WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1367 - Adrian Belew

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

Adrian Belew’s career in music was influenced by many and has influenced many more. As a completely self-taught guitarist, Adrian absorbed as much music as possible on the way to establishing his own sound and style. After getting his big break with Frank Zappa, Adrian went on to collaborate with David Bowie, Talking Heads, and Nine Inch Nails, just to name a few, and recorded 25 solo albums. Marc talks with Adrian about his amazingly prolific career, including his time with Robert Fripp and King Crimson. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's winter, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls? Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No. But moose head? Yes. Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too.

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customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. Lock the gate! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast welcome to it thank Thank you, Arizona. Thank you. Thank you, Arizona. I had a great time. I went out there with Lara Bites.

We did Tucson on Friday. We did Phoenix on Saturday. And it was great. It was a great time. It's good to be out in the desert. There's something about the Arizona desert. That's the one. The Arizona out in the desert. There's something about the Arizona desert. That's the one. The Arizona desert is the desert.

That's where those sequoia, soroya, what are they called? Those specific cacti. The classic old westy looking cacti happen only in Arizona. Or unless people drag them illegally out of Arizona to plant in their yards, they only happen there and there's hundreds of them. And they just, they have a very unique look as they ride up the bottom of a hill up towards the edge of these mountains in Arizona. And they're stunning. There's nothing else that looks like it. And the air was clear and the drive was clean, man. How you doing? Everybody okay? Is everyone all right out there?

I hadn't been out there in a long time. I could not remember the last time I'd been out in Arizona. I will tell you this. Today on the show, Adrian Ballou is here. Adrian Ballou is the guitar player. He's singular. A singular sounding guitar player that not everyone is familiar with, but he's the shit. He's amazing.

He's otherworldly. Almost an alien. Nobody does it like Adrian Ballou. Yeah, I mean, I talk to him about as much as I know about. See, I'm not a huge Crimson guy, but I know enough about a couple of the Adrian Ball Blue records, just barely enough, not to appease the full Crimson nerds, but certainly to

give some context. We talked about King Crimson. We talked about Zappa going way back. We talked about Bowie talking heads, Laurie Anderson, Nine Inch Nails, his solo career, I'm a Lone Rhinoceros. his solo career i'm a lone rhinoceros got a lot of albums out this guy worked with a lot of great people we were really able to sort of chart the evolution of his sound and who he is as a musician through his history with these amazing geniuses it was quite a conversation and uh he was out earlier this year on his own and now he's going to be performing with Jerry Harrison from Talking Heads here in LA next week they're going to do a stuff from the Remain in Light album which Adrian is on and sort of defined the sound of yeah I'll be so bold but I was first hipped to Adrian Blue by a guy I knew back in the day when I was in high school working at the Posh Bagel across from Yale Park, across from University of New Mexico.

15, 16 years old. There was a record store. This story spreads its wings a lot. There was a record store next door called Budget. Budget Tapes and Records owned by a couple, a biracial couple that enjoyed the club music, the disco music. Didn't like playing anything in the store but R&B and the disco music back in the 80s, 70s actually. And there was a couple of guys that worked there that kind of changed the way I saw music in general, informed me, educated me.

A few things happened. They gave me a box of records, promo records that they didn't use. It had Elvis Costello's first record in there, George Thorogood and the Destroyers. It had Tom Waits, Nighthawks at the Diner. That box in and of itself kind of laid down the track, laid down, wired me up, you know, plugged in some stuff.

And then there's one dude, what the hell is his name with the big mustache, who once took me to his house in an innocent way, and we made a mixtape of all his R&B records, the old stuff, Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Etta James, I think, was on there. What was Solomon Burke? I mean, it was just all of the stuff, the old soul business. What the hell was his name? Why can't I remember? Jim. I think it was just all of the stuff, the old soul business. What the hell was his name?

Why can't I remember? Jim. I think it was Jim. More importantly, Steve LaRue, Steve Lash LaRue, who was in the great performance art outfit called Jungle Red, who performed once a year in surgical scrubs. But Steve was a guy to hit me to the stuff man brian eno the residents fred frith uh john hassell uh you know the bowie stuff the the uh i think he was the guy who uh who first turned me on to adrian blue if it weren't for lash larue steve larue i wouldn't know about adrian blue

and i wouldn't know a lot about his stuff. That budget tape, some records next to the Posh Bagel around the corner, around the corner from the General Store head shop on Harvard Street across from University of New Mexico, completely blew my mind and arranged it back correctly around certain music. Now, Steve was a musician himself and sadly committed suicide a few years ago. And it's one of those situations where a mutual friend, Clemmer, David Clemmer, he kind of pulled together a bunch of stuff he sent me on CD that I still have to go through

of this guy who was kind of a mad oddball genius in his own right. I'd fallen way out of touch with him for a long time and I just heard about his passing and Clemmer's got all this stuff and I got to go through it. But what happens to that stuff? What happens to the unsung wizards of the oddball realm, the musical astronauts who couldn't quite cut it and couldn't quite hack it ultimately for whatever reason. Rest in peace, Lash LaRue. Thank you for turning me on to Adrian Ballou.

And that's that backstory. So I was very excited to talk to Adrian Ballou because, man, he makes that guitar sound like nothing else. So my slightly dementia father came out to Phoenix toenix to hang out with me and i was nervous i didn't know if he would recognize me i didn't know if we had crossed the line and he certainly did recognize me and he was quite happy to see me we're quite happy to see each other i tell you man we've all done bad shit in our life we've all made mistakes we have problems with people we love but i i you know seeing my father over these last few years as he enters this this uh end run with this problem this dementia has been pretty great and pretty uh i'm finding a lot of peace

around us around him around me around whatever i i remembered him however i thought he wronged me or however whatever man it's just doesn't matter it's certainly drifting out of his head that's the the gift of it if there's any way to look at it in a positive way it's they don't remember there's no going back to that so you you let go and you accept and you you kind of you take what you can enjoy those moments man but like he was pretty present he turns on the juice and his brain works a little better when he's around me his wife said and i talked to him got him going about some stuff in the old days i showed him some x-rays some picture picture I had on my phone, and my mom's got a little issue in her neck. And that used to be a place where he used to do the surgery on. He was

orthopedic. I showed him the x-rays and asked what he thought about the problem. And he locked right in, man. He did the doctor thing for a few minutes. It's all sort of still in there. And I'm just saying, man, you know, forgive the people you love. Forgive yourself. Find some peace. Can you? Can you do it? Look, I, you know, whatever my issues were with my parents, they're all fading as they fade. And I'm happy to be as present as I can be for where they're at right now.

It's a gift. And I did that show in Phoenix to a packed house. And I did those jokes about my dad and his condition with his wife there. And her brother was there and his wife, I think, and their niece and my old man. And I pointed, I did that. I made fun of my dad in a relatively good-hearted way.

And I thanked Rosie, his wife, for taking care of him. And I introduced them to the audience. And it was kind of beautiful. They had the best time. She was just so grateful and had so many laughs. She loves when I make fun of him. The last time they saw me, she said I didn't do it enough. So I went out of my way.

I just punched away at the old man. He loved it it and i'm sure he doesn't remember any of it today but she will and she's the one at the front she's at the front of his battle so very grateful for her and uh it was a it was a powerful night man so look you guys i talked to jerry harrison it was a few weeks ago uh of the talking heads of talking heads not the i was corrected on that we talked about uh adrian blue and uh and then here he is adrian came he. He and Jerry are performing songs from Talking Heads Remain in Light next week at the Wiltern Theater in LA. You can get tickets at thewilturn.net. And this is me covering the ground with Adrian Ballou. and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything.

So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls? Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No. But moose head? Yes. Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now.

For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Business insurance from Zensurance is a no-brainer for every business owner because it provides peace of mind.

A lot can go wrong. A fire, cyber attack, stolen equipment, or an unhappy customer suing you. That's why you need insurance. Don't let the, I'm too small for this mindset, hold you back from protecting yourself. Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance, mind your business. where'd you come from northern kentucky i was born in covington right across the river ohio river from cincinnati really i guess it's weird like i've listened to stuff you've played on my whole life, right? Here and there.

And I always knew your name. I remember there was a guy I knew who worked at a record store in Albuquerque, New Mexico, next door to where I worked in high school at a restaurant. So he turned me on to, I think it must have been Lone Rhinoceros. Right. When did that come out? That's 82, the first solo record. The year after I did the Discipline record with King Crimson.

