the guitarist to audition for the new “blue-eyed soul” record he was recording at Sigma Sound Studios in Philly. I was there the day Carlos walked in with his Gibson ES-355 and a small amp, accompanied by his wife Robin and their friend Luther Vandross. That ES-355 was wired for stereo, and each pickup always went to a separate amp with separate effects. When you hear Carlos on record, those “two” guitars you’re hearing are actually one live take. I would pan each amp to the extreme left and right, respectively.

EARL SLICK

Earl plays with the most swagger and the highest volume of all of Bowie’s guitarists. Like Ronson, he has created some very iconic guitar parts.

RICKY GARDINER

For Low, David really wanted to go “out there,” and I was working with a husband and wife duo in London, Ricky and Virginia Gardiner. Ricky was—and still is—the most adventurous guitarist I have ever worked with. He defies description. He was a resounding success for Low, and he took us to unexpected places. Bowie loved his input. Ricky would have stayed with us except for a strange illness he developed—an electromagnetic hypersensitivity allergy irritated by radio waves, microwaves, air pollution, etc. He and Virginia live in the Welsh countryside away from big cities, and Ricky still records and composes.

ROBERT FRIPP

Give Fripp a chance to plug into Brian Eno’s Synthi—the briefcase synth with the joystick—and all hell breaks loose. Mixing Heroes was no picnic. A lot of Fripp’s parts were ecstatically out of control, and a lot of it would have to be tamed with judicious comping and submixing. His choice of notes were always the ones you never expected. To watch the two well-spoken Englishmen in action was like being in an episode of The Twilight Zone.

ADRIAN BELEW

Adrian is a rock guitarist with great taste in notes, great technique, and great ideas… on acid! This is only a description - no acid was ingested on Lodger. His solo on “Boys Keep Swinging” is very bizarre, but completely accessible - very Zappa, in fact.

CHUCK HAMMER

The man showed us the first guitar synth we had ever seen and knew how to play the damn thing! We thought we were in the future the day he played the lush strings on “Ashes To Ashes.”

REEVES GABRELS

I regret that I never got to work on more than one song with Reeves. He’s a great guy, and he can play anything. For example, just when I thought I was getting something great out of him on “Safe (In This Sky Life),” David said in Reeves’ presence, “Take him out of his comfort zone. Take that Parker Fly and give him the Les Paul Junior to play,” or something like that. He played brilliantly.

MARK PLATI

Mark is so extremely talented. He plays everything on guitar well, and he’s a killer bass player, too. He had a good long run with David as a co-producer. We worked together on Reality and Toy. His guitar playing was always the right thing to do.

DAVID TORN

Dr. Ambient Guitar. He comes to the studio with a 16-space rack of some heavy-duty effects and cooks up loops on the spot. What he did on the opening track of Heathen, “Sunday,” is something completely different. I should say here that we never typecast our guitarists. For instance, with David, we once told him to turn off the ambience, and just play a rock solo that you would expect Earl Slick to be called in to do, and Torn shredded. We did this part experimentally, but mainly because we were often too impatient to wait for someone else to come the studio. If an assistant engineer was a guitarist, we’d ask him to play something if we couldn’t. This happened during The Next Day with engineer Brian Thorn from The Magic Shop studio in New York City.

GERRY LEONARD

David’s last musical director. His approach is similar to Torn’s, but Gerry is more of a rocker. He manages to add a kind of Celtic yearning in his playing.

BEN MONDER

Ben and I worked alone most of the time on Blackstar. David had a few guitar ideas he couldn’t play himself—although he did play a good deal of guitar on the album. After Ben worked with David present, we were left to add whatever I felt needed to be done. Ben definitely has his own sound—dark and ambient—and he played a couple of blistering solo parts on Blackstar, much to our delight. I look forward to working with Ben again sometime.

DAVID BOWIE

David was the type of musician who would pick up any guitar in the room and start playing cool riffy things. He came up with great hooks for his songs. Over the years, David often played a lot of riff-based lines himself, including most of the guitar on Diamond Dogs—though he did not play the “Rebel Rebel” riff. He was not a virtuoso, but his feel was so on the money. He had no problem with me tweaking his amp settings—“whatever works” worked for him. He would describe an effect, and I would come up with some plug-in alternatives, or just stick his guitar through my extensive pedals—which are mainly from Roland/Boss.

From Heathen onwards, he started to collect some cool guitars. He bought some Supros from EBay, and had them restored to new—including the electronics. He was fond of an old headless Steinberger guitar that he played on Heathen and Reality. For Blackstar, he started to make some very detailed demos at home, and he asked if I could use the guitars he recorded on a 24-track Zoom deck. For example, the heavy power chords on “Lazarus” are played by him. The bpm matched up perfectly, but I moved the parts around so they matched the playing of Donny McCaslin’s quartet. As very proficient jazz musicians, they were very complimentary about David’s playing. If David had a part he couldn’t play easily, he would delegate it to me. We had a very egoless relationship in the studio. We just did what worked.

I don’t think there will ever be anyone like David again. He put no limits on his imagination, and he recognized that in me. We were like two kids in a toy factory. I think he has made a point with Blackstar that it’s possible to make great art that will also be liked by the general public. He wasn’t about recycling rock and roll, or using analog tape, or getting a Top Ten single. He was all about art.

Jeff Beck Meets Ziggy

Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture, D.A. Pennebaker’s celebratory film of the band’s July 3, 1973 concert at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, documents the murder of Bowie’s beloved alter ego by Bowie himself (“Not only is this the last show of the tour, but it’s the last show that we’ll ever do,” he says from the stage). The film also features Jeff Beck trading solos with Mick Ronson on “Jean Genie,” a bit of “Love Me Do,” and “Round and Round”—not that anyone who saw the flick in its original theatrical release would know this. Beck asked to have his performances removed in the final cut of the film, and the alleged reasons for his action have passed into Bowie myth: He didn’t know the concert was being filmed, or he was disappointed in his solos, or he hated his clothes. Your call. However, the late Mick Ronson cast his vote for Beck’s wardrobe.

“I was too busy looking at his flares,” Ronson said in an interview about performing onstage with his personal guitar hero. “Even by our standards, those trousers were excessive.”

“Plug In, Turn Up, and Away You Go”

By Mick Ronson

David wanted to put a band together, and I happened to be there. I used Fender amps in the beginning, but for the Ziggy Stardust days, I switched to Marshalls. That’s when it started getting noisy! But, often, I wouldn’t even think of what I was plugging into. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter to me at all, as long as it works.

I remember playing on the road once with a guitar that had a cracked neck, and we got gaffer’s tape to fix the thing up. So there I was onstage playing this axe with gaffer’s tape. I don’t know how the hell I did it. If something went wrong with the guitar, I’d just ignore it. I’d sort of bash it about a bit, tune it up, and never bother with much more than that.

Ziggy was a very quick album to do - which made for great energy. You had the song down, you’d go in, record it, do a couple of overdubs, and it was done. That was the essence of it. We didn’t do too many takes.

A lot of the guitar sounds on the records were played with a Les Paul. I’d also use a CryBaby wah pedal. I’d set it on a sound and leave it like that to get a very midrange, honking tone. The rest of it was basically plugging in, turning up, and away you go. The equipment helps a little bit, but, more often than not, it’s in your own personality and your fingers.

It doesn’t matter what the public thinks about my playing, as long as I’m enjoying myself. Some people will probably think to themselves, “Why is he playing that hillbilly stuff? Why doesn’t he just go back to what he was doing?” And that is a good thing to do now and again. It’s always good if you can keep up what you’ve done in the past, as well as develop yourself in the present. You never know when you’ll want to use what you’ve learned before some time in the future. Of course, I hope everyone will like my music, but, either way, I have to keep moving on.

Quotes from the great Mick Ronson were culled from Steve Rosen’s December 1976 Guitar Player article - the only time we talked to Mick - and the 1996 BBC documentary, Hang On To Yourself.

“If It Felt Great, It Was Done”

By Earl Slick

It’s funny. When I did David Live, all I had was my ’65 Gibson SG Junior, an MXR Phase 45, and a late-’60s Marshall half-stack. That was it. I used, abused, and cast off tons of gear as my time with David continued, but my 1968 Gibson J-45 - which I bought new from a mom and pop music store in 1970 - is on every Bowie record. It’s also on [John Lennon’s] Double Fantasy. It’s just a magic piece of wood, and it feels and sounds great.

