Then again, such a work ethic is nothing new for Belew. He first came to prominence in the late ’70s, when Frank Zappa asked him to join his touring band, where he was seen by David Bowie, who asked him to play on his Stage and Lodger albums and perform live, where he was seen by Talking Heads, who asked him to play on Remain in Light and the subsequent tour, where he was seen by Robert Fripp and asked to join the reformed King Crimson—all within about three years.

Since then, Belew has brought his singular blend of high-wire fretwork and signal-processing prowess to seven studio and countless live King Crimson recordings, more than 15 solo albums, six projects with his pop side project the Bears, and dozens of recordings by major artists from Paul Simon to Porcupine Tree.

Past accomplishments notwithstanding, the Twang Bar King is as engaged as ever, freshly inspired by his association with 19-year-old bassist Julie Slick and her 20-year-old drummer brother Eric (both School of Rock alumni) in the Adrian Belew Power Trio.

“I love the Power Trio,” enthuses Belew. “These kids give me energy, and make me feel young all over again. They really inspire me to create, and we’re just starting.”

What’s the latest with King Crimson?
The new lineup of myself, guitarist Robert Fripp, bassist Tony Levin, and drummers Pat Mastelotto and Gavin Harrison will soon begin rehearsals for eight shows in August. We’re just going to get things up and running, and make sure this is something we want to do properly.

Will there be a new album?
At this point, Robert has been saying, “Let’s play a few shows, and see where we go from there.” If he and I do begin writing, the process generally involves about two years of planning and getting together repeatedly to design the material, write it, bring the band in for rehearsals, take it out live, and then get into the studio.

What do you find so rewarding about working with Nine Inch Nails?
Trent Reznor and his crew give me free reign to improvise and go crazy. Then, they take the bits they like, and make something out of them. The process brings things out of me I ordinarily wouldn’t do. We have a lot of fun, because Trent and I both have an affinity for odd sounds. He also loves to work with quirky effects that you can get down on the floor and noodle with—that’s something that  inspired me this last time.

How so?
Back in the ’80s, I had an Electro-Harmonix Echoflanger mounted on a stand, and I was able to get some really oddball sounds by reaching over and twisting the knobs—including getting the effect selector knob stuck between two positions, which is how I got most of my sounds. I miss quirky pedals like that, so I’m experi-menting with the Electro-Harmonix Flanger Hoax and some other pedals. The only problem with the Hoax is that I can’t get it to do the same thing twice [laughs].

What other pedals are you experimenting with?
I’ve got a Locomofon Fuz-Fabrik made by a couple of guys in Norway. It’s one of those devices that almost sounds like pulling Velcro pieces apart. Another new pedal is the Eventide Time Factor. I’ve got expression pedals connected to it via MIDI so that I can manipulate the delay time and feedback. My plan is to make unusual sounds with it, rather than the typical delay effects that I can already get. I’ve also just started working with the Eventide H8000 Ultra-Harmonizer, which is the big studio processor that Robert uses to create his Soundscapes.

You also recently acquired a Roland VG-99. How are you incorporating that into your rig?
I have three guitar systems. I use the Johnson Millennium 150 amplifier for about 75 percent of what do. I spent years programming it, and it also has a lot of custom software for effects such as backwards sounds and looping. Then there’s the Line 6 Vetta, which gives me sounds that I can slide in separately, or overlap with the Johnson’s sounds. And now, the VG-99 will let me play in altered tunings without bringing additional guitars, as well as get Dobro and other sounds that I couldn’t get otherwise.

Usually, I’m in a band with another guitarist, where I’m sharing the load, and I may even have to hold back a little bit. But in the Trio, all of a sudden it’s like I’ve got wings, and I can fly anywhere I want. As a result, I’m trying to have as many options as possible. A big part of that is looping—which is basically creating a virtual rhythm guitarist, and having him play while I run with the ball.

You mentioned looping patches in the Johnson. Don’t you mostly use a Boomerang for live looping?
The Johnson originally got me into looping, but the Boomerang is my main looper now. It goes into its own system so that Eric and Julie can monitor it separately. Of course, either of the Eventide units could also be used for looping in the future.

What tips can you offer for integrating looping into live performance with other musicians?
First of all, you have to have very good timing, because if you make a loop that’s the least bit off, you’ll have to erase it and record another one. The next thing is monitoring. You have to have a way to separate it out so that your bassist and drummer can hear as much of the loop as they want. We just began experimenting with the Bose L1 system—which is an amazing technology—and if that doesn’t work out, we may go to in-ear monitors.

What strings do you use, and how often do you change them?
I use D’Addario EXL125s. My ritual is to restring the guitar after the sound check as part of my warm up.

How about picks?
I use Ice Pix, which have material on one side that lets me stick them on the surface of the guitar while I’m playing with my fingers. They make a custom .67mm version for me.

How many times have people asked you how you get the elephant sound on “Elephant Talk”?
Enough that if I had a dollar for each instance I could probably buy an elephant. The funny thing is that every time I changed my gear, I had to figure out a new way to do it. If I had to make that sound exactly the way I did originally, I guess I’d have to scramble to get a Big Muff and an Electric Mistress.

How do you get those amazing backwards guitar sounds?
The folks at Johnson created a custom program for me. I’m not aware of any other way to get that sound—which is one reason the Millennium amps are so important. Of course, timing is crucial, and I’ve had to learn how to play ahead of myself, which is a bit tricky. I bring the effect in and out with an expression pedal.

