Tony Levin has decades of experience playing the music of King Crimson. But you'd be correct to think that the act of performing it is no walk in the park.
"It's some heavy lifting, the bass legend confirms during a conversation with UCR. "It's a lot of difficult material." But as he details in the below conversation, he and his longtime Crimson bandmate Adrian Belew are ready for the challenge -- and their drafted associates, guitarist Steve Vai and drummer Danny Carey have been hard at work.
Collectively, the four are known as BEAT, a new union that is set to revisit the '80s output of King Crimson. The outing has been highly anticipated and fans will finally get their first look tonight (Sept. 12) as the group takes the stage for their inaugural gig at the San Jose Civic.
Levin checked in last week as rehearsals were well underway to preview what's ahead. He also had new music in hand to discuss. The veteran bassist is set to unveil Bringing It Down to the Bass on Friday (Sept. 13). It's his first solo set since 2007 and one which brings together a dizzying selection of players from his musical work over the years. As he told us, music, both in the studio and on stage, is what keeps him going. "Give me good music, hopefully with good players and I'm a happy guy," he explains. "I just want to be a bass player playing good music with good players."
How are rehearsals going? Fans are really excited about this tour. Well, we’re excited about it. Rehearsals are kind of midway. I could spend all day describing what rehearsals are like, but it’s some heavy lifting. It’s a lot of difficult material, the King Crimson music of the ‘80s. But Steve Vai and Danny Carey have done their homework to the extreme, so they’re really ready. Me and Adrian Belew, not so much, because we knew this stuff to begin with. But we’re working hard. The exciting thing to me is not seeing if we can cover it -- of course we can -- but seeing where it’s going to go and how it’s going to differ from the way we did it in the ‘80s. That’s a lot of fun and that’s what’s exciting for me. It’s also nice to know that fans are so excited about it.
I loved hearing you say in a recent interview that you feel like you're still learning elements of the King Crimson material and to a lesser extent, Peter Gabriel's songs that you play. I once spoke with Bruce Hornsby and he likes to describe himself as a "lifelong student of music," which is something that feels like it also applies to you. That’s the way I feel. I know that one example that has come up a lot lately in the last few years, you see youngsters playing, in my case, the bass. They’re online and on YouTube, doing things technically that I not only never did, but I could never do. [Laughs] I had to process that and I’ve come to think of them as teachers, instead of thinking, “Oh, well, I’m an older guy, I must know how to do everything.” I look at little things in their fingers or their wrists and how they move and try and learn a little something from it, even though I know I could never play with quite the technique that they have.
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Listening to your new album, I thought about how as a bass player, when it comes to being part of a rhythm section, you might lock in with one guy and that's the guy for your whole career. But you've done that with so many folks. Let's talk about three of them -- what do you think you took from playing with Steve Gadd, Manu Katche and Bill Bruford? Well, first comes Steve Gadd. Because how lucky was I? I went to classical music school at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester and there was Steve Gadd, a great drummer at that time. He was classically trained, but he was doing gigs and he had no bass players. All of us classical geek bass players didn’t want to do jazz gigs. [Laughs] But I was more willing than the others, so in a way, Steve quietly mentored me and taught me how to play jazz, just musically from being with him. He later moved in with me in New York and we both entered into playing rock. So we have a big history going back and locking in together was our ethic in trying to do that. I had to learn how to do that in a jazz way.
Manu Katche, when he joined Peter Gabriel’s band, I actually knew him and had played sessions with him in Paris where he’s from. Because i got around doing sessions with French artists too. So I knew his playing, I knew he was great and I knew he would work out really well with Peter. We’ve had a really wonderful history since then playing on each other’s records, touring with Peter Gabriel and interestingly, the title track of my new album, Bringing It Down to the Bass, I wanted Manu on it, I just could imagine him surprising me with his style of playing on that. He didn’t have time to do it in his studio in Paris, but I nabbed him while we were on the i/o tour last year. We had a day off in Montreal and I grabbed him and ran into the studio. He was happy to do it. I sound like I’m kidnapping him, but I wasn’t. Typically, the first take, it starts with just the bass playing a riff and then the drums come in. I said, “Come in with whatever you want.” The riff he played coming in just knocked me off my chair. I loved it and I still listen to it all of the time. At the end of the first take, I’m in the control room and I pushed the button and said, “Manu, that’s it, you’ve got it. You nailed it.” He said, “Oh, no, no, Tony, I need to do another take.” So we argued about that and compromised. He did one more take. But really, I like most of that first take the way he approached the first music, so it’s good fun playing with Manu.
