phone interview on October 3, 2017 at 3:00pm.
TL: Hello?
DM: Hi this is David Menestres, I’m trying to reach Tony Levin.
TL: Hi David, it’s me and I appreciate that you are exactly on time.
DM: Oh man this is great! Sorry. You have a few minutes to talk?
TL: I do. I’m actually in a record session in a studio that doesn’t have phone reception so five minutes ago I waked outside where I can get reception and boom, you’re right on time, I appreciate that.
DM: Absolutely. Can I ask what you’re recording at the moment?
TL: It’s an album for somebody unknown and it’s in my area of Woodstock, NY.
DM: Ah, cool.
TL: That’s kind of what I do when I’m home. Sometimes you get lucky and have a nice record session, make some good music.
DM: Yeah, absolutely. So…
TL: You’re in Raleigh?
DM: I’m actually in Durham which is twenty miles up the road but close enough. Let’s see. Oh, and I’m also a bass player so I’m trying not to be a…
TL: Oh nice!
DM: …total nerd here, but you know.
TL: (laughs)
DM: So I guess let’s start at the beginning. How did music become part of your life? I know your brother is also a pretty well known musician. Was it something that was in your household growing up? Did your family members play?
TL: Yeah, our parents encouraged playing an instrument and finding an instrument you liked. I’m very lucky both that my older brother was and is a very good musician so I had his example to watch, and I’m lucky that I chose the bass at a young age. I didn’t really have a reason but after playing piano for a few years I said “I’d like to play that instrument” the bass and it’s one of those lucky decisions because now, so many, many years later, I say that with a smile on my face, because I’ve just been playing the bass all these years and I’m still very satisfied and challenged actually with playing the bass.
DM: I obviously feel a similar connection to the thing, I completely understand. It’s its own different thing. You grew up playing music and then you went to Eastman, right, for classical studies?
TL: Yeah. I started in classical, although I liked jazz, but I started in classical and then after being at Eastman for a while, I was at Eastman and I was playing in the Rochester Philharmonic, I could see that I wasn’t that thrilled being in an orchestra and I started playing jazz and soon after I started playing rock and again, I was a little lucky, and I moved to New York City back when there was a need for studio players and I kind of unwillingly fell into that profession, doing studio records, but what I found that I really liked to do and wanted to do was to go out and play live shows on the road, with jazz or rock. And I did more and more of that and less studio work as my career progressed. I’ve done an awful lot of records, and I didn’t dislike doing the records, but I’m saying my true joy and true love is playing rock shows live and sharing that experience with the audience.
DM: Sure, and doing studio work is a very different thing than playing in an active band that changes and evolves and does its own thing. When did you first meet Robert Fripp? How did you get the King Crimson connection?
TL: My memory is not great but that’s an easy question for me to answer because on the same day I met Peter Gabriel, I met Robert Fripp.
DM: (laughs)
TL: It was July 1976 and Peter was doing his first solo album, named “Peter Gabriel” but they were all named that. He had just left Genesis and a producer named Bob Ezrin who liked my playing and had used me on Alice Cooper and Lou Reed, and he joined me up with Peter. I did not know Peter, I did not know Genesis, I did not know King Crimson, and it’s an extraordinary day for me. I don’t remember what date it was, but if you can imagine I met both Peter and Robert that July of ’76, and I’m still very engaged with making music with them both after all these years.
DM: That’s basically the definition of a good day. One of the things I was curious about, and I noticed when you joined King Crimson in 1981, the credits changed from the songs being credited to individual people in the band to changing to just “music by King Crimson,” which as a musician I like the idea that it evolved into more of a collaborative thing. I was curious how, how does the writing process go in the band? And how do you, or how do songs evolve in the group?
TL: Well it was different on each song, but generally Robert would bring in a piece or Adrian would bring in the piece. It was pretty rare that Bill Bruford or I brought in one, although there were a few examples of that. So generally they would bring it in, it could be pretty done and the other guys only had to fill in their part, or it could have room for exploration and “Crimsonizing it” in quotes which is what we would do to change things drastically and it was one of the principles Robert introduced me to in running a band, to share the publishing equally. Not all bands do that, and there’s no perfect solution. One guy in the band wrote the, you know, you’re a musician, but for people who don’t know, if one person wrote the music and has the publishing, if that record happens to sell a lot, that person makes a whole lot of money from that that the other guys in the band don’t. So that’s not perfect but then if one person did all the writing and had to share ¾ of the money from that with other guys, then that’s not a perfect solution either. Crimson has chosen the later and I think it’s done it through the whole existence of the band, Robert is the expert at that, but I know that that’s to be the most equitable solution I know of for what is a problematic solution in any band, but only if they’re going to sell a lot of records. Now today we don’t sell a lot of records so the publishing is less crucial then it used to be.