David never asked me to play certain things. It was always, “Slicky, do what you do.” And this is where part of David Bowie’s genius lies - when he picked musicians to work with, he picked them because of what they did and how they sounded. He didn’t want to turn an apple into an orange. He’d often bring in skeletons of the songs. Very rarely did he have the whole thing written. So we’d sit on a couch or on the floor and fiddle around. I’d say, “Let me hear the song.” He might want me to take one of his ideas and mess with it until I got it where he wanted it.

Slicky and the Boss during A Reality Tour, 2004

As far as my full body of work with David, Station to Station is my favorite record that I ever did with him. I’ve always loved Carlos Alomar’s playing, and we had a very good musical relationship. We played so differently that our parts interweaved like a perfectly made puzzle. I’d say that Young Americans is Carlos’ album - even though I’m on there. Station to Station, on the other hand, is me doing most of the guitars. For example, David wanted to redo “John, I’m Only Dancing,” and he asked if I could come up with a riff for it. Well, the riff I wrote was meant to freshen up an old song, but David decided to write a brand new song around it, and that song turned into “Stay.” “Golden Years” - which is my riff, as well - is a combination of two riffs that I stole from other guitar players. I adapted the main theme from Cream’s “Outside Women Blues,” and there’s also a hint of Wilson Pickett’s “Funky Broadway” in there.

When we were working on material for Station to Station, David and I would stand in front of a wall of Marshalls at the far end of the studio, with everything feeding back, and [producer] Harry Maslin looking cross-eyed and wondering, “What the f**k are these guys doing?”

We would usually track basics exclusively live until Reality. That album was done in pieces. I remember playing on the title track, and David didn’t have the key or the chords or anything, so I was running through the thing, just fiddling around trying to find out what to play. And you know what? Some of that stuff is on the record. I guess I hit a couple of sweet spots here and there while I was learning the song. That’s how loose David did things. Perfection had nothing to do with anything. If it felt great, it was done.

One of the funny things about David is that he would get so involved in what he was doing that he’d forget about some of us. I don’t mean this in a bad way at all. He was just so focused. When he started The Next Day, I didn’t know anything about it. The band was sworn to secrecy. About that time, I got in this car accident, and within the hour, it hit the web like crazy. So I get an email from David asking if I’m all right.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

An hour later, he emails, “So I guess you’re okay.”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing? Are you busy?” This goes on for 48 hours—blah, blah, blah.

Finally, he says, “I’m making a record and you need to come down and play.”

I think he was just completely focused on making the album, then, all of a sudden, my name comes up in the news, and, bingo, I’m on the record. I’d expect nothing else from him. If he acted normal, I probably wouldn’t have lasted with him for so long.

I had a chance to work with Mick Ronson when he produced the demos for my first album in 1976 [Earl Slick Band]. He didn’t get the nod to produce the actual release - which is a shame - because Capitol Records didn’t think he had the experience. They didn’t know all the arranging and producing he had done with Bowie and for Lou Reed’s Transformer. Mick was great at “hearing” the end of the song almost before you did the beginning. He could envision what a song could be even in an extremely raw form. He was such a great arranger. I loved Mick to death. We were good old drinking buddies.

Mick was probably one of the few guitar players I’ve heard who could come across with that angst and aggression, but be melodic at the same time. He wasn’t a wanking player, either. Every note Mick played meant something. Out of every guitar player that David ever had, I think Mick Ronson is better than all of us put together. 

“He Was Always Curious About the Way I’d Come Up with Crazy Arrangements”

By Carlos Alomar

Young Americans was actually my second collaboration with David Bowie. I was 23 years old and working at RCA Studios as their in-house guitarist, and I was contracted to work on a session he was producing for the British singer Lulu. We hung out together. We went to the Apollo theater and other nightclubs, and we just had a great time. He’d come to my house for dinner and we’d exchange R&B and rock and roll stories. Later, he called me to do the Diamond Dogs album, but I was unavailable, as I was touring with the Main Ingredient (“Everybody Plays the Fool”), and that’s when he got Earl Slick.

Ultimately, David asked if I would do the Philly album - Young Americans - and he said we’d really have a good time at Sigma Sound. At this point, I really wanted to work with him, but as I was married, he’d have to match my price. We negotiated, and I left the Main Ingredient and I went with David. (Here’s a little-known fact: I was to be Luther Vandross’ bandleader - which we had dreamed about since we met in our teens. But we never realized our dream, because I decided to tour with David.)

For the next album, in order to achieve the rock/funk/electronic hybrid David was looking for on Station to Station, I knew that the rhythm section had to change [The main Young Americans rhythm section was Andy Newmark on drums and Willy Weeks on bass]. I really wanted to use Dennis Davis and George Murray. I had already worked with Dennis in Roy Ayres Ubiquity, so I knew what he could do, and George Murray played the most melodic bass lines I’d ever heard. David was delighted with this arrangement, because we were able to immediately create two styles that were basically mixed into being one. We were also able to flip the beat around, and hold down the slow, dredging tempo. Plus, I found out from the Musicians Union that, because of disco music, if a song is over four minutes long, you can get extra money. So I made the introduction super long for this reason. David and I would laugh about this for years to come, as that song was about ten minutes long!

Earl Slick’s power and expression is always reminiscent of the great rock and roll power players. When Slicky came in to do his part for “Station to Station,” his challenge was to hold feedback notes for a ridiculously long time. I helped him with the chordal transitions, and I thought it worked out great, as Slick and I always complement each other. He’s lead, I’m rhythm, and I can clearly state for the record that, although I play lead as a melodic expression sometimes, my heart and soul truly lie in the path laid before me as a rhythm guitarist. It’s like, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.

Obviously, I was able to work with a lot of David’s guitar players, but here’s another little-known fact: I have never met Robert Fripp or Chuck Hammer, as they did overdub sessions. It’s regrettable, because I am a big fan of both of them - Robert Fripp because of his innovative techniques and the ways that he looks at the fretboard, and, of course, Chuck Hammer because of his work with his synthesizer guitar. Ricky Gardiner is a lovely, sensitive man. I enjoyed my time with him immensely. His technique is extremely melodic - almost like a vocalist would sing. Adrian Belew is a hammering monster and his whammy bar technique is unequaled. I cannot say enough about Reeves Gabrels’ musical expression. Not only does he have awesome chops, his innovative use of pedals and effects illustrate his total mastery of his sonic palette. Peter Frampton is indeed the Rock God that everyone claims. He understands rock, blues, jazz, and tone, and he can play endlessly without ever repeating a line.

Needless to say, I learned a lot from their techniques. Thanks, fellas!

My stereo Alembic guitar, “Maverick,” was my inspiration for all my Bowie sessions and touring. It was made for my hands, and it allowed me to play effortlessly, and joyously create my arrangements. I have never used it for anything other than David Bowie music. David always gave me free range, and he was always curious about the way I’d come up with crazy arrangements and alternate chording and rhythms. He never really addressed his musical or stylistic evolutions with me. He simply understood that I could change and be the chameleon he knew I could be. I feel that our friendship, fellowship, and camaraderie helped guide things. There’s a certain comfort we shared that allowed David to feel that everything would be all right. So much so, that he became my next-door neighbor.

As musical director for David, I paid personal attention to the musicians to make sure they were having a good time and felt comfortable. Also, I didn’t tell them exactly what to play. I liked to say, “It would be like having Jimi Hendrix as a guitar player and telling him what to play. That’s not a good idea, as it breaks the musical flow and would not allow him to express himself within David Bowie’s music.” Anyway, David would later tweak their performances according to his needs. My rules were very simple: Play it like you wrote it, be yourself, and have fun.

Overall, it is extremely important for musicians to listen to each other. There is a big difference between overplaying and listening for the holes. Create that groove, lay that pocket down heavy, and don’t fill it up. If you can’t create a good song with just four instruments, then maybe it’s not a good song. No additional production is going to make it any better. My methodology is simple: Write the song, decide on an arrangement, start the production, and respect each other.

