When it comes to music, Adrian Belew has a pretty illustrious career to celebrate — and is used to doing so.

And this fall, he’s added another item from his crowded resume.

“Back in 2019, I realized that in two years we’d be looking at the 40th anniversary of the 80s King Crimson quartet,” the singer and guitarist explains, “the records which involved me and Tony (Levin, bassist) for the first time in something called King Crimson. I’ve been celebrating David Bowie. I’ve been celebrating Talking Heads music. So I thought this is something that really needs to be honored, too.”

He and Levin are doing it with Beat, filling out the lineup with all-star guitarist Steve Vai and Tool drummer Danny Carey filling in for Crimson founder and leader Robert Fripp and semi-retired Bill Burford, respectively. The repertoire hails from the three critically acclaimed albums the quartet made between 1981-84 — “Discipline,” “Beat” and “Three of a Perfect Pair” — and it comes with the explicit approval of Fripp, who last year proclaimed Crimson over and done for good (though it’s not the first time he’s said that) and had declined to participate, as did Bruford.

“Bill said, ‘What — and stand around a luggage carousel all day?!’ That was him declining,” Belew, 74 — who was also with Crimson from 1994-2008 — says with a laugh. “But both of them gave me the support. Robert’s line was, ‘If you feel strongly about it and you want to drive it, you have my support.’ And that was it.”

Levin, 78, who remained with Crimson through 2021 — and was on tour with his other regular employer, Peter Gabriel, last year — says he “wasn’t surprised” by Fripp’s endorsement of the Beat project. “He even lent us some soundscapes that we play at intermission. So he’s in favor of it, and that’s wonderful.”

For Belew, the Crimson gig was important — something he says “I had been preparing for, really, all my life,” after “accidentally” falling into a sideman career with Frank Zappa, as well as Bowie and Talking Heads. “That was all fantastic, mind-blowing stuff,” he acknowledges, “but my real goal had always been to be the songwriter and the singer and the guitar player and the lyricist, and that was what I got with King Crimson.”

The ’80s lineup actually brought the band back from a hiatus Fripp had imposed during 1974, after starting it six years prior in England with seven albums and rock radio favorites such as “The Court of the Crimson King” and “21st Century Schizoid Man.” It was a progressive rock group that touched on jazz and other genres, but in ’81, Fripp decided a restart should also be a reboot.

“It was an interesting time,” Belew recalls. “King Crimson was a really serious musical entity coming into a time when everyone was really thinking about video and MTV and all of that. We were thinking about advancing music, and we had the players to do that.” The new Crimson also embraced contemporary technology, including Fripp with guitar synthesizers, Bruford with electronic drums and Levin with the Chapman Stick, a stringed instrument played both melodically and percussively.“The actual sound we made was so unique and striking that I think people didn’t know what to make of it,” Belew recalls. “It was very rich and complex, with different time signatures, and you had our guitars running different lines that would go in and out of sync with each other. But at the same time, there was the skinny guy in a pink suit singing something you could sing along with, so it was complicated and accessible at the same time — a very rare thing.”

The albums were among Crimson’s most popular, too — especially in the United States. Vai and Carey were fans back in the day as well, which made them good choices to be part of the Beat venture.

“I’m excited about revisiting the King Crimson music of the ’80s,” says Levin, who released a solo album, “Bring It Down to the Bass,” last month. “It was really cool. But really what gets me more excited about this tour is the players. … To have Steve Vai’s interpretations, and they are interpretations of Robert Fripp’s parts, and to have Danny Carey going wild on the drums, that’s kind of what made my mouth water about this tour.

“That’s why I signed on without hesitation, to see where this music can go. It’s really valid music and, yeah, we did it very well in the ’80s, but even then I was trying to stretch my parts into other areas, and now I can see where it can go with really high-class, top-flight players who are really on top of their game and are also fans of what the music was in the ’80s.”

That was Belew’s vision for Beat, in fact.

“I don’t want this coming off as a band that’s just copying King Crimson and playing it to the letter,” he explains. “We’re gonna go somewhere else with it, with the people we have involved. With Tony and I, you have half the (original) band, so the legitimacy is certainly there.

“Of course it’s not King Crimson; we’re not calling it that. But we’re not going to step all over this material. We’re going to play it precisely in the places it needs to be played in a slight way, but there’s also been in King Crimson’s makeup places of improvisation. That’s just part of what King Crimson has always been.”

Having added 21 concerts to meet demand for this fall’s tour, Beat is now eyeballing more dates for next year. Belew and Levin also hope to record new music with the quartet, too, though active individual careers make concrete plans challenging.

“Y’know, I was spending time with (Vai) in his studio and he said, ‘I’ve got this little guitar thing here and I keep hearing you, wondering what you would sing over and it and play along with it,’” Belew says. “I said, ‘So you’re thinking that we might actually write stuff together?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, I would love to see that happen.’

“If it doesn’t happen, it’s not because we don’t want to. It’s because there’s not the ability to get us all in the same place. But we’ll try; it’s too good not to.”

Beat performs Sunday, Oct. 27 at the Masonic Temple Theatre, 500 Temple St., Detroit. Doors at 6:30 p.m. 313-548-1320 or themasonic.com.