Could you chronicle the guitar progression you've taken from Zappa to your current position with King Crimson?
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| "Playing with Zappa was almost like being in college, where you're learning things in a more formatted structure. Frank was the first person to show me how to play in odd time signatures. His music was very demanding and very regimented. The main idea was to play it correctly and play it consistently. I was working with a lot of those concepts and that was good for me at that point in my life. I'd never had any discipline up till that point. I'd only been playing in bar bands. My stint with David Bowie was concurrent with the growth of my guitar system and available sounds that I had. I was very encouraged by people like David and Brian Eno to really go wild and try a lot of ideas, sounds, and concepts. I'd worked towards that for a long time. My whole approach to guitar was not one of learning to play it properly and learning scales and notes and practicing  it was one of how can you make the guitar sound interesting? So here was David Bowie giving me carte blanche to do that. The same was really true in the next step, with King Crimson, but on top of that I had to learn to play like Robert Fripp in order to accommodate the interlocking Guitar Craft style of playing the he so favored in the '80s. The first thing we did together was we sat down and worked out [scats fast pattern ] Da da Da da da Da da Da da da endlessly. Hours and hours of that, which turned into songs like "Discipline." That was all very new to me. It required a picking technique I was unaccustomed to. And it was another discipline very similar to what I went through with Frank Zappa. On top of that I was suddenly saddled with the idea that I was going to be the vocalist and the lyricist and part songwriter and guitar partner and frontman. And there were a lot of rhythmic things to absorb. I got a lot of encouragement and support from [drummer] Bill Bruford. He was a very willing compass. He loves to show you ideas."
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In your initial introductions to Zappa, Bowie and Fripp, each wanted you in his band after hearing you play on stage. Were they all hearing the same thing?
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| "That's hard for me to know, but probably not. I think I could summarize it this way: Frank told me he liked me for my unusual guitar techniques. But he liked me more because in his estimation I was a very good singer. He needed someone who could sing and play guitar, which he couldn't do himself. He liked that combination. Bowie wanted a guy who could play wild guitar. He turned me loose, saying: "I want you to be my solo guitarist. Make a lot of interesting sounds. Play the solos and add all that color." That was the same kind of thing with Talking Heads. By the time it reached the Crimson stage, Robert had sussed out that I was a songwriter, a singer, a possible frontman, and a stunt guitarist as Frank Zappa once called me [laughs]. Robert put the pieces together in a way that I had been waiting for all along. He wanted me to be a part of the whole band and not just an add-on. That was my first real opportunity to persue the things that all along I thought I would do."
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That is, be frontman, pop stylist, and experimental guitarist?
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| "Yes. It's the perfect band for that combination. Before I joined the band I had been a big fan of all the stuff they'd done in the '70s, and historically that band always had a combination of cutting-edge, avant-garde, instrumental sections broken up by very well-crafted songs like "I Talk To The Wind" and "Cadence And Cascade." There's a whole catalogue of those songs. And I thought that was always the most brilliant thing about King Crimson. The band had such musical chops and integrity but could use them in both areas and not be limited to just playing songs or muscular instrumental things. The band has continued in that fashion, which offers me a forum of the very best two things that I do. I bounce back and forth between those two areas."
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How does a Belew/Fripp collaboration begin?
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| "It usually starts quietly. I have a studio here in my house, and it's very private. I've converted the whole downstairs of the house, and there's living quarters there as well, and that's where Robert stays when we work together. At first, we might not even plug in. It's just the two of us with electric guitars sitting on chairs in a room. We'll go over ideas that each of us have. So there's conversation reference points, what type of sounds this would include. If they're instrumental compositions, they'll usually be guided by Robert, and in that case I'll become his soundboard and work out parts with him. Then he can take those ideas away and fine-tune the compositions. That's how we worked on "VROOOM" as well as "VROOOM VROOOM" and "THRAK". If it's a song it will be just the opposite: then it'll be in my lap. Robert may have a few chord changes and he'll continue to ask me, "Where does this go from here?" It starts with us together and then we go off privately to work on it by ourselves.
With "VROOOM" Robert would bring in different sections to work on. Sometimes Trey Gunn would help us as well. After I gave my input, Robert would take that away and work on it some more, but it's really his song, his composition."
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In "VROOOM" you play two different unison figures, yet you're in different tunings.
