Work with David Bowie (1978–1979)

On the recommendation of musician/producer Brian Eno, after seeing a Zappa concert in Cologne, Germany, art-rock star David Bowie offered to hire Belew once the Zappa tour was finished. Belew accepted the offer as Zappa intended to spend four months editing the film, Baby Snakes.^[3] Belew then played on Bowie's Isolar II world tour in 1978; he played on the double live album Stage, and also contributed to Bowie's next album, Lodger. Twelve years later, he returned to working with Bowie, acting as musical director on the 1990 Sound+Vision Tour, while also playing guitar and singing.

Talking Heads, GaGa and The Tom Tom Club (1979–1982)

In 1980, Belew formed a new band, GaGa (based in his then-current hometown of Urbana, Illinois, for which he served as the singer, guitarist and primary songwriter, as well as, via backing tapes, the drummer). By now a frequent visitor to New York City, Belew had also become friends with the up-and-coming new wave/art-rock band Talking Heads. Invited to join the band onstage for performances of their signature song "Psycho Killer", Belew impressed them with his wild and unorthodox guitar soloing and became an occasional guest performer at live concerts. Around this time, Belew also met King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp at a Steve Reich concert. In July of that year, GaGa was invited to open several New York-area concerts for Fripp's band The League of Gentlemen.^[5]
At the same time, Belew had been tapped by Talking Heads and their producer Brian Eno (with whom he'd worked on Lodger) to add guitar solos to several tracks on the Remain in Light album, and was subsequently added to the expanded nine-piece Talking Heads live band for tours in late 1980 and early 1981. These concerts were documented in the DVD Live in Roma and in the second half of the band's 1982 live album The Name of This Band is Talking Heads. Belew's involvement with Talking Heads extended to playing on the band's spin-off projects. He played on keyboard player /guitarist Jerry Harrison's debut album The Red and the Black and on several tracks on David Byrne's soundtrack to the Twyla Tharp dance piece The Catherine Wheel (with his guitar noises credited, amongst other things, as "beasts").
At the time, the internal relationships in Talking Heads were particularly strained. The band's rhythm section, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, covertly approached Belew with the suggestion that he should replace Byrne as the band's frontman - an offer which Belew politely turned down.^[6] He did however go on to work with Weymouth and Frantz on their own spin-off project, Tom Tom Club. Joining them for recordings in Compass Point Studios, Nassau, Belew played rhythm guitar on the sessions for the band's debut album as well as adding his trademark processed solos (and even performing the entire instrumentation for the track "L'Elephant").
Unfortunately, Belew's experience with Tom Tom Club was less harmonious than his previous work with Talking Heads. Tom Tom Club's recording engineer, Steven Stanley, was vocal about his dislike of distorted guitar and erased the majority of Belew's solos during the mixing sessions. Worse was to follow when Belew queried Weymouth about songwriting credits, having co-written several of the album's songs in addition to his playing. He was apparently blanked, with Weymouth no longer returning his phone calls. Belew did not play live with Tom Tom Club or contribute to any further sessions. Recalling the situation when interviewed twenty years later, he claimed that he had opted to pursue other work rather than involve himself in legal or personal struggles with Weymouth and Frantz; and that he had chosen not to let it bother him, as several other more promising projects were happening for him at the same time.^[6]