DM: Right. I’m sure Discipline gets heavy rotation on MTV these days.
TL: (laughs) Well in the day, generally, it varied from album to album, but generally you’d make about equal amounts from the artist royalties, in other words from being in the band, and from owning the publishing. So it was half your income. It was pretty important stuff.
DM: Yeah, absolutely.
TL: And let me say that I know bands that have broken up or have become very unhappy with each other because of different approaches to that publishing solution. I don’t really love talking about the business side of music, the other side, just the making of music is what I love and that incarnation of King Crimson in the early ‘80s was very influential to me musically and really pushed me to challenge myself as a player, something I’ve been doing ever since, especially in the King Crimson context, and that to me is more important than all the publishing in the world.
DM: Yeah. I was listening to, in preparation for this, I went back and started listening to some of the albums I haven’t listened to in a few years, particularly in the early ‘80s work, and that music is so amazing. It sounds so completely different than the music that was out at the time and was popular, but it shares some of the similar qualities of the darkness and weirdness of the early ‘80s in New York and New York kind of falling apart but it’s also just very wonderful, forward looking music and I feel like it’s very, obviously we call this stuff progressive rock at this point, but it’s not, I feel like the musicianship is in service to the music and not the other way around like so many of the other prog groups where it’s…
TL: That’s what we’re trying to do.
DM: Yeah. “Look how many notes I can play!” kind of thing.
TL: That’s what we’re trying to do. And with Crimson it’s a subject that comes up a lot, at least with me, we’re trying to actually be progressive, and not, as in the ‘80s, we were trying to not do what we had done before, and now, many years later, we’re still busy trying to not do what we did before. That’s not to say we’re always successful in that, but that’s the adventure, that’s one of the challenges, and it puts you in a different place than a band that plays its old music the way it did before because that’s an easy situation for the audience, and therefore they can have a potentially bigger audience, but Robert Fripp and Crimson chose to at least try to keep progressing our music.
DM: Honestly, I’d probably find the band a lot less interesting if you weren’t doing that. I want to hear a song evolve and change, I want to see a band that at least tries to move forward over time. The current tour, that’s the 8-piece band?
TL: Yep.
DM: Ok good, just checking to make sure I got it right,
TL: Yes, we’re eight now.
DM: That’s amazing.
TL: Yeah, we can talk about it. The biggest feature, the most obvious feature, for people who come to the show, is we have three drummers, and once again King Crimson has done something that is quite unusual. And the approach of the drummers is not the normal approach, they do not bang the same part as each other, they worked out very elaborate strategies, sometimes different strategies from within one song, to break up the already complex drum parts and to have it be an interesting show. Frankly, I stand on a riser behind them, the drums are across the front of the stage, and frankly it’s an interesting show for me from my vantage point because I get to watch the drummers, it’s challenging and interesting what they do. So that’s the main feature that you can’t miss when you see the new line up, but we also have Mel Collins back playing flutes and saxes, he was in a much earlier incarnation of King Crimson, and that gives it a different sound. In other words not all of the solos are on guitar the way they were in the ‘80s when I joined the band. It’s a little bit more jazzy, its got that option with the saxophone sound. And also there is a lot of power with two guitar players playing and someone else soloing. We also have at some times three people playing keyboards which gives us a bigger palate of sound in a more orchestral situation then we’ve had before. So it’s interesting, it’s hard to describe in detail the way the band will sound, but it’s quite an interesting performance. If we’re allowed, we’ll play three hours with an intermission and we play so darn challenging music and people, the sense I have, is people go away having enlarged their palate of what they’ve heard musically. Usually some surprises for everybody, including us on stage.
DM: That’s always the goal. It’s always interesting when you figure out how to surprise yourself, especially when you’re playing stuff that you’ve played so many times.
TL: The pieces, some pieces, are pretty set the way they are. As a bass player, as you know, I have the option of changing some notes, that’s okay, but the piece in general is set but there’s some improv in the set and some nights we do quite free improvisation. In fact, usually before we go on stage, after sound check, Robert creates some music he calls “Soundscapes” string quartets, and that’s playing as the audience comes in. Later, when we come on stage, we can hit the first piece straight or we can start to play along with those improvs, or just one or two of us. Sometimes I reach the bass first and I start playing along with that. So there is an element of improvisation within our set and that’s pretty important to us.
DM: Just out of curiosity, what’s your technical set up? What instruments are you playing on this tour?
