There seems to be a “Thing” going on lately, where artists get contracted for a single session, but then end up as marquee players in the act they were brought in to bolster. This
There seems to be a “Thing” going on lately, where artists get contracted for a single session, but then end up as marquee players in the act they were brought in to bolster. This happened for Jennifer Batten with the Scherer/Batten BattleZone album (read all about it in the February 2018 GP), and it also went down for Adrian Belew, when ferocious drummer—and member of the Police—Stewart Copeland asked him to put some “stunt guitar” on a recording project in Italy.
“I thought I was going to play for a couple of days on a couple of tracks, and I ended up staying ten days,” says Belew. “I thought, ‘It’s Stewart Copeland. It’s Italy. I get to hang out in the Italian sun and eat pasta. What could possibly go wrong?’”
In fact, everything went all kinds of right—so much so that Belew, Level 42 bassist Mark King, keyboardist Vittorio Cosma, and Copeland turned into a bona fide band, and released the self-titled album, Gizmodrome [earMUSIC] late last year.
“I had my family with me,” explains Belew, “so it seemed more like a vacation than anything else. But as the days went by, it was pretty clear this group of players was doing something really special, unique, and uplifting. I thought it would be a shame not to be in a band with these guys, because the music is so good. And, in the bigger picture, I think people are gravitating back to music that is performed by accomplished players—they’re waking up to good music again. But I’ve been wrong about that before…”
So how exactly did you go from guesting on a Stewart Copeland project to joining a band?
When someone brings me in to do some hairy guitar stuff, I