Adrian Belew - Musical Style

Musical Style

Belew is best known as an unorthodox but accessible guitarist, with a playing style featuring bizarre electronic tones, unorthodox playing techniques and a wide variety of sonic effects (including guitar-based impressions of animals, birds, insects, vehicles and mechanical noise). Among his best-known guitar playing is the riff to Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love", the overdriven solos on Talking Heads' "The Great Curve", the wild slide melodies on his own Top 10 hit "Oh Daddy" and the careening elephant impressions on King Crimson's "Elephant Talk".

Part of Belew's sound creation involves physical techniques including tapping, pick scrapes, bending the neck, unorthodox use of the guitar slide and occasionally employment of objects (such as files) to attack the strings. In his riffs, he generally includes fret intonation work, and is even known to produce sounds from off the fret board, including the stringed portion of the nut and bridge. He is widely considered to be a master of the tremolo arm (whammy bar), something which he humorously referred to in his song "Twang Bar King" (which itself features a particularly demented whammy-bar solo).

Belew also uses a wide variety of heavily synthesized and electronically altered guitar tones. Over the years he has become known for playing various guitars processed through an immense array of electronic effects devices ("I’m surrounded by guitar pedals though, I can’t step out the ring I’m surrounded in without stepping on a pedal," he told Adelaide.now in 2008.) He has also stated that he composes specifically for certain amps and effects. Lamenting the demise of one specific amplifier made by now-defunct Johnson Amplification, he said, "I wrote specific sounds and types of looping and things that I just can’t seem to make other amps do." While he has used many brands of effects pedals, Electro Harmonix was one of his mainstays.

Belew is a pioneer of guitar synthesizers, having been one of the first players to bring them to (and consistently use them in) popular music. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was a user of the Roland GR300 (alongside Andy Summers, Pat Metheny and Robert Fripp). In the late 1980s and the 1990s, he used the Roland GR1. He now favours the Line 6 Variax digital modelling system. In the early 1980s, Belew was notable for owning and using a rare Roland GR505 fretless guitar synthesizer.

Belew's first guitar was a Gibson Firebird that he bought for $170. Belew now has a signature Parker Fly guitar, the company's first.

Belew has also been seen playing an extraordinarily flexible rubber-neck guitar in the Laurie Anderson film Home Of The Brave and in the video clip for his 1989 single "Oh Daddy". In 2007, he revealed that the guitar's neck was rubber containing "metal vertebrae" and that it was solely a visual (and unplayable) prop.

In addition to his readily recognisable guitar sounds, Belew is noted for the distinct, nasal, sometimes manic feel of his vocals. His singing voice is often compared to that of David Byrne, singer with Talking Heads, with whom Belew worked between 1979 and 1981. (During a particularly fraught period of Talking Heads' history, Belew was invited to replace Byrne but declined.)

Belew has cited Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Jeff Beck, Igor Stravinsky and George Gershwin as particular influences.