Customer Reviews

Young Lions

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This is a great album. Though I was familiar with Adrian Belew for his work with King Crimson and David Bowie, Young Lions surpassed my expectations.

The album resonates with its own verve. The songs are all good, the lyrics are full of images and the guitar work is as belew as it gets. It's a very listenable album, and representative of an idiosyncratic pop stylist. Belew carves his own niche with his manic guitar style and vocal wail (reminiscent of Bowie in some ways yet distinctive in itself).

The killer track here for Bowie fans is "Pretty Pink Rose". (As a sidenote, Bowie seemed to fare better in one-off outings with other artists in this era including Pat Methany and Mick Ronson.) PPR is easily one of Bowie's best songs from this period, and Belew makes it click all the way.

Certainly underrated by pop and rock pundits, you'll find this often in bargain bins or not at all. Worth getting.

If you are interested in Adrian Belew, Young Lions is a good place to start. What you should REALLY begin with is Inner Revolution from 1992. It's been out of print for some time, but you might get lucky. Otherwise, Young Lions and Mr. Musichead are places to start. Young Lions is Belew at his most commercial. 10 solid tracks of guitar genius. Adrian is an experimental guitar player so if you are looking for Eddie Van Halen or Steve Vai or Johnny Lang or Stevie Ray Vaughn, you will have to look elsewhere. I became a fan of Adrian when I saw his video for Oh Daddy on MTV back in 1989. Since then I have collected everything that's in print (though I wish Island records would re-release his first two albums). However, if you want an early overview you can pick up Desire of the Rhino King which compiles key tracks from his first three Island albums. If you really LOVE Belew then try King Crimson's Discipline, Beat, Three of a Perfect Pair and Thrak cds. He's also done much session work on Talking Heads, Paul Simon, David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails albums. Young Lions won't disappoint, unless you like more non-commerical fare, in which case you could try Mr. Musichead or Op Zop Too Wah.

In 1989, Adrian Belew released his crowning achievement, the understated masterpiece "Mr. Music Head". The following year, he followed it up with a decidedly schizophrenic recording, "Young Lions". Once again, Belew opts for the one-man-band approach, playing all of the instruments himself. He also gains ample support from friend and collaborator David Bowie, who rocks out full tilt on the first single from this release, "Pretty Pink Rose". Belew's guitar prowness is in full display and his vocals are emotional without sounding shrill. "Young Lions" also contains three absolute classics in the Belew canon; the title track is a majestic sonic landscape depicting the African veldt with drum rhythms and tribal chants working a formidable backbeat. Two tracks later, Belew reworks "Heartbeat", a song he wrote for King Crimson, and outshines the original with his shimmering guitar flourishes. The overall effect is brilliant. Track number nine, "Phone Call From the Moon", is evocative of the title; Belew's guitar work is slow, almost bluesy, and his electronically modified voice sounds distant, almost awash in the vastness of space. On these and several other pieces, Belew's songwriting is clear, focused and undeniable. However, the spectre of Belew's environmental concern raises its head in three cuts ("Looking For A U.F.O.", "Men In Helicopters" and "Gunman") to put a damper on this otherwise fluid, coherent recording. On these three tracks, the artist becomes condescending, preachy and pushy, all elements that would come to haunt his subsequent work. "Young Lions" hints at the darkness that would overtake Belew's later releases. It is the calm before the storm. It is also, along with "Inner Revolution" (strangely no longer in print) and "Mr. Music Head", Belew's best work. Personal Favorites: the propulsive beat of the African rhythms found in "Young Lions" and the wonderous retooling of his Crimson classic, "Heartbeat". Representative Lyrics: "Hot tribal night underneath florescent skies/ bonfires rage strange/ wild waving shouting Picasso faces/ in the guise of a lioness/ the wind kisses her burning dress" ("Young Lions"); "Men in helicopters fly/ shooting rhinos from out of the sky/ why do we always assume/ the planet is ours to ruin/ what a legacy we're leaving behind..." ("Men In Helicopters")

This CD is my first time hearing this artist. I wouldn't have described myself as an aficionado of progressive rock before now, but I really loved this cd. It rocks!

The standout in his catalog, Adrian Belew's "Young Lions" successfully finds common ground between Belew's pop and progressive leanings. It is also I feel the record where Belew began to establish his identity unique of his past collaborators-- the overt King Crimson and Talking Heads influences on his sound had finally been assimulated without shining as brightly as they had in the past.

The album is all over the place, the common thread being Belew's monster guitar playing and fantastic songwriting-- from tribal churning ("Young Lions") to delicate pop "Looking For a U.F.O."), eco-conscious rock ("Men in Helicopters"), ballads ("Phone Call to the Moon") and duets with David Bowie (the explosive "Pretty Pink Rose") and some crazy radio guy ("I Am What I Am"), the album covers a lot of ground. The important thing is that, quite frankly, everything is really, REALLY good. Witty lyrics, clever arrangements, and phenomenal guitar.

