Adrian Belew got his big break playing with Frank Zappa in the late 1970s, but it was David Bowie who helped propel him to the next level. After spotting the guitarist at a Zappa show in Berlin, Bowie wasted little time making him an offer. Zappa, however, wasn’t about to make the move easy.
“David asked Frank three questions,” Belew tells Ultimate Guitar of the meeting between the three musicians. “Frank answered all three of them with ‘Fuck you, Captain Tom.’ So we said, ‘Well, okay then,’ and we got up and left the building. Then David said to me, ‘I thought that went rather well.’ [laughs].”
The confrontation wasn’t necessarily the career-ending blow it might have seemed. Zappa had already told his musicians that they could remain on his payroll for three months after the tour or take other work while he turned his attention to a film project.
“There was only a little bit of time left on that tour,” Belew explains. “Frank had already told everyone that when we got back to the United States, he was going to rent a big editing machine, and he was going to be editing the live footage from New York, which would become the Baby Snakes movie. He figured that would take him three months. So, everyone was alerted that you could stay on his payroll retainer for three months, or you could go off and do other things.”
Bowie had a particular reason for seeking Belew out. Brian Eno had tipped him off that the guitarist was worth seeing, having caught Zappa’s show several days earlier. Bowie was looking for a guitarist for his Isolar II world tour, and Belew made a strong impression when the singer and Iggy Pop watched Zappa perform in Berlin.
“There was a part of the show where Frank took an extended 10-minute solo, leaving just Terry Bozzio [drums] and Patrick O’Hearn [bass] onstage, and the rest of us were supposed to walk off the stage at that point,” Belew recently told Guitar World. “As I was doing that, I looked over at the monitor guy, and there was David Bowie and Iggy Pop standing there.”
Belew seized the opportunity to introduce himself.
“I walked over and shook David’s hand and said, ‘I just want to really thank you for all your music,’” he recalls. “I didn’t even have time to say anything to Iggy before David said, ‘Well, good. How’d you like to be in my band?’”
Belew soon found himself recording guitar parts for Bowie’s album Lodger and touring with the singer. Although his first stint with Bowie was relatively brief — by 1980, he was recording guitar parts for Talking Heads’ Remain in Light — the experience gave him greater creative freedom and helped shape him as a player.
It was a path familiar to other musicians who passed through Zappa’s demanding band. Steve Vai, who joined in the early 1980s, would go on to play with David Lee Roth and later replace John Sykes in Whitesnake. Belew, meanwhile, would join Robert Fripp’s progressive rock band King Crimson, develop a distinctive signature guitar with Ken Parker and reunite with Vai in Beat.
Belew never returned to Zappa’s band, but he has since recalled his heart-wrenching final meeting with the man who helped launch his career.
