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Guitarist Adrian Belew has collaborated to great artistic effect with Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Cyndi Lauper, Nine Inch Nails, Tori Amos, Talking Heads, Paul Simon, Henry Rollins, Crash Test Dummies, Jars of Clay, Ben Folds and – as if that list weren’t diverse enough – William Shatner.
He has been present at the birth of such time-tested albums as “Graceland,” “Remain in Light,” “True Colors” and “The Downward Spiral.”
The only person Belew wasn’t able to make music for is Bette Midler.
“It was fun anyway,” Belew said in a phone interview. “Bette Midler asked me to write songs with her. I went to her house in L.A. and worked every day, and I just couldn’t come up with anything that was right for her.
“She wasn’t much help, either,” Belew said with a laugh. “We had a great time, and I made a new friend. But I’m not Barry Manilow.”
Even with the frequent crossing over that happens on the charts these days, it is still true that some musical genres are from Mars and some are from Venus. Yet Belew has been able to speak a language that is understood by all.
Belew is too grounded to readily agree with such an observation, but he said that one of the keys to his success with assorted artists is that he doesn’t think in terms of genre.
“I think it’s because I do have a lot of ideas,” he said. “Play me something, and I will have an idea for it. I am more about sounds than styles. I can put textures and shapes into every kind of music.”
That might be even truer now that Belew’s dream guitar is finished.
Belew will be at Sweetwater Sound, 5501 U.S. 30 West, at 7 p.m. Tuesday to unveil it.
Belew is a permanent member of two bands these days: King Crimson and the Adrian Belew Power Trio. It’s the latter he’ll be bringing to Fort Wayne.
The instrument that Belew will debut is called the Parker Adrian Belew Signature Fly Deluxe.
Bill Rowe of Parker Guitars calls it “a guitar at its highest point of evolution.”
“It is the most remarkable and revolutionary guitar yet built,” he has said.
Of course, Belew won’t just hold the thing up like he’s trying to get an appraisal on “Antiques Roadshow.” He will play it.
Belew said the length of the concert by the Adrian Belew Power Trio will be dependent on the size and enthusiasm of the crowd. The concert is free, but attendees must register at www.sweetwater.com/about/events.
Sweetwater will have a closed-circuit-TV set-up to placate the overflow, so show up early.
Belew described to me at length exactly why this guitar is so amazing, but because I am not a guitarist or guitar aficionado, it all sounded to me like Steve Martin’s routine about a parent who purposefully misuses words around a toddler, leading the child to ask her teacher, “Can I mambo dogface to the banana patch?”
You can make your own kind of sense of the guitar at www.sweetwater.com/store, where a simple search will lead to a video of Belew explaining it.
Because Belew is considered one of the most innovative guitarists in rock, it is interesting to hear that he started out as a drummer. He took up guitar only because he wanted to write songs.
“I was loving being a drummer,” he said, “but I kept wanting to write songs, and you can’t do that on drums.”
Belew was performing at a dive in Nashville, Tenn., one night in a cover band called the Sweethearts when a limo driver of Belew’s acquaintance brought in an estimable personage to hear the limo driver’s favorite band.
The estimable personage was Frank Zappa. Zappa listened for 40 minutes and offered Belew a job.
Belew said Zappa taught him more about music and the music business than anyone did before or has since. It wasn’t just that Zappa was a meticulous workaholic who insisted on many hours of practice a day.
“What Frank taught me went beyond musical things,” Belew said. “I learned how to be a professional touring and recording musician. I learned how he arranged music. I learned how to play in odd time signatures. I would not have been able to proceed into King Crimson had it not been for the time I spent with Frank.”
Belew was spirited away again when Bowie saw him perform at a Zappa concert and offered him a spot in his band.
“Bowie gave me his phone number,” Belew said. “In fact, he wrote it on my arm.
“So I had to call him,” he said, laughing.
Belew played backup on Bowie’s “Heroes” tour and contributed to his album “The Lodger.”
He followed one of the producers on “The Lodger,” Brian Eno, to another landmark rock project: Talking Heads’ “Remain in Light.”
In 1981, renowned British guitarist Robert Fripp decided to re-form his progressive rock group King Crimson and asked Belew to join.
Belew agreed, but he had a lot of reasons to be nervous.
“It wasn’t just the guitar partnership that was concerning me,” he said. “I was responsible for lyrics and melodies. I would be the front man. And we weren’t even sure what the band was going to be.
“But before too long we realized that there were certain things that I did well and certain things that he did well,” Belew said.
“I liken Robert and I to two sides of the same coin,” he said. “We have really approached guitar from very different directions. And we are literally a continent apart.”
King Crimson still simmers on the back burner, and then there’s the Power Trio, which basically rescued Belew from despair.
At the point in early 2006 when Belew was asked to perform at the Paul Green School of Rock in Philadelphia, he was feeling pretty gloomy about his musical future.
“There were times in the five years prior (to this School of Rock performance) when I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. I felt like I’d done it all. I’d kind of lost my enthusiasm. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.”
At the School of Rock, Belew met drummer Eric Slick and his sister, bassist Julie Slick.
Suddenly, Belew said, he knew he’d found “the proper trio for the material I was working on.”
“Now everything is fresh as a daisy,” he said. “All of a sudden, I can’t wait to play music. I can’t wait to play on stage.
“(Eric and Julie Slick are) so focused and so dedicated and they’re young so they don’t have such distractions as mortgages and child care,” Belew said. “They just want to play great music and they’re so good at it.
“They’ve renewed my whole license.”
