In Part One of my interview with Adrian Belew we talked about being on tour, putting a band together and what it takes to keep a long term project on track. We also talked about working with different musicians throughout his career.
In
one of your tours through San Francisco I
noticed you were using some equipment from Line 6. Can you tell
us about your current guitar and amp set-up?
Right
now I’m using a pretty interesting combination of things.
In the world of amplifiers I became very reliant on the early modeling
amps called Johnson Amps which were made, I believe by the company
DigiTech and I wrote so much of my material with things that I
discovered in those amps. Unfortunately they closed up that leg
of their company. So there are no more Johnson Amps and there is
no more support for them and they are very rare and here I am stuck
with two of them that I use. And a lot of the material that I wrote
can only really happen through those amps so I use them. When I
say they can only really happen, it’s because I wrote specific
sounds and types of looping and things that I just can’t
seem to make other amps do. Eventually, about two years ago I went
with Line 6. They are also a great modeling company and they are
probably the best one in the world and naturally they are famous
for all of their pedals and they put together these packages that
are amazing because you can get everything in one package. And
what I’m trying to do now is gradually move more to the Line
6 products. What I’ve got now is the twin Johnson Amps and
a twin set of Line 6 Vetta II’s.
What
I’m currently
doing is an interesting approach. I have two pedal boards; one
for the Line 6 and one for the Johnson’s. And so what I’m
able to do is create a sound on one of them and add something over
top of it with the other. Since most of my basic sounds were written
in the Johnson’s a lot of it starts with the Johnson’s
and then I kind of put the icing on the cake so to speak by introducing
something new from the Line 6. So if I’m playing along with
some particular sounds and I want to suddenly go to some radically
different sound, I pop the Line 6 pedal board in and then I have
a pretty unique sound there. To add to that I have one other thing.
I’ve been using a Boomerang looping pedal and running that
through a monitor amp that doesn’t do anything to change
your amplifier sound it just makes it louder. Whenever I create
a sound that I like or make a little loop, it will come discreetly
through that amp. That way Mike and Mike can hear that discreetly
and adjust the level as they want to.
How
about your recording studio?
What are you using in there?
We have, for a few years
now been using the Nuendo system which is very similar to a ProTools
system. Some producers think that it’s more friendly. I like
it very well. My Engineer, Ken Latchney has gotten so good with
it. It’s been interesting for me to watch the growth that
he’s made. Suddenly having this new technology. He was born
for it. It really is great and I love it. We still have a 48 channel
NeoTech board and I don’t think I’m going to pull that
out of my studio. First of all because I like it and it looks
impressive and we still do use it for certain things. I have a
foot, as I always have in each camp. I’ve always been kind
of pro analog and pro digital and believe that the best is the
combination of both. And there is no reason to go particularly
one way or the other. I know there are some people who hate all
things digital and there are people who would not touch anything
analog. I believe you should utilize all of the tools available.
I often make the painter analogy because I am a painter; you can
paint with an airbrush or a 3D computer program or you can draw
something with a pencil. It’s all the same, it’s just
tools and you can combine them in every way possible to get the
result you’re looking for.
So
right now my studio is comfortably out of date in the regards
that I could go out and spend tons of money updating to whatever
the latest and greatest thing is but Ken and I like where we are,
we love the sound that we’re
able to get now and so what we’ve turned our sites on is
really more to do with live shows and the live gear that you need.
We bought some boards and things for that kind of stuff, in ear
monitor system and let the studio stay where it is for the moment.
Sometimes you have to stop and say OK, I’ve got something
here, I don’t need to keep changing. I mean, there will be
a time of course when you move forward, that’s just the way
the music business is. You can’t really stick with anything
too long. There are so many options and I think that’s
the great thing about having been an artist through this period
of time. The last twenty year is just unbelievable with the
amount of possibilities that have happened.
You’ve
had two releases so far this year, Side
One and Side Two. Side Three is coming out
at the beginning of next year. Can you tell us about the recording
process and the producing of these?
Since they are
solo albums I try to do everything myself. Everything from designing
the artwork to producing and writing and playing as much of the
instrumentation and doing the singing. Basically everything happens
with me and Ken Latchney in my studio. Now there have been sometimes
when I’ve said, I can’t do this well enough, I need
to import someone else to do this. And when I make that realization
then I look around and if I need a violinist and a cello player
I find someone to come and do that. With the power trio stuff
that was on Side One there were a few pieces that I did
by myself and then realized, you know I really need a better
bass player and drummer than I am. Most of the time I can challenge
myself and do what I want to do on those instruments but for
a power trio you really need players that are specifically a
great drummer and specifically a great bass player and so I went
after people like Les Claypool and Danny Carey.
So
the answer of how do I record it? Most of the time it’s me and Ken
Latchney sitting here in my studio. My studio takes up the
entire bottom of my house and it has a fair size room for recording
and a fair size room for the mixing. It’s all been
sonically corrected by looking at computer wave forms and putting
up baffles and things to the point where the rooms are correct.