Bill Bruford, when I first heard him back then in 1980, as fans of his know, he played differently than anybody. He really invented a style of playing. I had a big change in my musical direction when I started playing with Bill, because instead of locking it down, he did creative things -- different with each take, by the way. He doesn’t lock into the part and then keep playing it, he keeps creating all of the time. So I decided early on in King Crimson to go with him and not to try to hold things down while he does this other stuff. I decided, “I’m going to be like Bill,” to the extent that I’m able to on the bass and Chapman Stick. So you’ve got to love working with a guy who changes your whole approach to music and gives you other options and other tools in your tool kit that you can pull out on other records.
You're crossing streams in some cases here from different areas of your career. I wondered if there were instances where certain people hadn't met each other? Probably, there’s cases that they never met still. Because each person usually recorded in their home studio. Dominic Miller, I knew him and knew of his playing, but I got to be together with him a lot in 2016 when Peter Gabriel toured in conjunction with Sting. We did this wonderful thing, they alternated songs, but instead of leaving the stage -- some guys left the stage, I stayed on stage for Sting’s pieces and what a treat to be sitting on the riser as Vinnie Colaiuita was playing the drums right behind me. And I’m right next to Dominic Miller, watching his foot, unlike other guitar players, he has this wah wah pedal, but it never sounds like one. He uses it to change the tone of the guitar with every note. It’s like a voice, like a person, as if he’s singing. I was so impressed and glad I had the chance to be next to that. So for “Bringing It Down to the Bass,” I thought, “I wonder if I could nab him?” He’s on the road all of the time with Sting, but he very kindly found a way, while he was on the road to record the track for me.
Listen to Tony Levin's 'Bringing It Down to the Bass'
You mentioned the tour with Sting. How much did you two get a chance to get inside each other's technique on that outing? Well, in my case, a lot. As I mentioned, I stayed on stage while Sting was playing. He’s got so many techniques. He’s so locked in that people forget to pay attention what a great bass player someone is, who is also a great singer and a great performer. Paul McCartney is another example. But yeah, Sting, the guy really rocks on bass. He’s got many techniques and it’s so effortless that you can’t see that he’s working at it a lot. He’s performing and he’s doing something else. But there I was behind him watching it with a great deal of admiration, feeling like, “I’ve got the best seat in the house here.” I’m sitting in front of Vinnie and behind Sting. I know he was aware of my playing and he liked it.
One piece of Peter Gabriel’s, called “Big Time,” has a very tricky bass part that I play with funk fingers. Sting actually didn’t know that I play it with the funk fingers. He thought it was thumbs slapping. He said, “Do you mind if I play that piece? I’ll stay on stage and play that.” He’d come over to me and I’d just play a little synth bass and stay out of the way while he did his version of my funk fingers part of “Big Time.” It was a good time. Plus, he had one old beat-up vintage bass that was really a classic bass. He didn’t play it much in the show, but it was on the side. The more I saw it, I think I asked him and his bass tech if I could play it on one song. For a little part of the tour, I had to bring out my oldest, most beat-up bass, so he could see it on the side of the stage. We had good fun as bass players on the same tour.
What sticks with you about the experience of working with David Gilmour and Pink Floyd? He’s a great guy. He called and asked me, “Do you want to play with Pink Floyd?” I thought, “Okay, I can do that.” It was kind of a short musical experience, playing on that album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason. It was really special. I was working with good players and David’s just a wonderful guy. I had worked before with Bob Ezrin, who produced the album. Even though I’d worked with him, I was impressed with the painstaking details. They would really think over things like, “Maybe we should record the Stick analog and then in the chorus, record the bass digitally.” There was that kind of attention to detail and then I thought, “Oh yeah, of course. It’s Pink Floyd. They do that.
I had mixed feelings that I couldn’t do the tour the following year. I wasn’t able to, because it overlapped a little bit with the Peter Gabriel tour. I felt bad that I couldn’t do the tour. I would have liked to have done it, but I couldn’t. But one example of what a really cool guy David is, at the end of that tour [a year later], they had the last show in New York. He called me at home -- me, the guy who was too busy to do the tour -- and he said, “Would you like to come to the last show and the party after? Because it’s that music that you played and we were thinking about you.” That’s pretty nice, when you think about it. A lot of people, maybe including me, wouldn’t think of who to invite to that. He’s a very, very sweet guy.
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You worked with Bob Ezrin in some really interesting situations, whether it’s that or Alice Cooper and certainly, Peter Gabriel. What do you think it is that Bob likes about what you do? Because those are three very different gigs, on paper at least. You’re exactly right. I don’t think about stuff like that. I ought to. But I know it’s a fact that way back in the ‘70s when I was doing sessions of a lot of styles in New York, he heard in me a proclivity for rock and he started using me for heavy rock and [things like] Lou Reed, also. I did a couple of Alice Cooper records -- I didn’t go on the road with Alice. I think I had an opportunity to. I don’t know why I didn’t do it. But Bob heard me that way and I never gave it a thought as far as why, but I’m glad that he did.