King Crimson. Yeah. And I think he gave me that record. It might have been after. It might not have been him. But there was a whole world of music that you were involved with that was like, I thought you were from outer space. I didn't think you would. I didn't know.

Well, I did grow up on the planet Mars. but it's a little small colony that we had there. Yeah. Just a guitar colony? Yeah. The colony with the amps on Mars. That's amp. Yeah. Amp Mars.

But I just never assumed that you were of human upbringing. Yeah. Well, maybe there's something to be said there. I've been watching a lot of ancient aliens. Maybe you did land? Kentucky itself is a little alien. Well, what year were you, like, was there music in the house? No, no, no one in my house, no one in my family had any musical background ever anywhere.

My father's side of my family were kind of, you know, country people. Yeah? Minor Kentucky area. How'd you get rid of your accent? And traveling the world all my life. And my mother was a school teacher. I mean, a Sunday school teacher. Really?

Yeah, and homemaker. Yeah. And there was nobody there feeding me anything. Brothers, sisters? Two brothers younger than me. Neither of them played anything or had any interest. So it just hit me when I was about 10 years old. I said, I want to play drums.

Drums, it was drums. Yeah, drums. And we had just moved to a new part of Kentucky, Ludlow, Kentucky, a little further down the river. Yeah. A river town. Yeah. And they said, yeah, okay,

well, we'll have you in the junior high school Ludlow Marching Panthers, but you have to play trumpet. Did you learn how to read music then? No, I didn't. No, I just learned how to do marching cadences. And I said, no, I don't want to play trumpet. I want to play, I want to be in the drum line.

Yeah. I didn't even know what it was called. That's so funny that despite your desire to play an instrument, they're like, well, we need a trumpet. Yeah. So like, you're not going to be anything. Yeah. Just play the trumpet.

Yeah. We don't want you in the band unless you'll play trumpet. But I threw a proper fit, and they put me on drums. Yeah. And for three years, I did that. Then we moved 10 miles away to Florence, Kentucky. Away from the river? Yeah.

So everything was gone. I had no friends. I wasn't in the band anymore. And at that time, the Beatles had come out. And when I moved to Florence, Kentucky Kentucky before I went the freshman year yeah I was uh I was just in a neighborhood my new neighborhood didn't know anybody but there happened to be a lot of musicians there and we started sort of hanging out really and pretty soon they said well you you're gonna hear this band called the Denims they do all the Beatles stuff really great so So I went to see the Denims. They're a local band? Local band, the Denims. And you're how old now?

I'm 72. No, I mean, how old were you then? I was 15. When the Beatles happened, you were about 15? 14, 15? Yeah. I was 14, 13, 14, but by the time I got to Florence, I was maybe 14 or 15. Did it blow your mind, like when the Beatles came out? Was that the thing?

Oh, incredible. Are you kidding? I went upstairs, and I actually had enough hair to cut it into bangs. You did? Right straight to the bathroom, cut my hair into bangs. But you don't have recollection of Elvis or any of that generation? Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. My mother had a little radio that was built into the headboard of her bed in their apartment. And I remember hearing, you ain't nothing but a hound. And running in the bedroom and jumping up and down like a crazed little child at age five to Elvis. It did it. But Elvis, and there were a lot of other people in between Elvis and the Beatles that I loved.

Roy Orbison. Sure. The Everly Brothers. Yeah, those harmonies. The Beach Boys, the Ventures, you know. But then it was the Beatles. That's so funny, because all of those, that through line, there's a through line to everyone you just said.

Like, you didn't go to Jerry Lee Lewis or, you know, Little Richard. Love those guys, too. But there's this haunting harmony trip that goes through the Ventures and Orbison. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It was harmony for me. Because, see, even when I was five, I could sing along with those kind of records and even sing the weirder harmony. So I would sing for my aunts and uncles and even sing the weirder harmony so i would sing

for my aunts and uncles and stuff and they'd say oh he's so cute you know and i thought well this is what you want to do for a living right yeah i think that's funny the ventures did you did you ever do a surf record i've written three surf songs of my own now i'm gonna do the third one on my next record okay but i just wanted to make sure i was friends i am friends with the Ventures. Well, the remaining Ventures have just recently passed. Who just passed? Don. Yeah, Don. Don Wilson.

And I was friends with Noki Edwards as well. I love those guys. They were really old school guys and I would see them, you know, I'd go to some of their shows and hang out with them and they accepted me. They loved me. They were like, we don't know what the hell you're doing, Adrian, but we sure do love it. Were they playing like state fairs and stuff? When I saw them, it was usually at the NAMM shows.

I used to go to all the NAMM shows out here in Anaheim every year. And they would almost always be playing somewhere. But I saw them other places, too. In fact, my trio opened for them in a festival somewhere. Oh, really? So they finally got to hear me, and they were scratching their heads. Was that Dick Dale? No, Dick Dale.

He's different. He was another guy. He was like a surf guy. He was the surf king. He was on his own. Right. But the Ventures really were important, too. I wasn't even a guitar player when I heard the Ventures.

And I wasn't even when I heard the Beatles, of course. When I was 16, I had mononucleosis, couldn't play in the denims, couldn't play drums anymore. Oh, wait. So you saw the denimsonucleosis couldn't play in the denims couldn't play drums anymore in the band oh wait so you saw the denims and then you tried to get in the denims yeah they asked me to join them to be a drummer

singing drummer yeah I sang I could sing any part you know and they were primarily I could mimic Paul's voice or John's or George or even Ringo's

oh really they were a cover band primarily they were but you know they got so popular in the northern Kentucky Cincinnati area that there was a popular DJ. His name was Dusty Rhodes on WSAI radio, and he coined the phrase Cincinnati's own Beatles.

So we were Cincinnati's own Beatles. We had eventually had the military suits and the Super Beetle lamps. Yeah, I played with them for three or four years. Really? Yeah. All through high school? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Drums.

Until a little out of high school. Yes, and when I was 16, I couldn't play with them for two months. I had to stay at home with mononucleosis. Yeah. While I was there, I had all these songs in my head. Of your own making? My own making, and I could hear them like it's a record playing. So I said, can I borrow a guitar?

Borrowed a guitar, the father's guitar from one of the guitar players i borrow a guitar borrowed a guitar the father's uh guitar from one of the guitar players in the denims in the denims yeah and i sat at home for two months and taught myself to play i didn't have anybody show me anything i just figured it out by okay i want this note where's my finger go for that note i want a harmony work where what finger can go there you didn't have a chord chord chart? Very painstaking, nothing. Very painstaking process. But when I came back, you know. So you had to invent guitar.

I invented my own chords for sure. And when I came back, you know, I had five of my songs written and played them for the Denims. And they said, what the hell are those chords? Really? Yeah, because they were like my own chord shapes. And I said, I don't know, you know a a furnished flat i don't know and they still don't match i still didn't know chords did they play this after that um yes we did learn one of them just one what about the other yeah you're still waiting to record those we never

we never got to really record and stuff we didn't get that far down the pike. So how did your tenure with the Denims end? I think something else in the band happened. Someone else left and we decided to call it quits. But it was at the time that in 1967, and I was graduating from high school, it was at the time that Sergeant Pepper had come out, and we could no longer imitate the Beatles. I mean, it was just that simple. We said, what are we going to do, boys?

Hey, lads, what are we going to do? We can't sound like the Beatles anymore. Oh, because it was out of that sort of basic, almost old-style rock and roll. We did try to play, you know, I read the news today, oh boy. But where's the orchestra? Where's, you know, this shit?

We need to get to the big part where the orchestra swells. It's the two guitar players going, na-na-na-na-na-na-na. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just didn't work. You can't do it. And you can't do it, like the amount of production,

all the sounds that they made with that record. How are you going to do that? Well, the one preceding is my favorite, which revolver and i remember bringing that we were playing at a catholic church gig and i remember bringing the record to the other guys in the denims go look here it is here it is i just gotten it yeah and we were just marveling over the cover and everything and then you know as we learned some of those songs we realized, wow, some of this stuff we're not going to be able to do because, like,

you can't do Love You Too, the, you know, the Indian song. You can't really do, you know, yeah.

Yeah. And with all the other, or, you know, turn off your mind, relax and vote downstream. Yeah, yeah,

yeah. Tomorrow never knows. I mean, that must have blown your, were you playing guitar full time there yet? At that point, I was writing songs. But like that, the sort of strange sounds in the backward looping and- Oh my God. And just some of the leads on that record must have informed your brain somehow.

