Paul Reed Smith Ends the Tonewood Debate

Adrian Belew has spent his career on the cutting edge of guitar sounds, inventing the most forward-thinking tones to ever appear on record. His work as a solo artist and with King Crimson would be enough to land him on every guitarist’s radar. But that’s just one facet of his musical life, and he’s famously spent time with some of the biggest artists of all time: David Bowie, Frank Zappa, Talking Heads, Nine Inch Nails. He even appears in places you’d never expect experimental guitar, like Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al.”

To talk about Adrian, we called up Blair White. As co-owner of Nashville’s Eastside Music Supply, White and Belew struck up a friendship and they ended up working together to decode some of the tones that Belew needed for the much-lauded Beat tour and beyond. Blair gives us some insight into Belew’s playing, his process, and helps us solve a mystery.