FRAMPTON’S COMEBACK

Peter Frampton declined to do a new interview for this article, but armed with his Suhr guitars, he was a rocking presence on 1987’s Never Let Me Down and the massively theatrical Glass Spider Tour - exposure that couldn’t have come at a better time for him. “The ’80s were a difficult period for me,” Frampton told Eric R. Danton of mmusicmag.com in 2012. “It was my dear friend David Bowie who got me out on the road and reintroduced me as a guitar player around the world. I can never thank him enough for believing in me.” In 1987, Frampton gave journalist Steve Newton a peek into the studio process for Never Let Me Down. “The most frustrating thing about doing sessions for other people is when they don’t know what they want,” he said. “David is the first person I’ve worked with who has a picture of exactly the way he wants it to go. If I was slightly off the direction he wanted, he’d just get his demos out and play them for me.”

“The Tape Would Start Rolling, and I’d Take It from There”

By Ricky Gardiner

David phoned me about coming over to Paris to play lead guitar on his latest album. I had just finished touring for many years with Beggars Opera [a progressive rock band Gardiner founded in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1969], so I readily agreed. By that time, I had been playing professionally - meaning “for money” - for 15 years, ranging from the music of Henry Mancini to Hank Williams. Back then, my own preference, with regard to guitarists, was Hank Marvin. He had immaculate timing, and I used to play most of his recordings after school. First, on an old acoustic, and then on a Futurama III - which was basically a Stratocaster copy with the advantage of independent pickup selection. In all other respects, it was inferior to the Strat.

When I eventually got my Stratocaster, it had an alder body (which is brighter than ash) and a one-piece birdseye maple neck. These attributes contributed to a lightness and brightness that allowed a singer’s voice to emerge in a performance or mix. This really mattered if one was playing in larger ensembles - as I occasionally did - where brass instrumentalists took solos. I played the Stratocaster on the Low sessions, and a young Seymour Duncan - he worked in London at the time - had sorted out the difficulties I had been having with the tremolo arm bending and breaking, together with the humming from the single-coil pickups. While he was at it, he added a midrange boost and toggle switches for each pickup.

During the sessions David and Tony [Visconti, producer] left me to it - although David sang the first few notes of what he wanted in “Always Crashing in the Same Car.” Tony would start the tape rolling, and I would take it from there. I tracked both live with the band, and on overdubs, and I thought Tony did well getting a clear sound out of the very small amplifier that was available to me. I was used to stacks and the like.

I wasn’t there from the start, so I don’t know if there were any pre-production talks about Bowie’s musical direction and stylistic shift - which happened mostly on side two, in which I did not take part. It was business as usual for me. I played the songs as they came along, together and separately with Carlos [Alomar], who is an innately musical person. He approaches a work with a view to practically solving that which he encounters, in a definite way, and consistent with his experience, abilities, and technique. Carlos and I explored many subjects, but guitar playing was not one of them.

Guitars and the musical life that follows have changed a lot over the years - mostly for the better. For example, when I started playing guitar in 1959, actions were very high, strings were only heavy gauge, and gigs were long. But the only gigs we did for free were for charity, or at a party. We needed a broad repertoire, which was good training. The advent of the long guitar solo - up to half an hour - was also good training. After all, a solo is nothing more than spontaneous composition. 

“He Was An Easy Person to Collaborate With”

By Adrian Belew

Right Track Recording was on a typically worn-down part of 48th street in Manhattan. From the outside, it could have been a shoe repair shop. It was there on a cold night in January 1990, I found myself standing on one side of an AKG C-24 microphone, headphones on, and about to sing the first verse of a song called “Pretty Pink Rose” [from Belew’s solo album, Young Lions, released in 1990 while he was guitarist and musical director for Bowie’s Sound + Vision tour]. On the other side of the microphone was another singer with his headphones on. It was at that very moment my mind and body chose to fully realize I was about to sing a duet with David Bowie! Blood rushed to my face like an acute case of embarrassment. I felt flushed and momentarily uncertain how to make my voice sound. The long lead-in to the track began, and, suddenly, David launched into his first line. I followed. It didn’t take long before we had the song complete, and we began working out an idea for backing vocals (“Take me to the heart, to the heart…”). Phew! I did it. For me, David was an easy person to collaborate with. If he liked something, he would be very encouraging - even excited. If he didn’t like an idea, he would calmly start out saying, “I’m not quite sure...” There was no sense of pressure, and, usually, a good dose of humor. We had fun together. After completing the “Pretty Pink Rose” vocals, I had the engineer put up another untitled track I had recently recorded. The idea was for David to write words, and perhaps record a vocal. I was very hopeful it would work out, and did it ever! To my amazement, David sat on the studio couch with a yellow legal pad, listening to the track over and over. Sometimes, he’d instruct the engineer to go back to a certain section, and then he’d busily scribble away. In just 30 minutes, he had written the words for “Gunman”  - our second collaboration. He allowed me to “produce” his performance. At one point, I asked if he would mind talking through the lyrics. It was probably an uncomfortable idea, but he gracefully gave me two takes. “Graceful” is a term I would use for everything to do with David Bowie.

I toured the world with David two times and about a decade apart. On the first go-round in 1978, my guitar rig was a model of simplicity - a pedalboard with a single row of eight off/on switches that controlled whatever boxes I patched into a mixer. The stompboxes were an MXR Dyna Comp, A/DA Flanger, Electro-Harmonix Echo Flanger, an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff run through an MXR 10-band Graphic EQ, Electro-Harmonix Graphic Fuzz, and a Roland DC-30 Analog Chorus/Echo. I had one battered Fender Stratocaster that I played through a Roland JC-120 amp.

In 1990, I did the second, much bigger Sound + Vision Tour that included 108 shows in 27 countries. By that time, my guitar set up was housed in a rack the size of a refrigerator weighing 500 pounds - and there was a duplicate rack, as well. The stage was a completely flat 60’ by 60’ metal grid. My MIDIgator pedalboard was flushed mounted into the stage, and my two Fender Twin amps and monitor cabinets were hung beneath the stage and facing up at me. Each “refrigerator” contained massive amounts of MIDI gear that included Roland GR-50 synthesizers and Korg AC3 multi-effects processors as the main ingredients. I had a bespoke box that housed many of my older stompboxes, including a Foxx Tone Machine and some of the Electro-Harmonix gear. I played three Fender Custom Shop Stratocasters with Lace Sensor pickups, Kahler tremolos, Bowen locking tuners, Roland synth pickups, custom finishes, and a ridiculously long MIDI cable that could stretch the width and depth of the stage.

Only David and I were allowed on the huge stage. The band was closeted off in a back corner behind an opera scrim. On our first night of the tour in Quebec, during one of my lengthy guitar solos while David stood in the middle of the stage watching, I ran from one side to the other back and forth like a good show-off rock guitarist is supposed to do. Only when I stopped did I realize I had roped David legs together with my ridiculous MIDI cable. He introduced me then as the “Fred Astaire of electric guitar.”

I’d like to think that playfulness and a boy-like spirit is what I brought to the Bowie shows. As I said, we had a lot of laughs. On his records, I was more than willing to be adventurous, which is what he wanted. He never instructed me, but instead gave me free rein to go wild. David Bowie was free-spirited, intellectually curious, utterly unique, and wealthy and superstar famous, yet down to earth to those around him. He was an incredible person to know. I am a lucky boy.

“He Pushed Me to Never Hold Back”

By Reeves Gabrels

In the best possible way, my role never seemed clearly defined. It was co-writer, co-producer, confidant, and, of course, guitarist. Being art-school boys, David and I settled into a conspiratorial friendship early. Throughout the following 13 years and the 40+ songs we wrote together, the studio was our Buckminster Fuller sandbox - our safe place to create where time stopped and art was made. There was no careerism - or attention to a “marketplace” - but, instead, a desire to tell a story and to leave a trail of good work. During our time together - contrary to the conventional view of David as a calculated manipulator of image - we felt more kinship with various art movements (the Beats, Fluxus, German Expressionism, the Constructivists, etc.) than we did any competition with the music being made around us. The big lesson we took from these various art movements was the concept of the “manifesto” - the idea of what we wanted the music to be, which was as much defined by what we would not do, as it was by what we could do.