Totally, totally. Because that was the first time I think I... That's weird guitar playing. It is. In fact, I remember also in the church parking lot, Sir Angie, we played a lot of churches at that point, I guess, hearing on the radio, sitting in someone's car, I didn't have a car, and hearing, I'm only sleeping. Yeah.

That's the first backwards guitar part I ever heard. Right, right, right. Which actually... But you didn't know it was backwards, right? I had no idea what it was, but I knew it must be a guitar. Because it seems like you figured out how to play that forwards. And I totally, well, not at that point. I wasn't that good.

Yeah. But I totally flipped out over that sound. Right. Backwards guitar is still something I use a lot. And now I can play it live while I'm playing. I can actually play live and make it sound- And make it play backwards. With some of the toys you can do it?

Yeah, with a digital delay. It's a technique. It's hard to do because you have to be always playing ahead of where you want it, what you want to be, because it has to record it first and then play it backwards. So it's about a two-second delay. Oh, so it actually has to play backwards. Yeah, yeah. You can't mock the sound i have a pedal so i'm playing this pedal and when i finally push it down it engages whatever i've been playing

turns it around backwards and there poof voila so you gotta so you gotta play it hard yeah to match it two seconds ahead of it what you want to do so uh you told you from another planet i am but you're pretty but the the but it's well that's sort of incredible because you're doing that in a live environment. And so your engagement, I mean, you've got to have a lot of confidence in your rhythm section and everything else to stay on that. I make a lot of loops when I'm playing with my own trio. And that's another thing. That has to be perfectly right on. So you're going to step on this thing, boom, right there,

and then you're going to step on it again to end it, boom, right there, and it's got to be a perfect loop. Right. Otherwise, you have to undo it and start all over again, which is highly embarrassing. Do you have a practice regimen now? Not at all. I just play a lot.

I never have actually had a practice regimen. Even when I was in King Crimson and we had the da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, all that stuff, I would just, a lot. I never have actually had a practice regimen. Even when I was in King Crimson and we had all that stuff, I would just, you know. That was Crimson in a nutshell. Once Robert and I finished our four hours of practice every day, I'd slough off, you know. I'm like, you know, okay, I'll catch up tomorrow on that. But where does it like, so where do you sort of begin to sort of you know bend the possibility so you go from the denims to what uh i got in eventually i got in a band uh in kentucky as a guitar player in kentucky well it was a cincinnati band in fact okay

part of cincinnati not the cincinnati beatles Cincinnati Beatles. They were gone by then. Yeah. And I started, you know, well, around that time. What was that band? What were they called? The first one was called Gory Oatley. Yeah. Isn't that,

how's that for a name, huh? And this is what, 69? Probably 68 or 69. Yes. And Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton had arrived on the scene.

Yeah. And so at that point, I was saying, gee, I want to do that stuff, not just be a guitar player. So I was learning, oh, foxy lady. Right, right. Just by ear. Yeah. I played the record and just figured it all out. And I figured out everything Hendrix did as well as I could.

And also Jeff. I loved his playing. Well, I mean, Hendrix was trying to, you know, Billy Gibbons tells a story about opening for Hendrix in Texas. And Hendrix had a full

stereo console set up in his hotel room. And he basically said to Billy, he said, let's go try to figure out what Jeff Beck is doing. And that was Hendrix. So Hendrix was sort of-

I've got to tell Jeff that one. He probably already knows. It was baffled by Beck. Oh, my God. Beck was such a lyrically beautiful guitar. Still is. He's my buddy and my favorite now. Really?

I mean, well, you know, Jimi Hendrix did something no one else will ever accomplish. He opened all those doors, and he was unique unto himself. At the same time, however, I always felt, well, Jeff Beck was doing some great stuff, too. And Jeff has been there since. So if you look at his entire career, Jeff has done more than Jimmy has by now. Well, right, but you also, like, the sensibility around electronics was different. Also, the sensibility around electronics was different. It felt like, despite whatever Hendrix did,

he was still in some sort of loop with those amps and still in the blues in a way. But it seemed like his pedal game, and people know this, I'm not that deep a nerd, was minimal. It was, yeah. But Beck, even on the I Ain't Superstitious with Jeff Beck group, that sound was something that was beyond anything that anyone could recognize. Unbelievable, really.

It was a wah-wah with some wonderful room delay on it. Is that what it was? Uh-huh, and he just was so great with it, though. It's a brain changer, that. That was the beginning. He always did. I mean, right from the beginning, for me, when I was still in the Denims and wasn't playing guitar,

the Yardbirds had a... On one of the Yardbirds hits, they had a flip side, which turns out to be an old Les Paul track renamed Jeff's Boogie. Right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that track right there from there on i was like i love this guy named jeff beck whoever that guy is you know that's incredible yeah and then he did that with him you are you

guys pretty good buddies well we see each other whenever i can well there must be, like, at some point, you've, you know, you, as a guitar player, are in that ether, I believe. One time I was in London in a little club. This was back in the day of early King Crimson. Yeah. And I was standing on a balcony, and I was looking down at the band. I don't know what band it was. I just wanted something to do on a night out. And across the way on the balcony, I saw Jeff Beck.

Yeah. And I looked at him yeah and i looked at him and he looked at me and we both sort of started walking to the corner we met at the corner and he goes hey you're that elephant guy and i said hey you're jeff beck and we just kind of hugged and said yeah this is great he knew he was on it plus what i did um later many years later my favorite compliment happened which was was with Jeff also. Elephant was in referral, too. Well, he had seen the video of Elephant Talk, I think.

So he knew I was the guy that made that elephant sound stuff. But years later, we were playing, I think, at Royal Albert Hall. Once again, King Crimson. loyal albert hall once again king crimson and the end of the show uh i did um three of a perfect pair by myself as the first on yeah just guitar and voice yeah and he just fell out over that he couldn't believe i could play that and sing that at the same time so i went backstage and there he was in the green room and he came up and i reached my hand out to shake his hand yeah he reached my hand out with his and with his other hand he made this motion that he was sawing my hand off and he said you bastard look at that the competition remains it's funny it is a because when you're

an astronaut you know and you've already sort of mastered space right you're kind of like you know who are the other guys out here you know and you're the other guy out there well i you know i still have i have a problem even believing any of that or thinking about myself in that way i just you know it's you just play you don't feel competitive yourself to someone that you right grew up yeah yeah loving but i don't get in awe of any of these guys. I spent an hour, as you have, with Paul McCartney, and I just loved every minute. Sure. I enjoyed every second of it.

Yeah. He was so wonderful. Yeah. But I wasn't sitting around like, oh, my God, it's Paul McCartney. I should have. Yeah. Because he has also meant an extraordinary amount to me in my life. Well, I mean, you can do that.

I mean, I have fanboyed with certain people. Yeah. Like with Keith Richards. You know, I did. Yeah. But then the second time I interviewed him, I was kind of busting his balls. Once they become humans to you. They do quickly.

Very quickly. That's the thing. When you meet these people or you work with them, you know, I meet David Bowie. And before I know it, me and David Bowie are joking about stuff. Sure. And he's no longer really that David Bowie. He's a different guy to me. Well, I keep trying to, like, and I think about it with you,

and I think about it when I talk to any musician, the sort of magic of the ability to sort of take a stage in front of, you know, tens of thousands of people and do that job and put on the show is kind of fucking amazing. It is. It really is. Like, I can't, I can't, it's still a mystery to me.

Like, even talking to you, you know, knowing that you were, like, on the Remain in Light tour and on all those Bowie, I don't know how many tours you did with him, all the Crimson stuff. Two Bowie tours. But, you know, you're here,

but, you know, do you feel a shift when you, like, Is that zone a magic? Oh, yeah. It's strange. If something overtakes me, I can even be really sick, and I can walk on stage, and I'm no longer sick.

I'm so completely zoned in, and there's an energy force, I honestly feel. It's not like a mysterious thing, but from the audience that just completely all of your adrenaline just goes sky high and you're in the moment and you're playing and a lot of gigs i play it's over almost in a flash sometimes really you go wow that i just barely started and that's done yeah because you're you're so in the moment. So, wait, okay, so you lock into Beck.

You lock, I don't see, I don't hear a lot of Clapton in you. No, but I learned a lot of his stuff because I did love. The riffs. I loved Cream. Oh, yeah? Yeah, and I loved, you know, a lot of his stuff. Sure. Jimmy Page, too.

