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GP takes a look at the Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Talking Heads and Nine Inch Nails (to name a few) veteran's sprawling collection.
“I just love guitars,” says Adrian Belew. “Every one of them has its own temperament and personality.”
Best known for the wildly innovative guitar work he has done alongside Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Talking Heads, Nine Inch Nails, and many others; his role as the frontperson of prog-rockers extraordinaire King Crimson from the ’80s to the ’00s; and for his 18 eclectic solo albums, Belew has also acquired more than a few guitars over the years. His collection, which numbers about 60 instruments altogether, is as eclectic, unpredictable, and extraordinary as his musical career.
“I own way too many guitars,” he notes. “I’m going to thin the herd pretty soon. I still have almost all the guitars I’ve used in my career, and a lot of manufacturers have given me stuff—which I’m very grateful for. But I own about ten guitars that I’ve basically never played, and it would really be best to pass those along to someone else.”
Belew’s guitar collection resides in two climate-controlled rooms in his Nashville home—acoustics in one, electrics in another. Nearby is the so-called “magic closet,” which contains pretty much every amplifier and effects device he has gathered over nearly five decades of playing—all of them connected to a single patch bay for easy recording in his home studio.
“I’ve got my original Roland JC-120s in there, Fender Twins, Supros, Johnsons, and the Foxx Tone Machine fuzz box that I used to make the first sound you hear on Lone Rhino [his 1982 solo debut].”
When Belew goes on the road with Gizmodrome—a newly formed “supergroup” consisting of drummer/lead vocalist Stewart Copeland, bassist extraordinaire Mark King, and keyboardist Vittorio