What would always happen in the space between the end of a tour and the point where he and I would get together to start “making stuff,” is that, in the time apart, we would individually and separately discover different things. For example, between Tin Machine and Outside, I got bitten by the industrial-music bug, and sent him NIN, Pigface, and Ministry. Before we began Outside, he was sending me drum & bass cassettes (Roni Size, Goldie). Before Earthling, we both stumbled across Photek, Squarepusher, and Underworld, and we pushed those influences through our brains/ears/filters.

My involvement as co-writer and co-producer meant I was also trying to get the sounds to - as Vernon Reid once said to me - “shake hands with the songs.” That, in turn, played a major role in the guitars I played, the gear I used, and how I used it. Here are some highlights…

TIN MACHINE

In 1988, I went to David’s house in Switzerland for a weekend. I ended up staying for a month. We realized we both had been listening to similar things: Glenn Branca, John Coltrane, Hendrix, Cream, Led Zeppelin bootlegs, Stravinsky, Miles, the throat singers of Tuva. Freaky. Manifesto in place, we began recording at Mountain Studios, Montreux, Switzerland in earnest - a song a day, top to bottom - and we knew we were making a snotty, f**k you rock album. I adjusted my gear accordingly: Steinberger GL-2T (on every track), 1962 Stratocaster (that Marc Bolan had given David, which I found in a flight case in David’s basement), 1963 refinished Stratocaster (used on half the album’s solos), 1956 refinished Les Paul Junior, 1962 Gretsch Nashville, and a Gibson SG that had belonged to Angus Young.

I ran four amps at all times - a plexi Marshall and 4x12 (David claimed it had been one of Mick Ronson’s spares - I also found this in David’s basement), Mesa/Boogie Mark III (the same amp Brian May used on Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”), Vox AC30, Fender Princeton. Effects included a Chandler Tube Driver, Dunlop Fuzz Wah (with Roger Mayer upgrade), Ibanez HD1500 Harmonizer/Delay, Ibanez UE405 Multi Effects, and a Pro Co Big Box Rat.

BLACK TIE WHITE NOISE

After Tin Machine disbanded, David decided to do a “Let’s Dance, Part 2” with Nile Rodgers, and he was recording a song I had originally written for Tin Machine entitled “You’ve Been Around.” I went to the studio with my live rig for the scheduled two-day session for my parts, and I had a little chat with Nile about how to record my amps. He insisted that I record direct using a rackmount ART guitar preamp. I resisted. Unless I was playing clean parts, I felt my rig was the way to go. We miked up my stuff, and I reluctantly agreed to try the ART unit the next day. Well, for the next two days, Nile did not come to the studio. Oops. So I tracked using my amps with David and engineer Richard Hilton, and I had a great time with David, as usual.

I played on “You’ve Been Around,” did wah and power chords on “I Feel Free” (which Mick Ronson did the solo on), and wah on “Nite Flights.” Sadly, I am only credited with guitar on “You’ve Been Around,” which was disappointing, as Mick was such a huge hero and influence, and the fan boy in me just wanted to have proof I was on a track with Mick Ronson. And so it goes...

OUTSIDE

It was March 1994, and in the days of faxes, David, and Brian Eno, and I were continually faxing back and forth regarding the “what if’s” and “how’s” of the record that would become Outside. We went into the studio with written songs, a lot of pure improvisation, and three pieces where Eno wrote out sci-fi scenarios to influence the improvisations. At the end of five weeks, we ended with what I think of as a two-hour, double-album “improvised opera.”

I knew I would need a versatile rig for all of this improvisation. I had been good friends with genius guitar maker Ken Parker for years, beta testing his designs (“Here, Reeves, take this and see if you can break it”). So I took one guitar - a white, tremolo- equipped Parker Fly Deluxe with a piezo bridge. The electric pickups were plugged into a Mesa/Boogie TriAxis, Mesa/Boogie 2:90 stereo power amp, two Mesa/Boogie 1x12 speaker cabinets, DigiTech IPS-33B, Eventide H3500, Rat distortion, MXR Phase 90, Roger Mayer Axis Fuzz, Dunlop wah, DigiTech DL-8, Univox Unitron 5 Envelope Filter, Electro-Harmonix Frequency Analyzer (that once belonged to Jake E. Lee), and Fulltone DejaVibe (serial number 003).

 The Parker’s piezo pickup was routed to a Prescription Electronics Experience Fuzz, DigiTech DL-8, DigiTech Whammy (after the DL-8 looper so that I could change the pitch of the loops), a DigiTech IPS-33B, and everything running in stereo to two Fishman acoustic-guitar amps. Of course, the whole rig was operational and ready at all times. For example, while tracking live, there are instances where you’d hear a mangled electric-guitar loop, and, then an acoustic guitar sound would suddenly appear over the electric loop. I have to thank my guitar tech at the time, Andy Spray, for helping to “make it so.”

It is also important to note that this record was done before we had Pro Tools. All we had was a 48-track Sony digital machine, a Studer 24-track deck, a half-inch stereo reel-to-reel, and a razor blade - amazing in its comparative primitiveness now; state of the art then.

The key to knowing which of the Outside songs were generated in which manner is in the writing credits. If there are six writers, it was improvised - such as “The Hearts Filthy Lesson.” Less writers than that means the piece was written in advance of hitting Record - “The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (as Beauty),” for example. This was DB at his finest Miles Davis/art director approach - getting a bunch of highly capable players together (each with their own evolved vocabulary), and letting them react to stimuli. Unfortunately, when it came time to get a record deal, the business people wanted a hit single and a single disc. For a long time, I couldn’t listen to the album, because what it became was not it was intended to be.

THE ROLAND VG-8

The Outside tour started in late August 1995, and in April 1996, the production manager and the “counters of the beans” asked that we cut back on gear. It was suggested that I use a pedalboard and a hired backline. Instead, I decided to use the new Roland VG-8 and S-1 upgrade card that allowed for altered tunings and Whammy-pedal-style effects. In the meantime, Ken Parker built me a Fly Deluxe with a single Roland hex pickup. As a result, several reviewers decided that I was miming my part because my guitar didn’t have any visible pickups on it. That was hysterical. Then, while touring Japan, Japanese guitarist Hotei gave me one of his signature Fernandes guitars for my birthday. Suddenly, I had the perfect combination for where I was at back then - a Sustainer- equipped guitar and the VG-8.

EARTHLING

This was my favorite album and tour of anything I did with David. Before going into the studio to work on this album, we had seen Prodigy, Massive Attack, and Tricky at the festivals, and the combination of elements in their music impressed us. I had been writing on my laptop with a small Yamaha General MIDI synth, so I had the early crumbs of what became several songs on Earthling, and the Roland VG-8 let me get away from traditional guitar tones. I could sound like an Akai sample of a guitar, but actually play guitar.

We booked Philip Glass’ Looking Glass Studio in New York, and by good fortune got Mark Plati as our engineer. Mark and I fell in love right away. He loaded my scraps into the computer, and David and I would jam out chord ideas against the tracks I had started. We would sit around one mic with two small Fernandes Elephant guitars that had built-in speakers. One of the fun sounds - and you can hear it on “Dead Man Walking” - is the natural phasing from our strumming hands waving over the onboard speakers. It became clear that the three of us - DB, Mark, and I - were writing and co-producing the album. By the time we were done, I ended up co-writing seven of the nine tracks - one of which, the aforementioned “Dead Man Walking,” earned a Grammy nomination in 1997 for Best Rock Song.

“The Last Thing You Should Do” was written by Mark and me using the process we came to call “obtainium.” We would look through other tracks and find bits and pieces of ideas gone wrong and make something new from them. I even made a 45-minute DAT tape of me playing all kinds of stuff on my rig. If we needed a guitar hook, we loaded my ideas into an Akai sampler and I played them from a keyboard. The guitar stuff was all done with an unfinished mahogany Parker Nitefly - called “Brown Dog” - that become an art project. If someone threw a bracelet or ring onstage, I would inlay it into the raw wood. It was my main guitar for years - always changing as I stuck more sh*t to it - and it’s the one I’m holding on the cover of the June 1997 issue of Guitar Player.

‘HOURS...’

When we started writing this album in 1998, David’s idea was, since we had been at it for ten years at that point, we should consider all the songwriting as a co-write and the production as a co-production. My mind was blown.