Yeah. Jimmy Page was a little later, Led Zeppelin. But then I was kind of on my own doing stuff. But you don't strike me as a blues guy. I did learn a little blues when I was teaching myself. But you didn't love it, right? Well, I figured to me that blues is kind of a great way to learn how to play soloing and stuff and show off. Right.

Did you ever listen to Peter Green stuff? I did. Yeah. I love that song, Oh Well, Part Two. Love that song. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had my little phase, blues. I was listening to John Mayall.

So it was specifically sort of like, I've got to pick up a guitar at a party. Yeah. Yeah, you've got to be able to do that. Yeah, you've got to be able to do that. You know, I learned how to finger pick like Chet Atkins. Come on. I did. I learned a few. How'd you do that? Atkins. I learned to- Come on. I did. I learned a few-

How'd you do that? I just taught myself. You didn't read nothing? You didn't, you just like- I don't read anything. I'm, I mean, in terms of music. No, but you didn't read anything about how he did it? Like the Travis picking?

You just kind of figured it out? I figured it out from records. Yeah. Everything I learned when I started- Didn't come easily? I figured it out from records. Or did you like- I seemed to be pretty good at it.

Okay. So you just had that. I had a really good detailed way of doing it. And I would figure out, like Beatles, but the Beatles were my biggest teachers, and I figured out every part. Yeah. Bass parts, drum parts, guitar parts. I'd listen to the production.

But would you spend hours? Oh, my whole life was spent in my parents' basement. At the end of school year, you know, with everybody else that had a tan from playing baseball, I'd be the pale guy that went back and still trying to figure out the next guitar riff. And what was that guitar, that first one

that you had? The first one I had was a Gibson Firebird, because I thought it was a pretty interesting-looking guitar. Great guitar, right? Big, big, big. Big and unusual really yeah something they're still kind of unusual but you know eventually over time i was working with my friend seymour duncan who became you know you know that guy oh very well we back then we knew each other in kentucky well he lived in cincinnati area and he was a very good guitar player at that time too by the way anyway long story short I kept talking to Seymour about changing the sound of the Firebird I had and eventually said you know you know what you really want here you want a Stratocaster you keep

getting me to put strats and you know okay the Firebird had those mini humbuckers right and like the sound of the guitar you love the look of it yeah sure so eventually i got a stratocaster oh like in the like in the late 60s right uh around the time i joined um frank's band so okay so you're in cincinnati kentucky area you're playing with gory whatever yeah gory outley did you record that was only for a year by the way well so how do do you just, like, how does Frank find you? Well, I went through a lot of things over the next 10 or 12 years. Cover bands, Elvis cover band, every kind of band. Holiday Inn Lounge Band, where I went back to playing drum.

Until you're almost 30? Until I was 27 years old, and I'm sitting there really thinking, oh, my gosh, I missed the bus. Because everyone is supposed to be famous by then or not. And you're doing a hotel lounge gig? I was in a Holiday Inn lounge band for two and a half years. It was called Sound Assembly. Two guitar players and me on drums.

We didn't even have a bass player, but we were called Sound Assembly. Were you miserable? I was miserable five hours a night. Yeah. But then I had the rest of the day for a month at a time sitting in a hotel room on a holiday inn to hone my art. And I taught myself to play cello. I played drums every night.

I taught myself to play flute. I wrote a lot of songs with acoustic guitar. I sold my Firebird to get a drum kit to play that gig because there were no shows for me anymore. This was in the disco era. Wow. And, you know, all the gigs had kind of dried up, so there was nothing.

So I thought, well, I better keep going with my writing at least. And so then what happened, my manager, I had a manager and he called me. In Kentucky? You know, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Stan Hertzman was his name. Yeah. And Stan couldn't do much for me.

Yeah. Because there wasn't much going on. Right. And I was, you know, light years away from having a record deal of my own or anything. But he said, there's a band in Nashville called Sweetheart. Yeah. And they need a new guitar player. Strangely, the guitar player from Gorey Oatley had called Sweetheart. Yeah. And they need a new guitar player. Strangely, the guitar player from Gori Otley had left Sweetheart.

Small world. Full circle. And so I went down to Nashville, joined Sweetheart, played in that band for about three years, one night. Three years? Yeah, one night. And then I was 27, and one night we were playing in a dank, dark bar called Fanny's. It was a biker bar it was actually painted flat black inside full of bikers not a great place but and i looked the hallway you could see who was

coming in and there's frank zappa with his crew of people his big bodyguard john smothers and terry bozio the drummer and a whole horde of people who look like frank zappa guys yeah came in he listened 40 minutes. Just by coincidence, or he'd heard about you? He'd heard about me from the chauffeur. He played a show that night. In Nashville. And he had a chauffeur taking him around, and he said,

we want to go see a great rock band. Who do you recommend? Yeah. The chauffeur said, this band. He took him to see Sweetheart. So Frank walks in. He sits there for 40 minutes and you know i remember all of a sudden he gets up he walks up to the stage reaches up to me i'm

playing give me shelter by the rolling stones it shakes my hand and says i'll get your name and number from the chauffeur and when i'm done touring i'm gonna call you and audition you and eventually that is what happened although it was about six months later and i by then i thought well that was just that was just a dream and then you flew out to l.a yeah my first time flying ever yeah and what guitar did you have the strat i had a very simple natural wood strat which made it through the first two months of touring with Frank. And then we took two weeks off before we went to Europe. And that guitar never arrived back in Nashville. Oh, you lost it. I lost it or it was stolen.

All right. So you fly out here. You audition for Frank over in Laurel Canyon at the house? Absolutely. Yeah, in the basement. And this is what year? We're talking? 77.

77. Mm-hmm. So Frank is deep in Frank. He's very very frank i'll be frank about it yeah and that house more frank than that so you go down in the basement yeah and uh and what what is he what do you got to do for frank what's what's the setup okay so his basement was not yet the gorgeous studio would become years later it was a linoleum floor and it was full of different activity people moving around you know pianos and things it was very distracting it was the original basement and then he built that whole other oh yeah every year i would go back and see him whenever i was in l.a it always goes back and he would always say welcome welcome to my

construction project yeah and it was always being but this time it was very simple, but there was a lot of people doing things there. And there was a little console. He was sitting behind the console, kind of like we are here. Yeah. And I'm standing in the middle of the room with a little pig nose amp in my Strat.

Pig nose. Yeah, a little tiny pig nose amp. I mean, that's real little for people who aren't guitar people. We're talking, that's cigar box size-ish. And it can't sound like much of anything. Did it have batteries in it? Yeah, it ran on batteries.

That's what I could afford, ladies and gentlemen. Come on. And Frank would say, okay, play, you know, he'd take a puff off his cigar, I'll go,

okay, Adrian, play Andy. And I'd play, start playing for about two minutes or whatever, and he'd stop me. Okay, all right. Yeah.

Then he'd start on the next one. He'd give me me 12 songs to learn and when i talked to him on the phone when he called me he said you do read music i said uh no i don't i'm totally autodidact self-taught yeah and he said well okay i'm gonna give you a shot i never do this but i'm gonna give you a shot anyway i like the way you were singing and playing so let's see what works yeah so i go there and we go go through this 12 songs and notes. They're all Zappa songs? Oh, of course, yeah. And from different records.

I had to borrow the records from friends of mine. Long story short is I failed miserably. I was so distracted. Really? I had nowhere to go. So I stayed around and watched other people do it. How'd you fail? What do you mean?

He didn't want you to be in the band? No, I just knew that I just didn't do well. I was too nervous and there was too many distractions. I thought he said he was going to give you a shot. He did give me. That was my shot. So I was standing around there because they said, okay, you're just going to stay here until five o'clock or six o'clock.

Then we're going to take you back to the airport, ship you back home to Nashville. So I had nowhere to go. And I watched some other auditions where hair-raising auditions, you know, keyboard players. And I watched a percussion audition. And then all of a sudden at the end of the day, it was just me and Frank standing there next to each other all of a sudden.

And I looked up and said, Frank, I'm really sorry. I know I didn't do well in the audition, but I thought it would be different. And he said, how so? And I said, Frank, I'm really sorry. I know I didn't do well in the audition, but I thought it would be different. And he said, how so? And I said, well, I thought it would be just you and me, quietly, and I could just show you that I can do this. And he said, well, great, let's go upstairs.

So we went upstairs. I took my pig nose. I turned it as far up, all the way up, pushed it down into the cushions on his purple couch. We sat there. We did it again, and we started again. And about a third of the way through, he started singing along with me, and I knew, okay, this is going well.

