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“Everybody’s doing something completely different from each other” Adrian Belew on what made King Crimson different to other 80s bands
“Even Frank Zappa — love him so much — would have parts where people were playing the same lines together, but we weren’t allowed to do that in King Crimson.”
Image: Scott Dudelson / Getty Images
As prog-rock royalty, King Crimson’s contributions to the genre is nothing short of revolutionary. While the 80s were swarming with a cacophony of bands vying for attention, former King Crimson singer/ guitarist Adrian Belew says that the group managed to stand out from their peers because every member was “doing something completely different from each other”.
In a recent chat with Rick Beato, Belew explains that King Crimson was able to carve a niche for themselves by challenging the norms of both jazz fusion (where improvisation was key) and prog rock (with its meticulously planned arrangements).
“One thing that separated King Crimson of the 80s from either of those things is the fact that we will never play anything in unison,” Belew says [via Ultimate Guitar].
“Like, in a jazz [fusion] band, they’ll play lines in unison. We never did that. We started right in, everybody’s doing something completely different from each other. And I think that’s a big difference, musically, why that music has what it has. Even Frank Zappa — love him so much — would have parts where people were playing the same lines together, but we weren’t allowed to do that in King Crimson.”
“It was a conscious thing,” he continues. “I personally really enjoyed that, because I thought it really did separate us. You never would go, ‘Oh, we’ve heard that in every other band.’”
Adding that overdubs “rarely” occurred, Belew says: “That was another thing that Robert wanted. We write the songs to be a four-piece, we record them that way. And we go and play them live that way.”
“Another thing we always [did] was, we would write to get the arrangements and start rehearsing. Then we’d go out and play a short little tour before we finished the songs. We’d go test-drive this material, we’d go back, finish it, and then we’d finally record. That’s worked almost through my whole tenure [in King Crimson].”
Belew, joined by Steve Vai, Tony Levin, and Danny Carey, will hit the road this fall as supergroup Beat on an extensive tour across North America performing material from King Crimson’s iconic 80s albums Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair.
Learn more about the tour on Beat’s website.