This is the place to begin investigating Belew's catalog. If you're already listening and you don't have it, get ahold of this-- its essential material. Highly recommended.

This is an incredible albulm. You may not get it on the first run through, but it will come to you.

This is my favorite Belew album. While Bowie fans go on about Pretty Pink Rose which is a great song, the standout as far as I'm concerned is Young Lions. A musical and sound engineering tour-de-force. Melodic, tribal beats, evocative. This song is worth the cost of the album alone. Belew is a totally original guitarist. While I hear SRV and Van Halen copy-cats every day, when Belew plays you know if can only be him. How can you copy a total original?

Released in 1990, this is Adrian Belew's fifth solo CD. It is 38 minutes long and the sound quality is very good.

Adrian Belew is an excellent, innovative and interesting performer/guitarist. He has added a lot to the groups he has played with, including Frank Zappa (in on of Zappa's best bands), King Crimson, David Bowie and the Talking Heads. But, his solo CD's have not always been great, with only a few good songs and some "unbearable" moments. However, this CD has a few great songs and nothing really bad.

He does two songs with David Bowie, Pretty Pink Rose and Gunman, which are both very good. Pretty Pink Rose is one of Belew's best songs of all time.

There are some other very good songs, like the funky, discordant I Am What I Am.

The CD has some songs that I would call filler. There is an unnecessary version of Heartbeat that he played with King Crimson. It is basically the same as the King Crimson version, but I don't think quite as good. Then there is a version of the Traveling Wilbury's Not Alone Anymore, where Belew tries to sound like Roy Orbison. He doesn't quite make it. Taken by themselves, these are pretty good songs and performances, but they aren't as good as the originals.

There are songs that are basic pop, like Looking For A UFO and Small World. They are horrible but are not the best things Belew has done.

All in all this is a fairly good CD throughout. My favorite is still his first, Lone Rhino.

THIS ALBUM IS GREAT! THIS ONE IS NOT AS PROGRESSIVE AS SOME OF HIS OTHER WORKS BUT IT IS AN ENJOYABLE LISTEN. YOUNG LIONS GETS THE CD OFF TO A GREAT START AND PRETTY PINK ROSE WITH DAVID BOWIE IS EXCELLENT. NOT ALONE ANYMORE IS A TOUCHING TRIBUTE TO ORBISON. BELEW IS A FIRST RATE MUSICIAN- CHECK OUT HIS OTHER SOLO ALBUMS SUCH AS HERE AND INNER REVOLUTION. AND OFCOURSE, CHECK OUT KING CRIMSON.

He's worked with Frank Zappa,David Bowie,King Crimson and of course Talking Heads,of which he was more or less a member at one time. Throughout much of his career he was known for his "zoo guitar",an array of communicative animal-like harmonic effects he produced on his guitar often to the accompaniment of different types of polyrhythms. This 1990 recording is not Adrian's solo debut needless to say but it did find him rather bringing together the musical influences of all those he'd worked with in the past into his own unique style. More or less this album sounds a lot like Talking Heads,circa their swansong album Naked. Interesting enough the first track on the album "Young Lions" is one of the only songs on this recording that even features any zoo guitar at all. Their are a couple of conventionally rockier songs on the album in the place of David Bowie's "Pretty Pink Rose" on which he sings as well and "Heartbeat". Both of these tunes are pretty progessive pop in the vein of XTC,Pink Floyd even Belew's old band King Crimson and are about as radio friendly and commercial (for this era) as the album gets. Considering Belew's importance to Talking Heads during their The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads era with the "expanded heads" Belew had managed to help further innovate as much possible in expanding rock n roll's rhythms with heavy doses of polyrhythmic patterns and on such songs as the environmentally conscious "Men In Helicopters" and "Small World",both of which interestingly enough make strong references to the exploitation of Africa he again expands the vocabulary into more conventional pop type melodies. "Looking For A UFO" throws in a little Holland/Dozier/Holland style Motown rhythm to the occasion with a witty lyric about searching for people from outer space to help us solve our difficulties on Earth. It's basically a pop friendly variation of Sun Ra and George Clinton's message which,considering Belew's association through the 'Heads with Bernie Worrell isn't a huge surprise. "I Am What I Am" is very much a cut-n-paste afro funk mixture of found voices (another radio preacher so it seems) not disimilar to David Byrnes projects with Brian Eno on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. The album ends on a very "Headsy" not with "Gunmen",which even finds Belew using a lot of Byrne's figity vocal inflections. Although some might view this as an attempt by Belew to cross over more into pop he was was obviously doing so by sticking to his guns rather than electing to sound like everyone else. That sense of individual vision was no doubt inspired by the musical flavors he was basing his sound on.