And then he stopped and put his hand out. This is typically Frank. Shook his hand. Okay, you got the gig. Here's how much I pay for this. Here's what we do if we do this. If we don't work, we get this retainer and so on. Explain the whole thing to me.

And it was done. And you did like four albums? I'm on, I think, eight or nine records because they keep finding things in the vault. Right. But the record I did was Sheik Your Booty. The disco record. Yeah. And Sheik Your Booty is, not many people know this, out of all

of his records, it's the biggest selling one. Because it had that hit on there. Two million copies. What was that? What was the hit on there? Bobby Brown? Maybe Bobby... Baby Snakes? I don't know. It was one of those things. Oh, wow. Yeah, there was a bunch of

really interesting, good songs on there. Were you a fan of his before? I only knew... Wasn't it Dancing Fool? Isn't that what it is? Dancing Fool is on there. Yes, that's it. That was the hit.

I'm a dancing fool. Yes, exactly. That's the one. Yeah, I knew some of Frank's work, but not a lot. When I was actually... When I was going back to the Denims when I was 16, the manager we had in the Denims, we always have a manager. And this guy came in one day and said, here, Adrian, I want to give you this record.

And he said, you're the only person I know who might really appreciate this. And it was Freak Out. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's early. So that's before. That was the first double album every May. Yeah. Oh, really?

Yeah. And when I was, later on on i would stay at his house most weekends so i could learn when you were touring with him no when we were still rehearsing rehearsed for three three months so i could learn the parts ahead of time when everyone on monday would get you know sheet music did you find him difficult to work with? I found Frank to be perfect for me. Yeah. He was very demanding, but he was also, for me, very generous, friendly. Well, you didn't read music, so he had to show you what he wanted.

Yeah. So I hung out with Frank. The other guys in the band, bless them, they're all great guys, they were all L.A. guys, so they went their way after every rehearsal. Who was in the band at that time? They were all LA guys, so they went their way after every rehearsal. Who was in the band at that time? Terry Bozio, Patrick O'Hearn, Tommy Mars, Ed Mann, Peter Wolfe. That might be it.

And so, you know, they would go home. I would go home with Frank. Because he needed some place to stay. Yeah, you know, on the weekends he would show me stuff. And then when we actually went on a tour after three months of rehearsal, unbelievable amount of rehearsal. I had learned five hours by then by rote. Yeah.

And I just continued to hang out with him. It would be me, him, his bodyguard, John Smothers, and our road manager, Phil Kaufman, who would go to breakfast together every morning or be seated on a plane together. So I got to be friends with him. I would watch or be seated on a plane together so I got to be friends with him you know I would watch him write music on a plane funny and bring out this great right he was so fun and so great to me yeah but he did have this one thing yeah to be in

Frank's band he demanded you just be super professional you know no drugs no hangover so for the next day. None of that. You play things consistently and correctly. That's what he preached. And I needed that. I needed that kind of mentorship. So it was perfect for me. Now, after that, I went right into David Bowie's band.

It was completely the opposite. But you could do it. Yeah, but David said, I want you to go crazy on guitar. Just go wild. That was for the Berlin records. And that was sort of like he it. Yeah, but David said, I want you to go crazy on guitar, just go wild. That was for the Berlin records, and that was sort of like he was- Lodger, yeah. I love Lodger. I do, too.

I think it's one of the- Is that all you? Yeah. That thing is like- It's one of these records where I'm like, how is that not the best, the favorite David Bowie record? I can tell you how. Because RCA was dropping him on that record. It was the favorite david bowie record i can tell you how because rca was dropping him on that record it was the last of his deal with rca so they did not promote it at all and

that was was that the last of the berlin records that was the last of the berlin that was the last of the berlin trilogy oh so many great things on there we had a great time when we did it that is my first actual recording experience what i recorded with with frank was all culled from live performances and baby snakes the movie all those songs yeah on cheeky booty i never got to go in the studio with him but i first so the first thing i ever did in a studio so that was all live they culled it from live no shit that's a lot of work for somebody everything live frank he recorded everything live, Frank did. Yeah.

So my first actual time in a studio, Lake Geneva, Switzerland, Tony Visconti's the producer, along with Brian Eno and David Bowie. Oh my God. It was pretty amazing. But Eno fascinates me. Yeah, he is fascinating. I mean, if you learn discipline and doing your reps from Frank, what do you learn from that crew in Switzerland?

How to do everything a different way, completely thinking out of the box. Not that Frank didn't think out of the box, of course. But it was Frank's box. It was Frank's. Yeah, it was his box. Yeah. It's a big box. I'll give you a huge box, universal of boxes.

But I'll give you an example. So this is what happened. You know, we went there and the studio we were in used to be the place that burnt down. It was a casino that burnt down. It was what they wrote Smoke on the Water about. Come on. Yeah, that's the studio. And guess who was playing there when Smoke on the Water, when it burnt down?

Frank Zappa. How ironic, right? Frank Zappa in the mother. Yeah, yeah. studio and guess who was playing there when smoke on the wall when it burnt down frank zappa how ironic right so yeah yeah yeah that's it that you know there's the that song yeah so when they rebuilt it they built it out into a concrete bunker literally yeah totally out of concrete so the first floor had this you know fairly small control room that's where david yeah and uh brian and tony would be and then i would walk up these concrete stairs to the room above and they had a one-way tv camera that could see me yeah and so they could talk to me and look at you couldn't see them i couldn't see them so here's brian's big idea yeah first of all they told me well this record is going to be called um planned accidents yeah planned accidents that's brian telling you we have 20 songs here and we want you to just

play what comes to your mind so what we're going to do we want you to go upstairs put your headphones on you'll hear the drummer count off, one, two, three, four, and then start playing. No key, no nothing? I said, playing what? Can I hear the song first? No. No, you can't hear the song. Yeah.

Oh, can you tell me what key it's in? No, no. Come on. Really? Really. So all those songs, Red Sails, I'm a DJ, Boys Keep Swinging. I am a DJ. All those guitar romps that are in there, those were me playing initially whatever I

could think of to play throughout a song I'd never heard before. But you're not hearing anything coming into your cans? No, I heard the song, but I had no idea. Okay. I mean, it would go to, I wouldn't know the first thing about it. Okay. There's a chorus coming up, I wouldn't know. So they'd let me do that maybe twice through.

Yeah. And then I'd start maybe the third time, and they'd say, wait, wait, wait. Sounds like you know where the chorus is. Forget it. We're done. No shit. You're done with that. Yeah.

And then what they would do is they would do a composite track of their favorite bits from that. And that's why those guitar things are so outrageous. But, you know, later I had to relearn them and play them myself anyway. And there was another story connected with that. So one day I come down from the control room and I go in the studio control room and they're laughing together. And I say, what's so funny? And they say, well, we got to tell you something.

You know, we did this with Robert and we made sure we thought that these parts were impossible to play but you no one told you you're so stupid you figured out how to play them because i had just been playing all that stuff on tour with david yeah so whose idea was all that? That was Eno? That was Eno, yeah, I'm sure. But David probably agreed with it, too. And you toured with David? Then I toured with David for 78 and 79.

With Pedro, too? 79. Carlos. Carlos, yeah. Carlos Almodovar. Carlos was the band leader. Almodovar? Almodovar?

What's his last name? Carlos Alomar. Carlos. He was the band leader, and he had been with David and played songs like Fame. Yeah, yeah. Co-wrote some stuff with him. Yeah, yeah. He's a good player.

Yeah, he's good, yeah. So that was who was in that band, and then it was down to me to try to do all the stuff that was on those records, and it was a lot of fun. Now, the next time I did was 1990. David came back to me and said, I want you to be the music director of this much larger tour we're going to do. 108 shows. Which one was that one? 27 countries, sound and vision.

Oh, yeah. And so you can bring your own band, and I want you to figure out the arrangements and do all that stuff. So that was a whole new level for me of touring. You had to put together a band? Well, I had a band already that we were touring at that time, a trio. Yeah, okay. Backing my record called Mr. Music Head. Yeah, yeah.

Just a keyboard player and a drummer. I would say just that. We didn't have a bass player yet because the keyboard player would play keyboard bass. Sure. So all David wanted to do was insert a bass player he liked from Switzerland, and away we went. We had a small little band playing all of his 35 or 40 hits. Wow.