How do you get the subtle microtonal shifts on the “Within You Without You” bit you play live?
I turn the tremolo arm around backwards, so that pressing on it will cause the note to go up, creating an Indian-sounding tonality. You can really get some nice things—especially if you combine it with the Sustainiac, so that the notes almost sound like they are bowed. I use the tremolo arm to voice things—every little nuance—and mine is free-floating, so I can pull it up a third, or lower it until the strings are completely flaccid. Being able to manipulate the pitch like that is what makes the guitar such an emotive and expressive instrument. That’s why I love the guitar the most.

Web Extras!

Adrian Belew Interview Excerpts

Have you ever had to do a gig with just a guitar and an amp because your other gear wasn’t available for some reason?
When we played in Germany at the Zappanale Festival, I had taken a lot of trouble to put all the stuff in cases, and get it down to the perfect weight and size so that we could ship as much as possible. We couldn’t ship everything, but we had all the basic components, and naturally it didn’t make it there. So, there I was at this festival, in front of 5,000 people, standing there with a Stratocaster and a Marshall amp, and it was kind of scary. The problem for me, of course, is that it cuts out so much of my material that was written with loops and backwards sounds and things like that.

But you pulled it off.
Yeah, but I didn’t like it that way. I like Marshall amps—that’s not it—and I love just playing straight guitar into an amp. I can do it and I love it. But it’s not really what I like to do the most. What makes me happiest is to make the guitar sound like a lot of different things, and I’ve taken that approach all my life, so take that away from me, and it’s hair-raising. If I had hair, it would be hair-raising [laughs].

What’s the latest on the Parker Adrian Belew Signature Model guitar?
I think we are getting to the point now where we can consider manufacturing it. I just had another meeting with Parker in Chicago. There have been a lot of hang-ups since the designer of the custom part, Axel Rudich, passed away. It became nearly impossible to reverse engineer what he had done, because he had manufactured so many of the parts himself. But I think we have finally resolved those issues, and in three months we should be able to put the signature guitar into production. It’s an incredible guitar. I can’t say enough good things about it. The Parker Fly Deluxe, period, is revolutionary to such a degree. The feel of it, the way it makes you play better, smoother, its perfectly in tune, there are no dead notes, it weighs four pounds. For the signature model we crammed in every possible electronic thing that you could have in there that’s modern, including the Line 6 Variax system, the Sustainiac system, and MIDI. So the Parker Fly Adrian Belew Signature Model will allow you to do just about everything. It’s got some vacuum cleaner attachments on the back, and a microwave somewhere in there.

How many of those things will be in the production model?
All of it will be available. It took me a while to convince Line 6 that they should actually put this into the highest quality guitar possible, which is the Parker Fly. Because all along I felt that the Variax was just amazing technology—I love it, I think it is incredible—but I wanted it on my guitar, and I’m sure a lot of players feel that way. It has taken them a while to open their minds up to that. Each Signature Model is individually ordered and custom made to what you want, so if you didn’t want the Variax, they could mange that. Parker is going to hand the guitar off to the customizing guy—yet to be named—and he’s going to add everything. They’ve got orders, and I’m really sorry to anyone who has been waiting, some for two years now, but its one of those situations where the guy who was doing all the work was a genius.

How did you get the great compressed sound on the opening riff to “Beat Box Guitar”?
That’s just a sound that I dreamed up with the Line 6 Vetta II amp. It’s a very lo-fi-sounding backwards delay. It almost sounds like it is coming through a two-inch speaker. That’s what causes that squashed sound. And I did it with kind of a wah, which is unusual, as I never use a wah sound—but it worked for that passage.

How did you get the great fuzz-octave sound and the great bass-fuzz sound on “Incompetence and Indifference”?
The fuzz-octave sound is the ZVex Fuzz Factory. That’s exactly when I first got that device. Mr. Vex sent it to me and I was very excited, so I went right into the studio and started making sounds with it, and that’s part of that song. The fuzz bass was, I think, a Fender Jazz Bass through a rackmounted Tech 21 Comptortion. It’s a really lovely device, because it has compression and distortion in the same device, and one effect really matters a lot to the other.

What was the compositional process for “Water Turn to Wine”?
I wanted to do something that was the same pattern over and over and over, but done in different ways. It’s a very simple chord pattern that’s all in one key, and then I just kept playing it in different ways. Like, I’d turn it around backwards, or what we call offsetting, where you play one line and then play it again, but offset to itself, so it’s rhythmically in a different place. It’s not like creating a delay, but it is like that in a certain sense, except the notes are different—it’s hard to explain how to do it. The fun thing about that song is that the “flute” stuff that Robert Fripp plays wasn’t actually played in that song. I asked him to play on a different song called “Truth Is,” and he chose to play a flute sound, but there were already flutes in the song, so I decided to export his parts out of there and into a different song. I don’t even know if Robert knows that, but in fact he never played on that song. It works perfectly, though. Offsetting is the kind of thing that Robert and I started doing back during the ConstrucKtion of Light record.

Did you have to manipulate it in any way to make it fit?
No, the only manipulation was to harmonize the single-line parts with a harmonizer and changes the notes in certain places.

What’s going on with the Bears?
They’ve gone back to hibernation, I suppose. Kind of what we do is every few years we have enough material that everyone feels great about, and we just mosey on over to the studio and make another great Bears record. I really liked the last one a lot, and I see no reason for us to do anything other than just keep doing that every now and then. We can’t really make a living at it, and go out and tour, because there’s not enough of a market, and everybody in the band mostly has their own jobs and things they do. I’m the only one whose job is full-time road warrior. It is a great process, it’s easy, it’s fun—and we actually make money doing it like that, because we do everything ourselves and we’re all very good at recording quickly. We’ve always had this wonderful chemistry, and whatever we feed into the Bears machinery is always going to sound like a Bears song.