David Bowie Gift to Guitarist Pal, Adrian Belew
by Best Classic Bands Staff
David Bowie, Tokyo Dome, May 16, 1990
In 1990, Adrian Belew was serving as the musical director and guitarist for David Bowie’s Sound+Vision tour. The longtime King Crimson member released his fifth solo album, Young Lions, to coincide with the exposure he’d be getting since they were playing stadiums. And if you were David’s friend, well… he would apparently go to the mat for you. Two Bowie compositions appear on the gifted guitarist’s Young Lions, including “Pretty Pink Rose.”
Bowie had announced that his Sound+Vision tour would be the last where he would perform his back catalog live. Since many of the dates were at stadiums, perhaps this was a way to fill north of 50,000 seats each night. All told, the Sound+Vision tour played 108 dates in 27 countries in less than seven months. (They typically played seven shows every ten days.)
As he told Music Express magazine: “It’s time to put about 30 or 40 songs to bed and it’s my intention that this will be the last time I’ll ever do those songs completely, because if I want to make a break from what I’ve done up until now, I’ve got to make it concise and not have it as a habit to drop back into.”
Watch him perform in 1990 during the tour
So alongside such Bowie treasures as “Changes,” “Suffragette City,” “Rebel Rebel,” “Space Oddity,” “Young Americans” and “Let’s Dance” was a little song he wrote for his pal Adrian Belew. It wails…
This live performance from 1990 of this largely overlooked gem is our Classic Video.
Belew was born December 23, 1949. See him on tour in 2025 with Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison. Tickets are available here. Many of Belew’s recordings are available here.
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1 Comment so far
Jump into a conversationAt first listen, I thought Adrian had missed his first vocal cue. Then I realize that he was singing, but that both his mic, and at some points even his guitar, were turned way down in the mix.