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| "Well, I don't know how it is to play in Robert's tuning, but that's a very fun song to play in standard tuning. It feels real good. There's a real nice logic to how you can finger that. It always causes me to grab the whammy bar."
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Do you each talk a certain way you in musical colors and Robert in music terms?
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| "It's not so cut and dried. We each have our own musical vocabulary, and it's often reference points to things we know and do. It can be guitar sounds. Robert will say, "I want you to use your big clouds right here." Or if we're still in the talking stage, we'll say "This can have the same heavy sound that 'Red" has. We'll use our own work as reference points because that's the simplest way to do it."
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The stage demeanor between you and Robert couldn't be more different. Does that contribute to the band's musical dynamic?
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| "Yes, but I think that's just natural, it's the way we are as people. Robert is very reserved and focused, which is exactly who he is. My jumping around and having fun attitude is more who I am. I think both our presences are necessary for the band. But I think that's true of everybody. Each person brings his own weight to the band and his own levity. Robert offstage can often be very funny. I'm busy trying to have fun and be funny onstage. Who knows? Maybe offstage I'm not as funny as I think I am."
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What's it like at a Paul Simon session versus a Nine Inch Nails session?
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| "Paul's very particular and wants exactly what he wants. He's not really looking so much for your input. When you work with Trent Reznor it's almost the opposite. He says, "What would you do here?" and you offer about five suggestions and he picks from them. Most of my sessions are of the Trent Reznor nature. Most people call me expecting me to show up and do something wild. A lot of times I go away from those sessions and I've put so much stuff down on tape I have no idea what's going to end up on the record or not. And I get the record a couple of months later like everyone else in the world and there it is and I discover what I've played [laughs].
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Do you have to be a quick study to survive with disciplined bandleaders like Zappa, Fripp, and Laurie Anderson?
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| "Oh yeah, I think you do. You have to be thinking fast and be ready to go. I learn by rote very quickly. I think King Crimson has helped me sharpen those skills as well by the way. This band works quickly both in the studio and in rehearsal. When we went to Japan to rehearse for this tour we learned three songs in two days very difficult songs. In fact, one of those songs we learned from a Guitar Magazine transcription
"Three Of A Perfect Pair." We had to learn that song from your magazine."
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How was the transcription?
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| "It was very accurate and very good. I still have no idea how I played that solo you transcribed [laughs]. That was very helpful. [See our Aug/95 issue of which we are now infinitely proud ed.]
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What setup are you using these days?
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| "I use a MIDI guitar system. It's all MIDI and all stereo, run by a MIDI Mitigator by Butler. If you like a sound you can call it a patch, give it a name, and even program in a song. So when I'm on stage, let's say I'm playing the song "Dinosaur," and it has five different guitar sounds, there they are in front of me, and they're named A, B, C, D, E. This allows me to shuffle through them at the proper time. It's just a way to quickly move from one thing to the next. Everything is built around several guitar synthesizers and several guitar processors. The main guitar processing units I use are two Korg A3's. They may be a little outdated now, but I've written so many nice things with them that I'm still enjoying them a lot. They give me all my basic distortions and delays, flanging, chorusing all those things.
"The two synthesizers I'm using are the Roland GR-50 and GR-1. They do different things. On the GR-50 you can assign two different sounds to each string, which are activated by the way you touch it. It's not easy to program but there's a lot of versatility with the internal sounds. The GR-1 is almost just the opposite. It's a very friendly instrument for making up your own sounds. So I need those combinations, because what I primarily do is design my own sounds. I don't like to use sampling; I'm more intrigued by achieving the sound and creating the sound rather than just replicating the sound. I also use a Fox Tone and a Frequency Analyzer, old devices from the '60s that are unique and that I've used on my records. I've had them MIDI'd and rackmounted so I can use them in my setup. On the overall system I have a Roland 330 delay, and it comes up on a pedal anytime I want it. So you can have any delay you're already using and then bring in the 330 on top of that. Then I have two older boxes called Roland RPS-10's. A lot of people ask me how I get that backwards guitar sound, and that's what does it. They were never advertised as being able to make backwards guitar sounds, but there's one little setting on it called "Inverse," which allows you to sample a little bit of the guitar and turn it around backwards as you're playing. You have to learn the technique of playing a little ahead of where you want to be. But after you've mastered that, it's really a lot of fun."
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