We debated quite a bit about direction. I wanted it to be like Earthling 2.0, and David wanted something different - something I assessed as more of a singer/songwriter album. So, once again, I adapted my guitar gear and approach to suit. This was about real amps for the most part, along with vintage pedals and vintage guitars. I had 1956 and 1957 Les Paul Juniors, a 1960 Les Paul Custom, an ’80s Les Paul Custom, a mid- ’60s Gibson Trini Lopez, a 1963 Stratocaster, and a 1966 Telecaster. I also used a sparkle-pink PRS with P90s and a Parker Fly “Brown Dog” with Sustainer and hex pickups. Acoustics were a Gibson Hummingbird, a Martin D-28, and a Takamine 12-string. The amps were an old Gibson Skylark, a Mesa/Boogie Heartbreaker, a plexi Marshall, a Vox AC30, and a Fender Princeton. One thing I did with the Princeton was mic it up, and then on multiple inputs combine the miked sound with an Amp Farm Princeton, a Roland VG model of a Princeton, and a Tech 21 SansAmp “small Fender” setting. I just wanted to see if I could make the “World’s Biggest Princeton” and spread it across the stereo field.

ONWARD…

It was a dream come true that I found myself standing next to one of the world’s greatest singers and frontmen. This allowed me to push myself and the music without any worry of overshadowing the singer, because, to state the obvious, no one could beat DB. David was a force of nature. I loved that man, and I loved the times we had. He gave me the greatest gift - the confidence to be myself as a musician and as a man and to never hold back. I am proud to say he was my friend.

David never told me what to play, but he did enjoy pushing me out of my comfort zone. For example, I didn’t think that “Looking for Satellites” from Earthling needed a guitar solo. His solution was to say, “Okay. Play only thirty-second-notes and stay on one string per chord change. Stop when you get to the chorus.” I was so bugged that I was being made to play a solo that I did what he asked, but I blasted through the verse and continued through the chorus to the end of the song. One take. It is now one of my favorite solos.

I hope that David is remembered as a real person and as an artist, and that he is not turned into a once-upon-time symbol of controversy by the media - a saucy sound bite by the tabloids, or a silkscreen on a t-shirt worn by baby boomers and hipsters alike trying to create the appearance of cool without ever looking below the surface.

It would be wonderful if music fans took this opportunity to listen. Now is the time to go deep. His life’s work is waiting there to be heard - as well as the contributions of all of us that he championed.

ROBERT FRIPP IS MIA

Yes. There is no new Robert Fripp interview in this cover story. There’s also no old Fripp interview. It’s somewhat baffling that Mr. Fripp was intervi - but nothing exists from Fripp’s own mouth about his work on Heroes and/or Scary Monsters. 

“He Had a Deep Interest in Experimental Guitar Textures”

By Chuck Hammer

I met David Bowie In October 1979, while on tour with Lou Reed in London. During that tour, I was using a Roland GR-500 guitar synth as my main instrument. David attended one of Lou’s concerts at the Hammersmith Odeon and expressed interest in working together. In late 1978 through 1979, I had been recording experimental tapes with the idea of layering sustained guitar tracks to build up textures. I referred to this idea of multitrack layering as “guitarchitecture.” The core idea was to extend the guitars sonic vocabulary. Soon after meeting David, I sent him a cassette with four experimental guitarchitecture tracks. A few weeks later, I received a phone call from David’s assistant asking if I would be interested in working on David’s next album, Scary Monsters, which was to be recorded at the Power Station in New York City during February and March 1980.

RECORDING “ASHES TO ASHES”

Chuck Hammer

The session was done privately with just David, Tony Visconti, an assistant tape op, and myself in the studio. Throughout the session, David and Tony were intensely focused. Upon entering the control room, David mentioned that he had listened to the earlier cassette tape extensively. They began the session by playing the basic track that would eventually become “Ashes To Ashes.” The submix they chose to play was a sparse basic instrumental track containing only bass, drums, rhythm guitar, and a minimal keyboard without vocals. Because this basic track was intentionally sparse and open, it allowed room to imagine adding a wide range of possible guitar textures.

After listening to the initial playback, neither David nor Tony said anything, politely waiting for my reaction. I noticed a few similarities to one of the experimental tracks from my cassette tape as a reference point. Certain sections within David’s basic track seemed like they could be developed with layered guitar-synth textures. Those sections would later turn out to be the vocal chorus sections of “Ashes To Ashes.” As mentioned, there were no vocals on the submix track at the time - or at least David chose to not let me hear any vocals as reference.

I suggested that we try to multitrack the GR-500 as a textured guitar choir with stacked, sustained chord inversions. David was very open to the idea, and he simply nodded his head in agreement. They had already prepared a basic chord chart for the song. I began to overdub a series of four discreet stereo tracks of layered chord inversions with the GR-500. Each layered track of chord inversions was voiced as widely as possible across the fretboard, and each pass was recorded with slightly different tape echo, Harmonizer, and GR-500 settings. As the sustained tracks were being built up, they began to sound like a guitar choir. Between takes, both David and Tony walked into the main studio from the control room. Tony made a few tonal adjustments to the Roland JC-120 amp settings prior to each take. I recorded a few additional takes with different GR-500 parameters, running the song down from end to end.

Both Tony and David tended to work quickly, and they committed to ideas early in the process. During the second playback, for example, Tony had already subgrouped the guitar-synth tracks on the studio’s Neve console so that he could test a fade across all of the guitar tracks simultaneously, treating it as a unified guitar choir. I was stunned when I heard the playback. It was an ethereal wall of guitar texture that none of us had ever heard before. We all looked at each other realizing that we had something very solid on the tracks.

TRACKING “TEENAGE WILDLIFE”

The second song we recorded was “Teenage Wildlife,” and it was much more complex. During the initial playback, I was again given a very sparse and open basic track without guide vocals. The chart for this song was complex in terms of containing multiple song sections. Tony suggested that we actually record each section separately - like a suite - using different GR-500 and Harmonizer tones. Their basic track already had a solid chordal presence, so I began to build up layers of single-note lines using the GR-500 set to Solo Mode. Robert Fripp also appears on the track in a major way, but, at the time, his tracks were not played or mentioned. It was a bit of a clever production strategy on their behalf, as they simply left it open for me to build as much density in the lines as I wanted. Because I had no idea that Robert’s brilliant tracks would also be in there, I just kept developing and layering the lines as we worked through the discrete song sections. Tony made extensive Harmonizer adjustments about three quarters of the way through the song where he wanted more density. He was deeply involved in guiding me through each section. Eventually, they mixed our guitar tracks together varying the density of the layers - like a small guitar orchestra - depending on how thick they wanted it to sound for each section.

THE SIGNAL PATH

For both “Ashes to Ashes” and “Teenage Wildlife,” my rig was as follows: 1977 Roland GR-500 Guitar Synthesizer (GS- 500 Controller with GR-500 module) into Roland RE-501 Chorus Echo Tape Delay (only tape echo engaged) into Eventide Harmonizer (set to full-octave up, 20-percent Regeneration, 20-percent Harmonizer mix blended under main tone) and out to a 1978 Roland JC-120 combo (no overdrive, no reverb, and no other pedals). The tracks were recorded in stereo to a Studer 24-track tape deck.

SOME NOTES ON THE GR-500

It’s worth noting that, although the GR-500 had a huge analog tone and a unique sustain technology, it’s intermittent tracking made it notoriously difficult to play. As a guitarist, this really forced me to rethink and modify my technique - making me think more as a composer in terms of layers and stacking textures rather than linear lines.

Let me elaborate on the GR-500’s simple- but-effective infinite sustain system: The frets in the GR-500 are connected to its electrical ground. When a player fretted a string, an electric current passed through the string. The electric signal passing through the string is a greatly amplified version of the string signal detected by the divided hexaphonic pickup. Large magnets replaced the traditional “neck pickup.” As a result of Fleming’s Law, the alternating electric current in the string passing through the strong magnetic field caused the string to vibrate and create a feedback loop and infinite sustain. The GS-500 used a bridge with plastic saddles to electrically isolate each string.

INSIGHTS & INSPIRATION

Bowie’s Scary Monsters arrived at a point in his discography that was very experimental. It was the first record he made after his trilogy of albums with Brian Eno, and Bowie asked me to step in and extend those sonic directions to the guitar tracks. The layered GR-500 tracks on Scary Monsters were the first use of guitar synthesis within Bowie’s catalog.