Most of the time Ken and I work everyday. There is kind of an
everyday accumulation of ideas. He comes everyday at 11:00 o’clock
and we start. For Side One, Side Two and Side
Three, those were done in between the cracks of touring
with King Crimson and the Bears. King Crimson had made a
decision that we would do a lot of touring for several years
and so as it has worked out for the last four or five years,
I’ve
had little bits and pieces of time. You know come home and be
here for two weeks before going out to tour again. And during
those periods, that’s when I put down all of my new ideas,
any new sounds I was working with, any new thoughts I had on
lyrics all were put down during those in between the cracks periods
and that’s why there is so many different kinds of music
in this package of three records. And people ask why didn’t
you just make it one record and I’ll tell you why,
because to service the music properly I found that it really
fit better when you focused on one particular thing. Side One is
mainly focused on power trio material and my ideas of how to
deal with that. If you combine it with Side Two which
is a totally different type of material, it kind of waters
down both of them. So I would rather have the listener get
a shorter package and a more focused one and that’s
why I did three separate records. Side One is power trio. Side Two is,
I don’t know how you define that music. I’l l
leave that to someone else and Side Three is really
all of the variation of things that didn’t work in
the other two ideas. Side
Three is more like most of my solo records. People tend
to say they are eclectic. They move from one style to another
and I think that’s what Side Three is. It has
a variety of different kinds of material none of which really
fit into Side
One or Side Two.
Speaking of producing, are there any up-and-coming
bands that you are working with either as a producer or a mentor?
No,
not at this point. I get a lot of offers from unknown bands and
I sort through them. There are a few people that I find interesting
right now but there is nothing that I go on to say this is what
I’m going to do. A lot of it has to be funded for one thing
and that’s a difficulty that I don’t want to take on.
I’m not a record label and I’m not a bank. So someone
else has to get those things in motion first. Usually I will find
someone eventually that I think wow this is interesting and special
and I’d like to be a part of this. What I try to do in the
world of production is a little different than some producers.
Someone was mentioning this to me the other day in an interview
that my productions don’t have a trademark to them like a
Jeff Lynne or a Todd Rundgren or someone like that where you listen
and you know that’s the producer. I approach it differently.
My idea is to produce things in a way that I feel is required to
realize the music that the artist is attempting to achieve. I never
really try to put my signature on it, what I try to do is just
accommodate what they need to do that they maybe can’t do
themselves. You know, I’ll put in ideas galore but I won’t
try to sound like Adrian Belew.
What
advice could you give to someone who is looking to really break
new ground musically and survive in the music industry today?
Well
breaking new ground, the first part of your question, has to
do with being true to yourself and being uncompromised. Developing
your own view of music comes from a lot of things that influence
you at certain points and you take those ideas and you work with
them further so new ideas occur and you synthesize all of these
different things from different places. You know, records you’ve
heard and artists you’ve
seen and things that have affected you. You’re really taking
those things and resynthesizing those into your own ideas. Let’s
face it, no one comes onto this planet and just has a brand new
way of doing everything. Everyone learns from other people and
then takes that information and rechannels it in their own way.
So if you really want to come up with something new, what you need
to do is listen to the people that you really enjoy, learn everything
you can from them and then kind of turn that spigot off. Then just
stop and try to work within yourself, what can you do now with
this information? It
takes many years to honestly develop something and I think it
helps if you can play live because ideas always come out while
you’re playing. You play things that you didn’t
even know you can play. That’s a way of furthering your abilities
and also it’s a way of getting people to know who you are
and what you’re doing.
Surviving
in the music industry, that is tough because it’s ever changing. It was changing as I
came into it in the 80’s and it’s changing still. I’m
not really sure how to survive in it. My own advice is to do a
lot of different things. That’s what I’ve done. There
are people out there who have done nothing but one thing and they
survived on that but for me I’ve always felt that if you
do a little of this and a little of that, first of all your calendar
can be filled in a little easier. Therefore you can stay in the
game of having the music business be your living and that’s
a difficult task. Secondly, you increase your networking, you meet
a lot of different kinds of people, you increase your knowledge
so that’s why I try to do everything that I can possibly
do. Even playing other instruments is helpful because you get a
different background and a different sense of music than just playing
one instrument all of the time. It is very hard these days in the
music business. I don’t have any solid advice cause I’m
searching myself. I don’t think that you ever get to the
point unless you’re a superstar and you’ve made so
much money that you don’t have to ever make anymore money.
I don’t think you can ever get to the point in the music
business that you can feel comfortable and say OK now I’m
fine. Everybody has to continually reinvent themselves and reinvent
their music and struggle to get to the next spot with it.
If
you’re
starting out and you don’t seem like you’re getting
anywhere with it, don’t worry about it. Just keep going because
it’s the same for everybody except for a handful of people.
I mean really there are a very few people out there who are fortunate
enough. I remember one time talking to Frank Zappa and he said
if he were starting out now he didn’t even think he could
get a record deal because the climate changes from season to season
and from decade to decade and even quicker than that. Whereas in
the 60’s Frank Zappa was just weird enough that it was great.
Who knows, in the 2000’s he would just be too weird. No one
would get it and want to sign it. The Bears for example are a pretty
straight-forward pop band to me. We write three and a half minute
pop songs. I don’t understand why no one in the record business
is interested in putting that music out. I guess that time has
just passed us by. That’s OK. We find other ways to deal
with it. You have to be really smart in the business part of it
and if you’re not, which most musicians are not
including myself, you have to collaborate with someone
who is.
Is
there anything else you’d like to
add?
Only this one thing, having said all of the things
that I’ve said, some of which might be taken to be sort of
depressing. If you’re born to make music, you make music
and I wouldn’t care right now if no one heard what I was
doing or liked it. I would still be doing it. I think it’s
a passion and commitment that you have and you just close your
eyes to the rest of it. Don’t worry too much about it. Life
kind of takes care of itself if you’re working hard.
Steve Beck founded OnlineRock in 1999 as a place for musicians to post music and share information. In 2001 Beck launched OnlineRock Records which has released music from Gregory Paul, Autumdivers and Ike Willis (former Zappa front man). He has traveled to Sierra Leone, Montenegro and Zambia on behalf of the US State Department to talk to musicians about the industry. As time permits, Beck records and performs with Julie Cornett under the band name Needle. Contact him at steve@onlinerock.com
