 |
|
 |
|
|
|
Adrian Belew
tourdates
offical Web site
"It's a lot of fun because everybody just comes down and stays at my place for the weekend, brings their latest songs, we pick one, we go in the studio, we learn it, and then we record it."
"I'm hoping…the next solo record, being the first one I've made in a while…will attract enough attention that maybe a bit of a new audience will come along, maybe some Primus or Tool fans that don't know my music very well."
|
|
|
|
8.11.04
Running Wild with the Lone Rhinoceros: Adrian Belew (cont.)
by Greg Prato
Mt: And what are the Bears currently up to?
AB: The Bears were here just a couple of weekends back. We had been doing weekend recordings on and off — that's the way we've done these last couple of records. And it's a lot of fun because everybody just comes down and stays at my place for the weekend, brings their latest songs, we pick one, we go in the studio, we learn it, and then we record it. It sounds exciting and fresh. We've had three sessions now like that for this next record, and we have eight songs in the box. So what we'd like to do is one more session, which will bring us up to ten or eleven songs, and that'll be enough I think, because the music that we're making currently is even better than the last record. It's more mature. It's got a lot of really heavy playing to it, and yet, there's still a body of songs that naturally comes with the four of us all being writers. So I think that the Bears album is really in very good shape, and I expect to really finish it by the fall.
Mt: How was it working with William Shatner recently?
AB: I haven't heard any more of how that's proceeding, but it was a lot of fun. Bill Shatner is quite a character: I guess he's 70 years old, but he seems like he's 13. He's got more energy than just about anybody I've ever known. It was a lot of fun working with him. It was pretty impromptu — we had Ben Folds, John Painter, and the drummer was my friend Matt Chamberlain, who's played with Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, and many famous artists. And so it was quite a good band that just got together, and made music behind his poetry readings. And Henry was there too. What is Henry's name?
Mt: Henry Rollins?
AB: Yeah! Sorry, I couldn't remember Henry's name. Sorry there Henry, I love you Henry! I was thinking Henry Kaiser, who is a guitarist. Henry Rollins was there too, so you had him and Bill kind of sparring verbally, and then in the background you had this really good band that was making interesting music behind it. So I'm really anxious to hear how it turns out, and I was happy to be a part of it.
Mt: Did you play on one song or on the whole album?
AB: No, I played on a couple of songs — I went there more than once. The first night I played on a couple of songs, and then I spoke with Bill about one particular piece that he wanted to know if I could devise some music for. Kind of a Japanese haiku poem, and I said, 'Sure, I've got something here that I think I can do with that.' I played him some ideas, and he said, 'Let's come back tomorrow and do that.' That one was pretty much just me and Bill. I don't know if it will turn out that way, but we'll see.
Mt: And what's the status of the your long-planned box set, Dust?
AB: It's always been my plan to put Dust out after the next solo record. And now since it's turned into three records, I suppose it's on its way. The music is done; all we really need is to get the biography part of it together. And I think we've taken a big step towards that, because recently I spent about two weeks going through all the archive stuff that we have — videotapes, pictures, articles, you name it. And we put together a DVD that shows kinda an overview of the extent of my career. It's really wonderful, it's got film from Frank Zappa, the Talking Heads, David Bowie, it's got every album on there that I've played on, and music from a lot of different things — and me talking about all of it. So it's a DVD that would accompany something like Dust, and I think it's moved just a notch forward. But essentially, Dust is meant to come out after this next run of solo records, so I'm not in as much of a hurry. What I'm hoping will happen is the next solo record, being the first one I've made in a while, I'm hoping it will attract enough attention that maybe a bit of a new audience will come along, maybe some Primus or Tool fans that don't know my music very well. So after that it would make sense to follow it up with a record like Dust that educates everyone.
Mt: So is it safe to say that Dust should appear sometime next year?
AB: Yeah, when I talked to Sanctuary, I said, 'By the time we're putting out the third record from this trilogy of solo records, I'd like to have Dust ready to follow that. Or be there at the same time.'
Mt: One last question — in the Talking Heads book, This Must Be the Place: The Adventures of Talking Heads in the Twentieth Century, there's a bit where Tina Weymouth supposedly asked you to replace David Byrne. Fact or fiction?
AB: No, that's true actually. First there was talk — she and David were… I don't know. The whole time I was in that band, for that whole year, there was a lot of tension between the band. They were trying to sort out who had contributed what mainly. So there were two sides — there was the David Byrne/Brian Eno team, and there was Tina Weymouth/Chris Frantz, which went on to become the Tom Tom Club. There was two sides to the argument — I was stuck in the middle of it, not wanting to be there at all, because I loved all of those people and all of the music. There was a time on tour in Italy when she was asking me about doing that, and I was refusing to do that because I was smart enough to know that David Byrne was really integral. [laughs] When I went down to the Bahamas and worked with Chris and Tina on what would become the Tom Tom Club record, at that point they seriously asked me to join the Talking Heads with David still in the band — become the fifth member. But… there was a problem. David was in Bali, and unreachable by phone, he was going to be there for three or four weeks, so there was no way to get the entire band to convene and say, 'Yes, we'd like Adrian to join the band.' This was exactly at the same time that Robert Fripp was calling me a third and fourth time, saying, 'We're ready, are you joining the band?' So my manager at the time said, 'Well, here's what you have. You have a non-offer and you have an offer.' [laughs] There's no sense entertaining the non-offer, because it's not an offer.' So I joined King Crimson. I would have liked to have done either of those things. As it turned out, it's worked really well for everyone — Talking Heads went on and did quite well without me! [laughs]
top of page page 1 of interview
|
|
|