Although David was highly organized during the recording sessions, he was very open to experimenting. One of the first things he did during the “Ashes To Ashes” session was to walk into the main studio room where my gear was set up, and ask me to show him the range of tones that I was able to achieve. Experimenting with new tones and textures had become a hallmark of his recorded work - it was almost a prerequisite - and Bowie had a deep interest in new sonic terrains and experimental guitar textures. He also had a deeply keen understanding of how these tones could work within the wider context of his own music. One of the key insights I gained from working with Bowie on Scary Monsters was to always follow your own instincts and your own sonic language.

Because Bowie’s recordings were so widely listened to, it was not necessary for much verbal direction. Scary Monsters was one of the albums where all the ideas he had been developing on the previous three albums were extended into something new. The sense of sonic exploration and the high quality of the previous work was the inspiration.

David was an extremely polite person, and he went out of his way before, during, and even after the recordings to accommodate anything I might need - including giving me a listen to a pre-release, vinyl test pressing of “Ashes To Ashes.”

Finally, when you have musicians at the level of Carlos Alomar, Carmine Rojas, and Dennis Davis at the heart of a basic track, their musicianship brings the recording up to such a high level that it becomes essential to reach for something new in your own playing - something beyond what you might normally play. Otherwise, quite simply, your own track won’t cut it. 

“I Was Basically Free to Do What I Wanted”

By Stevie Ray Vaughan

The entire recording experience of Let’s Dance helped a whole bunch, and in a lot of ways. I learned a lot about playing - particularly in terms of recording techniques - and about business. It was real fun doing the record, trying to see where my style would fit in. It was a pretty open thing, and more an experience of looking at music in different ways - of looking at big arrangements and fitting the parts in. I learned a lot about how songs are built. But the Bowie sessions were easy, because I was basically free to do what I wanted.

From what I understand, Bowie was looking for somebody who played this style anyway, and I was the one he picked. Most of the time, he just told me to plug in and play. He’d say, “Plug that blue guitar in!” I cranked it all the way up, and other effects were added later.

Nile Rodgers and David gave me some input on what needed to be done, but it was real relaxed. Most of the songs were cut in one or two takes. There was no worrying over the parts. I probably played only two or so hours over the three days it took to do the thing.

Quotes pulled from Bruce Nixon’s interview in the August 1983 issue of GP.

PETE GETS CRANKY

David Bowie and Tony Visconti had a grumpy guest star in the house when Pete Townshend was invited to play guitar on “Because You’re Young” during the 1980 sessions for Scary Monsters. Visconti remembered Townshend being in a “foul, laconic” state who barked “Chords? What kind of chords?” when asked by Bowie to play his signature rhythm-guitar style on the track. Visconti bravely answered, “Er, Pete Townshend chords,” to which the Who mastermind calmly responded, “Oh, windmills.”

“David Didn’t Hold Back From Giving Me Truth”

By Nile Rodgers

My personal technique of producing - no matter who it is - is to focus on the artist’s direction first, and what I’m supposed to achieve. I lock down the “DHM” - what my partner Bernard Edwards [Chic bassist and coproducer] would call the “Deep Hidden Meaning.” Once I know what the song is really trying to say, then I switch from that super-focused guy, and I become like an entertainer. I’m trying to have fun, to be your coach and your rooting section, and make you feel comfortable. So David would have an idea of what he wanted, and then it would be my responsibility to make sure we got that.

I always record live in the studio, and David would sing a scratch vocal, or he’d have an idea of the song that he’d talk us through. Every now and then, he would do something very funny. In those days, he’d have a little cassette recorder, and he’d play the tape while the band was playing. He’d say, “I heard this while I was walking down the street,” or “I started singing this thing to the groove in the background -listen to what it sounds like.” He used to kill me with that. It was amazing. When I was younger, I had these brilliant music teachers, and they would say things like, “Art is all around us. You just have to look for it.” And David Bowie was always looking for it. He just seemed to see it and hear it. It was like, “Okay, now let me share it with you guys.” He was an extraordinary man - a great artist.

Everybody’s performances on Let’s Dance were basically one take - including Stevie Ray Vaughan’s solos. Let’s Dance was the easiest record of my entire career - 17 days from start to finish. David did all of his vocals in less than two full days, and Stevie Ray Vaughan did all of his guitar solos in a day and a half. We walked out on day 17 and never touched the record again.

This was possible for a couple of reasons. He didn’t have a record deal, so he did Let’s Dance purely on his own. He also did some cover tunes, rather than write everything himself. And I think he was coming off an odd period in his life, and he wanted to trust me. I said, “Hey David, let me do the arrangements,” and I changed everything. There’s nothing he gave me that appeared the way it was when he submitted it to me. That’s why we went so fast. Most of the time, he wasn’t even in the studio with me. He was in a lounge watching television. He’d come out and go, “Wow, that’s great,” or he’d criticize something and we’d change it. Everything he heard, he heard with fresh ears.

For example, when I came up with the riff for “China Girl,” I thought I was going to get fired because it was so corny. I played it for him by myself, and I said, “David, the reason why I’m doing this is because this song doesn’t have a hook. It doesn’t sound like a hit, and you told me you wanted to have an album with hits, so let me put this hook in.” Happily, he said, “I think it’s fantastic.”

I also changed “Cat People” from the dirge-like version he had done with Giorgio Moroder [for the film of the same name]. I said, “David, what if you sing it exactly that dirge way, but the band plays double time, and then I play jazz-type guitar -double-stops with thirds?” We made it into a rocker. He trusted me to do that stuff.

We had so much fun, and Stevie became my best friend for life. The look on his face when he first walked into the control room and heard “Let’s Dance” was like, “Oh my god - I’m experiencing something important and magical. What do I do? How do I fit in on this thing? I have to get out of their way, and just add spice.” I didn’t have to tell him anything. He instinctively knew his role was like, “The meal is fantastic - now here’s the dessert.” And, bang, he nailed it. We couldn’t believe how quickly he would whip through those solos. He could just hear the music, feel it, and understand we were all supporting David Bowie. We were making David’s pop record.

And I’ll tell you, he didn’t know anyone in the band except for me and David, but he knew they were my friends. He wanted to bond with them so that he’d be accepted as family, too. He also knew we were making Let’s Dance like a black record. White bands would book the studio for months and months, but black records only got a few hours. We’d work an eight-hour shift because we had lower budgets than rock albums. So we would order our food at the beginning of the day, so that it was here when we took a break for lunch. We’d eat and - boom - back to work. Stevie saw we were doing that, and he called Sam’s BBQ in Austin, Texas, to order our lunch for the day he came in. We didn’t know this, so we started our lunch order, and Stevie said, “Y’all, I got lunch today.” The next thing you know, all this BBQ came in. I was like, “Check this dude out. He’s right up on the vibe.” And from that moment, Stevie and I became like brothers.

When David called me to do Black Tie White Noise, I was thrilled to work with Mick Ronson - a bit of hero worship for me. I dug his playing for so long, and now I get to become his coach. How cool is that? He was really easy to work with, and we got what David wanted. The album itself was a whole different mindset from the compositions on Let’s Dance. This was originally music that was going to be played at his wedding. He was very aware of his own life - his past and the journey he’d taken to get to where he was. He would talk about his fear of death, his brother committing suicide, and other things. So in those kinds of intimate situations, you get truth, and David didn’t hold back from giving me truth. For a producer, these relationships are incredibly special. 

“He Really Wanted What You Had to Offer”

By Mark Plati

David decided he wanted to play Low in its entirety on the 2002 Heathen tour, and, as musical director, it was my job to arrange its presentation for the stage - as well as helping with the set list, running the rehearsals, making sure everyone had charts or the necessary gear, cueing endings and transitions during the show, and so on. As Low was such a dense record, I decided the most accurate and expeditious way to figure out how to represent it live would be to get the original multitrack masters and transfer them into a DAW. Then, I could isolate individual tracks and decide how to divide up parts based on each guitarist’s style, technique, and use of effects. In this case, those guitar players were Earl Slick, Gerry Leonard, and myself. Initially, I was concerned about having three guitarists on the tour. David was really into it visually, but I knew it would be a train wreck if I wasn’t extra mindful of how all the parts interacted, or if I didn’t orchestrate everything properly.

