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Zappa was impressed enough to hire Belew on a handshake deal for a year. Belew's second audition was a more intimate one-on-one experience which took place in Zappa's living room. Believing that he'd messed up his first audition, Belew persuaded Zappa to give him a second one. Once the formal invitation came, Belew flew out to Los Angeles and found himself auditioning alongside more formally trained musicians.
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Zappa approached Belew and discussed auditioning him for an upcoming tour, although Belew did not receive an official invitation to audition for the better part of a year. In 1977, while playing at a Sweetheart gig at Fanny's Bar in Nashville, Belew was discovered by Frank Zappa, who had been tipped off regarding the band's talents by his chauffeur. By 1977, he was playing with the regionally popular cover band Sweetheart, but wondering whether (at age 27) he had missed his chance to make a living with original music.
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In the mid-1970s, Belew began using the first name "Adrian" and moved to Nashville to pursue a full-time career as a professional musician.
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He eventually found his own sound and style by learning how to make his guitar mimic sound effects such as car horns, animal noises, or industrial sounds and then applying those sounds to relatively standard songs. While maturing as a player and mastering various playing styles, Belew became increasingly preoccupied with ways to avoid "sounding like everybody else". Mostly teaching himself by listening to records, he was ignorant of the studio trickery and sound manipulation used to create particular guitar lines, and so found ways of replicating them himself manually using unusual playing techniques and a growing interest in effects and treatments. Not inclined to formal music study, Belew was nonetheless a quick developer and rapidly became a high school guitar hero.
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At the age of 17, he was further inspired by a club performance of blues rock guitar soloing pioneer Lonnie Mack, who later became a close friend. Inspired by Jimi Hendrix, he took up guitar while he was bedridden for several months with mononucleosis. Initially known to friends and classmates as "Steve", he played drums in his teen years, playing with the Ludlow High School marching band and later with the high school cover band the Denems. Robert Steven Belew was born into a middle-class family in Covington, Kentucky, on December 23, 1949. Belew has also worked in instrument design and multimedia, collaborating with Parker Guitars to help design his Parker Fly signature guitar, and designing his own iOS mobile apps, "FLUX by belew" and "FLUX:FX, the multi-effect audio processor app."īiography Early life (1949–1977) He released a top-10 single in 1989 with " Oh Daddy", and his 2005 single "Beat Box Guitar" was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. In addition, Belew has been a member of the intermittently active pop band the Bears, and fronted GaGa in the late 1970s and early 1980s.īelew has worked extensively as a session, guest and touring musician, including periods with the Frank Zappa and David Bowie bands, Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, and Nine Inch Nails, as well as contributing to hit singles by Paul Simon, Tom Tom Club, and others. He has also released nearly twenty solo albums for Island Records and Atlantic Records in a range of blended or alternated styles including art rock, New Wave, Beatles-inspired pop-rock, progressive rock and experimental noise. Widely recognized as an "incredibly versatile player", Belew is perhaps best known for his long career as singer and guitarist in the progressive rock group King Crimson between 19. A multi-instrumentalist primarily known as a guitarist and singer, he is noted for his unusual and impressionistic approach to his guitar tones (which, rather than relying on standard instrumental tones, often resemble sound effects or noises made by animals and machines).
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Robert Steven " Adrian" Belew (born December 23, 1949) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer.
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