Because he advertised it as being the last time I'm ever going to play these songs live. So we went around the world, 27 countries, and played everything. And how we did it is we had samplers that the keyboard player would would trigger yeah so the orchestra would come in for you know space oddity and we'd be you know we'd sound like the record but it would only be four of us and on top of that the show had big huge opera scrims and videos and stuff very very amazing. And they put the rest of the band, the other guys, three guys in the band, behind an opera scrim in the back of the stage. Huge 60 by 60 foot stage that they carried everywhere. Yeah.

And only I was on stage with David. Wow. Just me and him. Wow. Which was scary as heck. Well, you do some stage antics. I did then. Yeah.

We even have a runway we go on you know so and it was fun you go from there to uh crimson or no talking heads next next up folks is talking heads yeah they saw me at madison square garden with david and then uh i came to a couple of their shows when they were out on tour and then finally they asked me to sit in and play psycho killer and then uh i came to a couple of their shows when they were out on tour and then finally they asked me to sit in and play psycho killer and then the next thing i know they asked me to play on remain in light yeah see like that record is for a lot of heads of people the record and in in terms of like that's their peak to some people to me too it is i just say you know for me it was and and in a lot of it a lot i like a lot of their stuff but a lot of people attribute it to you so when you say that's the peak for them

in your eyes too what makes you say that why i just think it's a record unlike any other record yeah period yeah you know i mean it's not just the head stew i mean it's it's brian eno and it's you know it's a package of ideas and a new way to make records that no one had attempted yet at that point. Which was how? Layering everything. Okay. Well, that's an Eno thing, right?

So, you know, I would say, let's say, I wasn't there for the whole thing. It's almost like looping with a pedal. It is. Okay. It's looping, and then what what it is is everything is on a track and then if you want that loop to come up you you turn that track on then when you want it to go away you turn it off so you're continually building these different combinations of the loops that you have sure and so everything when i went there there was nothing but the the bass

and drums and a few little of the guitar tracks. Yeah. Just the da-da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da. And so, you know, Brian Eno and David and Jerry Harrison were there in the control room and they say,

okay, here's what we want you to do. We want you to go out and in the control room, I could see me, big glass between us, put your headphones, listen to this song, this da-da-da listen to this song this it's not going

to change keys nothing yeah there's no vocals nothing yeah and kind of imagine where a solo would be and then play a guitar solo yeah so that's what i did i went out and i stood around tapping my foot oh what a nice groovy track this is ha ha Wonderful. Then I launched into a guitar solo. And that was the guitar solo for The Great Curve. And so then I thought, well, they were all jumping up and down behind the glass. I could see them just going crazy. So I thought, well, that went pretty well.

Let me wait around another couple minutes. I'll do a second one. And that's how it worked. And that's how it worked. And you toured with that. I did, yeah. Yeah. And that was a big crew on stage. Yeah, well, the only way to do that record, because of the way they recorded it, which I just explained, was to bring in a lot of extra people. I was one of them. They had a second bass player.

They had a percussionist. They had a second keyboard player. But that wasn't the band. It ended up being a 10-piece band. But not the same. That wasn't Bernie Rorell up being a 10-piece band. But not the same... That wasn't Bernie Rorell. Yeah, Bernie Rorell. Yeah, Bernie was in the band.

He was the keyboard player. But you weren't in Stop Making Sense, though. No, this was before Stop Making Sense. But Bernie was on that, too. Because what happened for me right after that is we... Chris and Tina and I went down to the Bahamas to try to make a record together,

which became the Tom Tom Club. That's a good record. Yeah, it is. Fun. Genius of Love is still being re-recorded by people. Yeah. The last record called Lato that's out right now is Genius of Love being re-sampled yet

again. That's nice. I'll be picking up a little check for that. Do you? Yeah, of course. That's great. So, okay, so you of course. And then I joined Ken Crimson. Okay, but like

Catherine Wheel you were on? Catherine Wheel I did with David and I also did two of Jerry's solo records. So all in all, at that time I did five records. You did Jerry first one? Casual Gods? You were in the Casual Gods? Yep, and Red and the Black.

That's crazy, man. Those five records. And then I jumped into King Crimson, did Discipline, and then did Lone Rhino. So within like a period of just- So you do Discipline, then you do your first solo record. Yeah, I was doing it at the same time, really. What was the shift into Crimson after they'd been established? Did you feel some nerd pressure?

Enormous pressure. Unbelievable pressure. Well, you know, the funny thing was, you know, all my life... So Discipline, what's that, their fourth record or fifth record? Oh, I think, I don't know how many records they had before.

Probably six, maybe. Okay. But it was never an actual band that went from record to record, as you know. Robert was the only continuing figure from record to record. Okay, okay.

So then they take a long break. I think they stopped in 73 or 74. Come back in 1981, and then it's the new band, me, Tony Levin, Bill Bruford, and Robert. Bruford, right. And what happened right off the bat

was Robert sort of gave me the keys and said, okay, you're going to be the front man. You're going to be the songwriter. You're going to write the melodies. You're going to write the lyrics. And you're going to be my guitar partner you're going to write the melodies you're going to write the lyrics and you're going to be my guitar partner all the things that i had been waiting for to have uh all my life was suddenly handed to me but it was actually in a band called king crimson

which was my second favorite band after the beatles so for me it was huge pressure so i didn't even know well how am i going to write a song with da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da? We rehearsed that stuff over and over, hours a day. You and Fripp. And I was supposed to then turn it into songs, which was kind of... Okay, so you kind of broke it open with Bowie, and then you got into a different groove with the heads, and Zappa gave you the discipline. But you were a Fripp fan from way back yes i knew king crimson very well when i was in the the holiday in band

we play five sets a night i would go back to my room put on headphones and put on king crimson which record all of them yeah all of those records learning those riffs i knew i never learned any of them i never even tried to play them. Oh, you just liked to listen to them? No, I didn't know how they were playing that stuff. No? No, I didn't. I didn't understand odd time signatures or anything then yet.

I hadn't played with Frank yet. Yeah. That's where I learned that. So I just loved the records, and I thought, wow, this is another level of music here. Yeah. And then one day I wake up, and I'm in that band. And they're saying, hey, now it's time for you. To lead the band. To basically write the songs and anything.

And you're singing them too. And sing them and play the dual guitar parts with Robert at the same time. Plus jumping around while you're at it in a pink suit. So how was your relationship with Fripp? It was wonderful for a long, long time. Yeah? Because he always supported my ideas. I mean, he was very difficult to work with in certain ways.

Things had to be his way. Yeah. And that was not always, you know, absolutely great. But he gave me, personally, a lot of leeway. Yeah. Because he says, you know, whatever you need. If you need this to change to another key, if you want to do something else in here, just take it.

Make it yours. Yeah. So that's what I had to do. I mean, we started with frame by frame, and right off the bat, I added some chord changes, moved it up a key, and so on, to make it so that my melody would fit. Yeah. And then wrote the words, and then we went away there we go And he was good at that. Yeah, it was absolutely wanted that so when we get to something like elephant talk

I'm just fooling around one day in rehearsal and start playing That the done that the guitar we start kind of playing along with that Tony's playing it and pretty soon. It's okay Well, I think I can make that a song that's how it was always Framed can you make this a song or should this just be an instrumental and you you did like a million records with them yeah did a lot i did 33 years worth of records with them you and i wrote all the songs and lyrics for 33 years that's every one of them yeah and do you do you still are you guys still friends yes okay yeah i mean after um robert recently this is i guess 14 years ago it's not recently yeah uh decided to go a new way with a different band i was hurt and you know i felt funny about it yeah the way he did it was kind of a little cold uh which band was that that was the

last one they had the uh the eight-piece band he started that eight-piece band okay but anyway i was also at the same time very very engaged in my solo career again you did so many records we hadn't done anything for a while so i was you know you know, I was, and then eventually I did a movie with Pixar and I invented something called Flux, an app that plays music differently every time you hear it. So I was really engaged with a lot of things and even if he had asked me to be

in the band, I would have probably had to say, I can't do it right now, at least. Right. So, you know, I got over it. I said, okay, so it's King Crimson without me. It's okay. I was there for a long time. You were there for, I would imagine. I loved what I did and what we did together, so I I got over it. I said, okay, so it's King Crimson without me. It's okay. I was there for a long time. You were there for, I would imagine. I loved what I did and what we did together, so I'm happy with it. Well, I mean, I imagine that in terms of, like, you know, Crimson Heads,

like those first three that you did, like Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair, I would imagine that for most of them, they're like, those are the records. Yes, that's what I always hear. No, I mean, that's, you know, a lot of people from a different age group in particular who didn't get the first round of King Crimson, the first thing they may have gotten was, you know, elephant talk or something off a beat or something.