For Low, there would sometimes be four or more guitar parts on a track, which I needed to distill down to three separate parts and sounds. Then, I would make an individual mix for each player. I’d solo their part on the right side of the mix, and put the rest of the track on the left side, so that they could hear their part in context if they summed to mono. (I did this for the rest of the band, as well, which was time consuming, but it made it a breeze for everyone to home in on their parts and sounds.) Fortunately, the three guitar players had very different styles that complemented each other well. I started by taking Carlos Alomar’s rhythm parts for myself, and then I divvied up the lead and ambient parts according to whose style - Slick’s or Gerry’s - I felt fit better. I threw Gerry the most oddball parts. He made it his business to really cop the sounds - especially Ricky Gardiner’s phase shifting and dirt on the solo from “Always Crashing In the Same Car” and the warbly ska-like vibe from “A New Career in a New Town.”

The go-to gear for each of the albums I played on revolved around a generally small collection of guitars, basses, and amps. On ‘Hours…’, I played bass, and my involvement on guitar was limited to 12-string acoustic (David’s Takamine). My parts were done at the end while I was mixing the album, as there were spots on a few songs that we all felt needed it, and David and Reeves [Gabrels] told me to go for it on my own. This led to me being involved in the VH-1 Storytellers show. I knew they would need an extra guitarist for that gig, so I went ahead and asked! For that show, I primarily played the Takamine 12-string—though I also used a 1978 Gibson 355-TD (a gift from David and Reeves) and a ’67 Rickenbacker 12-string. My amp was a ’62 Fender Princeton, and I used a Korg AX1G for reverb and modulation effects. After the VH-1 gig, I stayed in the band and became musical director.

The next album I was involved in as a guitarist was the unreleased Toy—which I produced with David right after the Glastonbury mini tour in 2000. We came straight off the road, and recorded most of the album live. For my parts—usually rhythm against Earl Slick—I used a 1999 Roadhouse Stratocaster, a ’61 reissue Gibson SG (Gibson gave one to Slick and me for the Glastonbury tour), and my ’67 Rickenbacker 12. Again, I used David’s Takamine for acoustic work, occasionally mixing it up with my Martin HD-28. My amp was a Fender Hot Rod DeVille 2x12, which offset nicely against Slick’s Ampeg Reverbrocket. We ended up doing an additional session, and I added what came to be known as the “Mini Strat” - a small practice guitar given to me by guitarist Marc Shulman that tech Flip Scipio hot-rodded and brought up several notches to a truly usable standard. David loved it, and he used it to write the song “Afraid” [Heathen].

On Reality, I was again serving as bassist, but I played some guitar using my road instruments at the time: the ’99 Roadhouse Strat, an ESP Vintage Strat-style, and an ESP Ron Wood Signature Tele. My amp was a Matchless DC-30, although I remember we had a lot of fun messing about with a Korg Pandora - most notably on “Never Get Old.”

David didn’t direct me all that much. I’d often be left to my own devices, whether it was guitar, bass, or even synth programming. David would always have the big picture - the artistic overview - and then he would let us do our thing as far as how we’d interpret that overview. He really wanted what you had to offer, but, at times, he’d feed somebody a specific idea or line to play, or take a part somebody was trying out and suggest a way to twist it around - always one of the funnest parts of any Bowie session. As most of my parts were fairly meat-and-potatoes, I didn’t get a lot of that unless I missed the mark completely.

In the live context, his vocal was a prime source of direction. Not only because of the dynamic you’d follow, but just the joy of playing with a vocalist who was at the top of their game. I think that brought out the best in all of us.

During my time with David, I prided myself on being as “Bowie-esque” of a collaborator as I could be. David knew I had a musically open mind, because to be young and coming-of-age as a musician in New York in the 1970s was a special experience. We had so much thrown at us - rock, funk, disco, electronic music, and all the combinations thereof. Bowie was a big part of this, as his music crossed many of these boundaries during those years. Part of the reason Station to Station became my favorite Bowie album was that its melding of rock and soul made perfect sense to me. David changed direction several times while I was with him. I always eagerly anticipated where the adventure was going to go next, and the smartest thing I did was to roll with it. 

“A Boundless Love For Pursuit of the Inexpressible”

By David Torn

Wow . David ’s gone. I can barely speak about the years during which I worked on countless tracks with Mr. B., but I’ll say what I can. First and foremost, David was a man whom I really loved and respected, and who was my friend. There are the richest of colors there that can’t ever fade.

David first invited me to work with him in 2000, and Heathen began in summer 2001. From the beginning, he was open to whatever sounds and parts I thought suitable for most of his music. If he had direction to offer, it would be simultaneously quite clear, emotionally speaking, and yet highly interpretable - which I believe was his intention.

The creative doors opened between David and me during one of the first tracks I worked on, “Sunday.” I took a few improvised passes, getting some ideas about the song’s arc, adjusting my sounds, etc. I then recorded an improvised pass exemplified by the textural bridge that occurs between 2:15 and 3:10. That is a backwards melody I recorded with a Teuffel Tesla guitar into my Echoplex Digital Pro. It was manually faded in and out in real-time against a 20-second-long, harmonically dense, polyphonic ambient loop that blooms around the appearances of the reversed melody. The ambient loop was recorded on my Lexicon PCM42, and processed in real-time with my original octave-like reverb program on a Lexicon PCM80. I mixed them with my modified Rane SM82. There were three Rivera amps set up in three-point-stereo: wet/dry/wet. I was mixing in the wet amps with expression pedals while playing, so I could add expressive effects.

After recording that, I listened to the track a couple of times, and I asked David if I might have a bit of time to work out an unusual rhythmic part - which, if it worked, would be pre-looped, yet actually performed. While no one in the studio likes to wait while insane strangers work hard, but waste time failing at so-called “great ideas,” David and Tony [Visconti] guardedly agreed, and left me to go at the part.

I set my Electrix Repeater to match the tune’s click, and played along with the piece, working out my ideas and techniques, and recording the first track into the Repeater. When I had the ideas for each section mostly worked out, I recorded those parts to each of the remaining three tracks on the Repeater. Then, with David and Tony’s enthusiastic approval, I practiced triggering, stuttering, mixing, and performing the part.

I’d used the Repeater’s four loopable tracks to build a single guitar part—one track contained tones common to all the harmonic changes within the piece up to 2:00, and from 3:10 forward. The other three tracks were suited to specific harmonic regions. In order to make the transition into the bridge, one track was set up so I could manually transpose it via a small keyboard. I had assigned a volume fader to each of the four tracks, and I programmed a knob on the keyboard to stutter the start of each phrase, or wherever I felt a stutter/glitch might be useful. I think the entire process - including coffee - took about two hours. This multi-voiced rhythm part begins the song. It’s just my part and then David’s synth.

David also had a great love for old Supro amps, and, while we were recording “The Next Day,” he presented me with Marc Bolan’s Stratocaster - which Marc had given to David - to play. Amazing! It was amazing to work with David for 15 years, knowing that someone I respected so much enjoyed, encouraged, trusted, and reveled in this kind of work process, and in endless travel through the imagination with a boundless love for pursuit of the inexpressible. Excelsior, DB. 

“He Loved the Guitar and Understood Its Complexity”

By Gerry Leonard

Working with David was the highlight of my guitar-playing career without a doubt. He taught me so much about how to play rock and roll by being by his side. It was almost like getting a transmission from a higher being. He taught me to stay rooted in the storm, but also how to soar and drive off the cliff at full speed, and even land safely. I did two big tours with him over the years. One tour was where we played the Heathen and Low albums back to back, in their entirety. This was a real challenge and an education to decipher, as well as execute those wonderful guitar parts live, from the unmistakable Brian Eno processed sounds to complex loops from David Torn.

I ended up then becoming his musical director for the 13-month Reality tour, taking over from Mark Plati, which was a great honor. This was a huge undertaking with full production and crew, eight trucks, nine buses, and an airplane. Even our repertoire was huge - it grew to more than 65 songs. All throughout, David was the best boss you could have asked for - clear about what he wanted, and yet flexible to allow the band to contribute and shine.

I got to be involved from the ground up on The Next Day. He called me early on to help flesh out his demos. I brought a small rig and two small amps to this tiny rehearsal room in Manhattan, and with Tony Visconti on bass and Sterling Campbell on drums, we dug in for the week. At one point, I was embarrassed as David was singing in front of my amps, which were cranking. I asked him if it was too loud, and he just grinned and said, “Nah, I like a bit o’ loud.” This reminded me of when we were in rehearsals for the Reality tour, and he stood in front of me and said, “Sounds great, Gerry, but can you turn it up?” David was probably the only singer I have ever worked with who told me to turn up!

Whenever I got to record with David, I liked to pick out some special and esoteric gear. When we recorded “The Next Day,” we had constraints in regard to separation, as David wanted everyone to play live. I called up Mesa/Boogie and got two small 1x10 cabs that we stacked up facing opposite directions. We put a Shure SM57 on one side, a Potofone ribbon mic on the other, and we locked up the cabs in a giant road case. I drove the cabs with a Mesa/Boogie TA-15 and a Sommatone Roaring 40. It was a really killer sound - super punchy and yet spacious. I also brought my EMS Synthi Hi-Fli - a rare effects console from the ’70s with faders to dial in sounds, and its own chrome stand, like a piece of furniture.

Over the years, I have amassed quite a collection of odd but interesting effects, including vintage Ibanez, Z. Vex, Electro- Harmonix, and Lovetone pedals - all wired into a custom switching system that I built. I used combinations of the pedals for distortion and color, depending on the song and the part. In the studio, I needed to work fast and play takes very much in the vein of a live performance, and, this way, I could go from a dry, straight-amp sound to super-wide cinemascope by clicking one button. For playing live with David, I built a complex system using the Voodoo Labs GCX Guitar Audio Switcher, which gave me scenarios such as using an Eventide H3000 as a stompbox.

For guitars, it always felt best to pick ones with personality—like my trusty, threepickup ’69 Gibson SG Custom (that I’ve had since I was 16 years old), or my ’65 Firebird with P90s. I also have some lo-fi guitars - like a Teisco Del Rey with gold-foil pickups and flatwound strings - or something like my ’60s Rickenbaker 360/12 to help change the mood on a session. Or, sometimes, I’d just play my white Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul with nickel hardware and a Bigsby. David dubbed it the “Liberace Guitar.”

Working with David on guitar parts was a very dynamic thing. Sometimes he would have the riff, but he’d hand it to you to develop it. The insistent riff in “Love Is Lost,” for example, is a David riff played by me. The kind of “Peter Green” lead lines are played through a rig David and Tony [Visconti] put together from a photo of Mick Ronson’s setup back in the day. David had found a Ronno Bender pedal - a copy of the old Tone Bender Mick used - and they sourced a Marshal head and a huge 8x10 Marshall cab. I had to stand well back from that rig, and even then it would fry your eyeballs.

Mostly, David would just want you to come up with your own parts, and if he liked where you were going, he would be really encouraging. He loved to see it all take shape quickly, right there and then. “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)” is a good example of a guitar part that was pretty much my first instinct back at the demo stage, and I went on to develop it around his evolving vocals. It was always a treat to do some ambient things around his voice. I would try to find the key harmonic sense of the piece, and then build some loops and lines using an EBow or a volume pedal. I would normally use a combination of distortion, delay, and pitch shifting, and find the right sonic space for it all to exist in the track. These soundscapes would range from dark and ominous to celestial and spatial, and it was extra special to do them whenever David Torn was also on the session. After a while, it got to be confusing as to who was playing what, but what a glorious racket!

When I worked with Earl Slick, David would call us “bookends,” referring to our disparate styles. But he loved the two-guitar thing, and he would encourage us to go all the way. Slick is a fantastic old-school lead-guitar player, and that left me free to be spacious and ambient.

I think David loved the guitar and understood its complexity. He was not afraid to put it front and center, and there was no better place to be a guitar player, but by David’s side [BREAK]

“The Songs Dictated Which Approach Would Work Best”

By Ben Monder

Bowie didn’t really have any gear at the studio - except for one electric guitar and one acoustic. I used the acoustic - I think it was a Yamaha - on “Dollar Days.” I know he played those bizarre “shrapnel” guitars on “Lazarus,” but I don’t know what he used to get that great sound. He mainly sang with us in the live room, which really helped the energy of the performances.

My guitars for the session were my Ibanez AS-50 semi-hollowbody and a Fernandes Strat body with an ESP neck, as well as pre-CBS Fender pickups in the middle and bridge positions. I ran my 1965 Fender Deluxe Amp and 1967 Fender Princeton - modded with a larger transformer, 6L6s, and a 12" Electro-Voice speaker - in stereo. I split the signal with my Audio Upgrades-modded Lexicon LXP-1 reverb. I also had an MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay, Ernie Ball volume pedal, Keeley-modified RAT, Walrus Mayflower Overdrive, Walrus Deep Six Compressor, Fulltone Deja Vibe, and a Strymon BlueSky Reverb. I don’t think they did anything to my guitars during the mix. They didn’t seem to touch anything.

David was very open to everyone’s ideas as far as parts and sounds. I just experimented with what I thought would work. I also had a couple of demos to listen to at home so I could prepare a little bit. There wasn’t a ton of direction per se - although, at one point, David wanted an “atmospheric” pass over the tune “Sue,” so I turned my reverb and just about everything else up to 10 and played sounds over it. That seemed to do the trick. He was very enthusiastic, and when something didn’t work, it was obvious to everyone.

The songs were well thought out and structured before I got there, so they largely dictated which approach would work best. But the atmosphere was very positive and supportive, and he seemed generally very happy with the way we were interpreting the material.

Of course, I have been listening to Bowie since I was 12 years old, so it was not unfamiliar ground.

WORDS ON A WING

Bowie talked to GP readers for the one and only time as part of Joe Gore’s June 1997 cover story with Reeves Gabrels. Here are a few gems from that conversation…

Embracing Error

“There’s a certain self-security factor involved. Musicians who are involved with their instrument to the extent that there are no thought processes involved in their playing have far less of a problem reducing down and deconstructing what they’re doing, making technique sound ugly and rubbing it up the wrong way. Guitar players who are less confident of their abilities are more likely to regard it as just sounding like noise if you ask them to do something that’s not ‘musician-ly.’ Guys who are really into it can let go more easily. Fripp is like that. I think he was quite bemused by some of the things I asked him to do—such as to imagine he was playing a guitar duel with B.B. King where he had to “out B.B.” King, but do it in his own way. That was on ‘It’s No Game, Pt. 1’ from Scary Monsters.”

Sound & Vision

“Ever since I was young, I’ve seen music in visual terms. I see the textures I’m hearing, and I equate certain sounds with the relative roughness and smoothness, or density and transparency of color. It always made sense to me that you would go to, say, E minor, and it would have a particular hue. ”

Guitar Style

“My guitar playing hasn’t moved with the times at all. I use the same chords as always, but I do know a lot of them, and I’m able to put them together in interesting juxtapositions. Any time I did spend being disciplined was learning how chords work together.”

Groove

“I have no technique, but I have very good timing.”

Unfettered Composition

“The most exciting thing about the way we work is our ability to construct a song in maybe 15 minutes. It’s extraordinary how we can develop something very quickly with almost no premeditated ideas about what we’re going to do.”

“Rebel Rebel”

“It’s a fabulous riff. When I stumbled into it, it was, ‘Oh, thank you!’ I’ve only ever showed one other person how to play it properly. I was in a hotel in London years ago, and there was this awful row coming from upstairs. It was some guy playing electric guitar—dreadful heavy metal stuff. Then, he started going into his version of “Rebel Rebel.’ I went stomping up there, and it was John McEnroe.”

Outside Forces

“However principled and idealistic your vision, you can’t help the intrusion of others. Intentions and expectations are very different for the artist.”

Ghosts

“I have one of Marc Bolan’s old guitars, and if we have it in the studio, all the luggage of the guitar comes with it, and it changes the attitude of what we’re doing. I can’t pick up a guitar and play just anything on it. Whatever guitar I’m given contextualizes the thought.”

The Unknown

“It may be the dilettante side of me, but when I know where things are going, I lose interest real fast. Not knowing where you’re going is what makes it exciting for me. It leaves a permanently open landscape.”

Guidance

‘I’m very good at opening musicians to areas of their own technique or creativity that they might not have looked at before.”