That is King Crimson to them. Like the guys in Tool, for example, they tell me that. A lot of people. Les Claypool told me that. Oh, yeah? Yeah, a lot of other players say you know that your crimson is the crimson my crimson if you want to call it mine sure i don't think you can call it mine because it really truly is roberts i suppose i know but he put you in charge well he kind of gave me the keys and i i didn't lose them but what was it like when you had to learn all the old crimson that you never went to that you did you like when you sat to learn all the old crimson that you never went to

that you did you like when you sat down with robert well we didn't at first want to do any of the old king crimson robert refused to do uh 21st century or any of that stuff but eventually we learned i think lark's tongue and red and that became part of our repertoire was there ever a moment where he like had he showed you something you're like oh okay uh or did you already kind of know it but no all only thing that robert and i worked on was the the really tricky interwoven uh gamelan kind of guitar stuff now that was his idea so i had to learn how to do that with him yeah and that must be pretty and then i had to learn how to figure out how to write songs with that was the real tricky bit for me yeah but it must have been fun to get in that into that groove with him i love that we would sit you know for four hours a day that's always

four hours yeah unplugged guitars electric guitars yeah and sit there and just go it was like exercising or something you know yeah and then okay're going to, let's change it this way. And it was fascinating. It was wonderful. It must have, like. It freaked me out for a while because I didn't know how it could possibly be made into songs, but I did it. It must have been another huge kind of building block of your skill set. I mean, like.

Definitely. Definitely. building block of your skill set i mean like definitely definitely i think king crimson i i look at it now as being you know really uh probably half of my legacy uh-huh the other half being 25 solo records yeah the other things in between playing with all the different people of course are in there too but those are not your own makings what's your favorite solo record of yours like where do you think you really kind of just from my own knowledge so i can go you got to hear the last record elevator yeah i feel like that's i feel like i've gotten better and better and that's where i really want people to start from yeah if someone said hey you got 25 where do i start i say start with this one it's the last

one and i feel like it's it's worthy oh great. There are other ones, you know. I would say it's something like Zop Tu Wa, Inner Revolution, Mr. Music Head. Yeah. And some people, this is what bugs me, some people say, yeah, I got your, you know,

Lone Rhino record and your Twang Bar King record and I love your solo stuff. And I'm like, well, you're only missing 23 then. It's a lot of music, folks. Dude, it's hard to keep up, man. I do understand that.

I can't keep up with other people's records now at all. It's a weird thing, too, when, and it must be weird for you, when you've been part of some amazing bands and defining bands, and you defined the sound of some of those bands, that people don't associate you as a solo artist yeah so they you know early on you know when you do the beginning of crimson and then you do the first two solo records the crimson guys are like oh you did a thing but then like eventually they just keep moving forward with crimson they don't know what you're that you're

out there churning away you can't really expect people to keep up with everything. I can't do it myself. Long ago, I actually stopped, Mark, trying to listen to much music of anyone else's because I felt like it dilutes what I'm doing. And I've got constant creativity going on in my brain, honestly. I've got a studio in my basement of my home. Where do you live now? got a studio in in my basement of my home where you live now i've been living for 30 years in uh on the northeast side of of nashville in a place called mount juliet okay and the first thing we did was put in a studio and it's the best thing i ever did i bet so that's how that's how i've had

had the that's how i've been able to make so many records of my own or with the bears or even king crimson records we did two of those there and what's your relationship with resner how did that come about well my my relationship with trent was always based on i think what i did in david bowie okay with david okay i think he was such a fan of david so one day i was in la doing something else and i happened to have my gear and my manager called me from cincinnati and said I just got a call from this band Nine Inch Nails I said yeah I've heard about them I don't know anything about them he said well they they want you to play on their record yeah and I said well I've got my gear here maybe I should he said I think you really should do this they they sell a

lot of records yeah but I didn't know their music so i ended up going and doing that first session for downward spiral based on that and i i loved it i just loved the sounds they were making that record trent sounds and production was so great and i was i mean at one point i was crawling around on the back of my gear plugging things in differently just to find new ways of doing things for him because that's basically what he would do he would always on all four records i've done with him he'd say okay i've got this now listen to it now is there something you could think you could add to that i go yeah i got five five things i i want to do okay go and i go and you know i record them

and i come back and he's there like oh oh, my God, that was great. Oh, that's fantastic. And then I'll go away, and three months later, the record will come out, and I won't recognize what the heck I played because by then they've just done so much to it. So that's always been my experience with him. That record's insane. Those two records, well, you were on four, but the Fragile and Downward Spiral. And all of those were done that way where never was it planned here's what i want you to play or try to play this or and you were trained

that's that that's the berlin system yeah i always right yeah i always brought my my game with him like whatever when trent would call me and say i'm gonna do a new record can you come out i'd say okay i got this new thing i'm doing and i have this new trick and i'm gonna do a new record can you come out i'd say okay i got this new thing i'm doing and i have this new trick and i'm gonna do this great man i'd always make sure i gave him i put those on his records they belong there yeah and you did this work i mean you've done a lot of bits like i guess with tony levin why he asked you to why wouldn't you go play with tony oh of course he's the best i love tony he is the best he's phenomenal phenomenal. And as a person, too, by the way. But what do you see as just jobs? You know, like Paul Simon has two albums.

Was that just a job? Well, I love Paul Simon's work. Sure. And I think he's fantastic, one of our best songwriters ever. But it was kind of that because I was just thrown into it. I wasn't going to be in his band or anything else. It was kind of that. And Paul is one of the very few people I ever worked with who was very, very specific. thrown into it i wasn't going to be in his band or anything else it was kind of that and paul is

one of the very few people i ever worked with who was very very specific with what he wanted me to play okay so he would say no i want you to play this here's the harmony you know and and i'd say okay but the thing he wanted from me laur Laurie Anderson, who I'd also done three records with. A few records, right? Yeah, I love those records. Had talked to Paul and said, if you want to ever have a guitar player who's not a guitar player,

you gotta hire this guy, Adrian Blue. He does all these sounds. So I brought in my synth stuff. I was doing guitar synth mostly on that record. Graceland. This is Graceland. Now I walk in. Hell of a record, the record walk in on

the first morning and there's just um roy haley his engineer and producer for many years yeah just there and me and roy said you want to hear some of the stuff and he puts on some stuff and i thought oh my god roy is getting a little senile or something this is not paul simon's records it was all african stuff yeah you know this isn't Paul Simon right so then Paul arrives and I said Paul you know I'm having a little trouble with is you know and he goes oh well here let me show you he he like stands right next to me it starts put up and put up the boy in the bubble song yeah he put up that track and he start he said I've got some of the words he starts singing some of the words in my ear. I'm getting chills down my back, right?

And then I go, of course. That's Paul Simon. How brilliant. You've reinvented yourself, dude. And it was so wonderful. On the back of the sound of the African continent. And he told me the whole story about how he spent three years there,

studied the music, knew what it was all about, and then took it upon himself to make it his own david byrne did that too yeah with brazilian music correct really i think so yeah i don't know i wasn't around for that but uh so anyway when i worked with um paul it really was him wanting sounds right and me providing the sounds. But so when you hear the horn section, that originally was my synthesizer guitar parts. I had written guitar parts that sounded like a baritone sax synthesizer, a tenor alto, and I played the whole horn section. I think they added other horns later.

So this synthesized guitar business, as it evolved out of your original you know Jeff Beck seeds yeah and then you sort of like kind of rest there's literally solos that you do where it sounds like you're wrestling with the fucking guitar well I usually am yeah and but you know there's a whole sort of menu of sounds that you can now make. Well, yeah, it's my I call it my vocabulary. Yeah. And it's a go to thing. So throughout my records, especially my solo records, I've threaded all these themes.

You know, I OK, I've got this sound and I want now I can use that here. I go to it for as orchestration. now I can use that here. I go to it for, as orchestration. Yeah. Like, you know, like a composer might look at the orchestra, say, okay, I know what, if I have these two bassoons, do it this way, I can get this sound.

Right. That's me. You have your. I've got that. Your vocabulary of sound. Yeah, but the thing is, I'm always trying to change it. Yeah, and do you? I do.

I change it all the time because I can't just go back and keep doing the same thing. That's my heart. I'm a creative. Yeah. So that's exciting. Now I'm excited too. I can't stop doing that. Now I've got to get on it and get elevator as soon as you leave and get in it.

I brought it for you. You did? Of course, yeah. Oh, great. I brought a CD of it. Oh, that's great. A couple of them. You can give them to, you can put them in your closet.

No, no, I'll keep them. And they have my artwork, so you can see my artwork in your closet. Yeah, you don't release on vinyl? Not yet, because it's too right now. It's just taking forever, and I couldn't wait any longer. I started making Elevator during the COVID lockdown, and it was done two years before I could release it. Right.

So I was saying, I'm not going to wait another year for vinyl. I want this out now. I wrote it. But I can get it on Apple Music, right? Absolutely. Yeah, you can get it all over the place. So the Laurie Anderson record, she must have been just sort of like, go for it. Absolutely.

Another one of those. I think after a little bit of time, I think people just came to me with that in mind. Yeah, because they're like, you were a guy. You brought in your bag of tricks. You're not asking me to come in and play rhythm guitar much. So how does William Shatner happen? That was through his producer and player, Ben Folds. Oh, okay.

They were in Nashville doing his record. Four in the afternoon, I get a call from Ben, and he says, we're doing a late night session tonight with William Shatner henry rollins and me were you interested i said are you kidding what do i have to do we'll just bring your stuff over around 10 o'clock yeah we went to five in the morning and it was the best session and those all of those guys yeah were just going wild at five in the morning william and henry were running around like little kids ripping offing off of each other.

Oh, that's hilarious. And it was just amazing, man. I just had the best time. Oh, that's fun, man. So all I did was, you know, hey, can you make up this kind of thing? Sure, okay. And I'm going to watch these guys run around. I loved it.

So fun. So now playing with Jerry on these gigs, you're going to be here in L.A. at the Wiltern? Wiltern, yeah. Is, how much prep did you have to do with Jerry? It's just the two of you

and a band? It's a full band. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's a 10 or 11 piece band. I mean, it used to be a band called Turquoise.

Oh, yeah. Jerry told me about it. Two of the members left and my bass player from my trio, Julie Slick, is now taking the place of the bass player from my trio, Julie Slick, is now taking the place of the bass player. But yeah, we've got a three-piece horn section, two backup girl singers.

It's a big deal. It's a big deal. We've got at least three or four keyboards. You do on most of the singing? Like three or four guys who play. We play guitar. We share it because no one, we don't really want to appear to be, oh, I'm trying to be

David Byrne. Right. So Jerry will do some, I'll do some. The baritone saxophone player, Josh, does some. But you do a couple of your,

a couple of Baloo songs too, no? We only do Thalehun Jinjit from King Crimson. I thought that was more appropriate for that band

because of the size and I wanted to use the horn sections and the percussion and stuff. Yeah. It really fits that song well. We do a real cool version of it.

It's more almost Talking Heads meets King Crimson version. Oh, wow. Really, truly. But yeah, I sing, you know, I think I sing out of 15 or 16 songs, I think five. Okay. Yeah.

And Jerry seems great. I had a great time with him. Oh, I love Jerry. Great guy. He's great. Jerry has really been helpful in my career a lot of times. He's the one who really got me on Remain in Light and really got me on the tour, Tarking Heads tour.

And we've kept in touch over the years and seen each other a lot of times. He produced a record, for example, God Shuffled His Feet, that record, and called me in to play on that song. So we've bounced ideas back and forth. Whose record was that? Crash Test Dummies.

Oh, okay. Yeah, big record. And do you stay in touch with Eno? A little bit, but I don't really have that kind of relationship where I feel free to just call him with nothing. But I did talk to him a couple of years back and it was nice conversation yeah we were we were trying to do something a technical uh streaming kind of service thing that fell apart before it even got see he's another guy who i love and but like at some point

it's like oh my god he's done 19 records since the last record i bought yeah i mean what am i gonna do yeah you can't keep up with it. I understand. Yeah, yeah. His records are great. Oh, yeah. Another one I like

is saying like that is Andy Partridge with XTC's, another friend of mine. He's just prolific as heck. Yeah, he's another guy who's mad at me

for interviewing Todd Rundgren. Oh, Todd Rundgren, let's talk about Todd. Yeah. Did you ever work with him? Yeah, I just did

his new solo record. Me and I wrote a new song together, co-wrote the song called Puzzle. When's that coming out? It's out. Oh, it is? It's out, Puzzle. You got to hear it. It's very good.

Okay. So Todd called me one day and he said, I'm doing this record where I'm going to finish songs with other people. Okay. I'm going to co-write with people by doing it that way. Do you have any unfinished songs? Yeah. Are you kidding?

Yeah. How many do you want? He said, well, send me four. I said, okay. I sent him four. Yeah. He calls me back eventually and said, okay,

I want to work with this one here. Yeah. And I had already done the music and the verses of it. Didn't even have a title yet. He said, I'm going to do the rest of the, I'll do the choruses and the rest, some more of the music and produce it.

And he did and I loved what he did with it. Because the original song was kind of down. It's you know, people struggling and that kind of imagery. Yeah. And he said, you know, it's kind of a down thing. I'm gonna make it uplifting for you. I said, good luck, buddy. But it's exactly what he did oh wow so i was really so pleased with it it's great so it's on his new record oh that's

great yeah all right man it was great talking to you you know you're wonderful i appreciate it man you too really are and i've had a lot of people fans and friends of mine say they've listened to you for years oh yeah you're a very popular man well thank you and i i was honored've listened to you for years. Oh, yeah. You're a very popular man. Well, thank you. And I was honored to talk to you. I was concerned about keeping up because, like, you know, I know there's some deep Crimson people. And I always worry about the deep Crimson people if I'm going to talk to you. But I think we did all right. I must have said a million words by now about Frank and King Crimson and David.

It was all great. It was all great. You know, we touched on everything. Beautiful. So that was great. Well, thanks, man. Well, thanks, man. Well, thanks, Mark. Okay, there you go.

Adrian and Jerry Harrison are performing songs from Talking Heads Remain in Light next week at the Wiltern Theater in LA. Get tickets

at thewilturn.net. You can get Adrian's albums at adrianballoud.net. There's a lot of them. Dig in, man man you're never going to hear somebody else that sounds like that and what an influence he's had and what an influence has been had on him

alright look you guys hang out for a second you can get anything you need with Uber Eats well almost almost anything so no you can't get snowballs on uber eats but meatballs and mozzarella balls yes we can deliver that uber eats get almost almost anything order now product availability may vary by region see app for details discover the timeless elegance of cozy where furniture meets innovation designed in canada the sofa collections are not just elegant, they're modular, designed to adapt and evolve with your life.

Reconfigure them anytime for a fresh look or a new space. Experience the cozy difference with furniture that grows with you, delivered to your door quickly and for free. Assembly is a breeze, setting you up for years of comfort and style. Don't break the bank. Cozy's Direct2 model ensures that quality and value go hand in hand. Transform your living space today with Cozy. Visit Cozy.ca, that's C-O-Z-E-Y, and start customizing your furniture. Okay, look, people, on Thursday, Sam Rockwell is back on the show.

He was on back in 2016, episode 695. You can go listen to that now for free. It's available in the free feed. Richard Linkletter was also on that episode. There was actually a lot for me and Sam to talk about since the last time he was on. He won an Oscar. He was in American Buffalo on Broadway, which I saw. We made The Bad Guys together, a number one box office movie. Made the Bad Guys Together, a number one box office movie. So it was good reconnecting with Sammy. This week, I'm in Boulder, Colorado at the Boulder Theater on Thursday, September 22nd, and Fort Collins, Colorado at the Lincoln Center on Friday, September 23rd.

I'm in Toronto, Ontario at the Queen Elizabeth Theater on September 30th and October 1st. Then I'm in Livermore, California at the Bankhead Theater on October 6th. And Carmel by the Sea, California at the Sunset Center on October 7th. I'll be in London, England at the Bloomsbury Theater Saturday and Sunday, October 22nd and 23rd. And I'll be in Dublin, Ireland at Vicar Street Wednesday, October 26th. Then in November and December in Oklahoma City, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Long Street, Wednesday, October 26th, then in November and December in Oklahoma City, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Long Beach, California, Eugene, Oregon, Bend, Oregon, Asheville, North Carolina,

and Nashville, Tennessee. And my HBO special taping at Town Hall in New York City is on Thursday, December 8th. Go to WTFpod.com slash tour for all dates and ticket info. And before we go, friends, here's some familiar guitar. guitar solo Thank you. guitar solo guitar solo boomer lives monkey and lafonda cat aims everywhere