TL: A little less than I was. Last year I was playing 5-string bass and 4-string bass. This year for some reason the sound of the 4-string bass is just working best for me with all those drummers, I don’t know why. So I play 4-string bass. I also have the electric upright, which I play either with a bow or plucked, and I also play the Chapman Stick, which is a touch-guitar style instrument with 12 strings, with bass strings and guitars strings. Needless to say, I’m not needed much on the guitar end of things with two guitar players, excellent guitar players, in the band. But I play bass strings of the Stick and it has an unusual percussive sounds so I’m able to get a different feel from the bass when I play that instrument. And notably I played it on some of the past repertoire, King Crimson’s, so I can pull it out for those pieces. That’s about it. I play 4-string bass, electric upright, the NS electric upright, and the Chapman Stick.
DM: Do you use any pedals at all? One of the things I’ve always liked about…
TL: I use so many pedals I’m hard pressed to remember them all. I also switch them out, not just each tour, but each leg of the tour, so for instance, next week we’ll go to Austin and we’ll have a whole week of rehearsing. King Crimson very conscientious. Even though we’ve toured a lot this year, and we could get by with one day of rehearsal, we will rehearse a whole week and bring in some new material and things like that, during which I might switch out pedals. I’ll have probably the option of, I don’t know, 20-30 pedals in my case and I’ll see what works best. I generally use compression a lot, fuzz tone, B-2 or B-3 fuzz tone, and I go through an amp-modeler, that I can also add effects on that. I use echo sometimes, not too much in King Crimson, and there could be some other things I’ve forgotten. Some chorus things, a good assortment of pedals.
DM: I just have a couple more questions and then I’ll let you get back to your day. Out of curiosity, do you still make the thunderfingers?
TL: Oh, Funkfingers! They are better than ever. A fellow, a bass player I know, who is an inventor and much a better mechanic/engineer than me, asked if I’d mind he’d start making them a few years ago. So now they’re offered online and they’re better. He puts a little tiny weight at the end of the drum stick, which really makes it better to play. I don’t know why, I vastly prefer his version to mine. I call them “Funkfingers” and for those that don’t know, they’re drumsticks, of chopped up drum sticks, one can attach to one’s fingers with Velcro and get a very percussive attack on bass, which along with some compression, sounds pretty good. I use them quite a bit on this tour with King Crimson.
DM: I was also curious about how you use the internet and interact with fans. You’ve had a blog on the internet since ’96, since before blog was even a word for anybody. How has that changed and evolved for you over the years?
TL: I haven’t changed as often as I should, because I got stuck writing code, probably like an older guy. I started the website in the mid-90s, early 90s, and, even though I started it, I’m not sure exactly why, I think mainly to sell my solo records, but I quickly realized something wonderful was going on, that people were coming to my site to notice what I had said about being behind the scene at rock shows or even better, taking pictures of them. So I stop trying to sell the records and I just made it what later became a blog, there was no such word then, and I still very much feature as many photos as I can take of the audience, so they can, if nothing else, see how wonderful they seem to those of us on stage. And that’s been a nice feature of the web, but like I said, in the beginning I was writing the code and as years went by, everything got different but my coding didn’t, so it was quite a bit behind at times, but now, about two years ago, I finally switched so now it’s viewable on mobile devices and it looks a little different than it was. I mostly use it just to communicate. It’s a shame there’s a wall between us, which does not happen when I play with Stickmen or in a small rock band like that in clubs, we just go out and say hi to everybody after the show, and that’s fine. But with King Crimson, with Peter Gabriel, we do big shows and you just can’t say hi to everyone after the show, so there’s this unnecessary wall and the web, or my website anyway, has taken down a little bit of that, in eliminating some of the distance that we don’t really need to have among us.
DM: Are you currently working on any solo projects? Or anything that would be under the Tony Levin name in the future?
TL: I’m in the early stages of a bunch of projects. So many that I don’t want to start talking about them, and frankly, I’ve learned through the years that it’s better not to talk about something that’s not coming out soon because it might not come out and then you look a little bit foolish, “Hey whatever happened to that great record you said was coming out?” So I’m in the writing process of solo music and Stickmen, the band I’m in, and King Crimson as a band is always composing things. And I’m working on, I take a lot of photographs, not just for the web, but I take them on the road, and I’m working on some releases of those photographs. And that’s it. I’m not working on another book at the moment. I’ve put out a few books, the most recent about two years ago, and that’s about it, that’s what I’m working on.
DM: OK. One more question, two related parts sort of. What are you currently listening to at the moment? And what was the most recent thing you heard that just completely blew you away?
TL: Great question. I don’t have a wonderful answer because I spend a lot of time making music and my listening time seems to mostly be doing homework, we call it home work. In other words, things I need to learn for upcoming tours, or things I need to check out to see what the bass part was, so unfortunately that’s mostly what I’m doing. The band that’s excited me most in the last two years is called Sleepytime Guerrilla Museum, very radical wonderful band. I think they reformed with different memebers, and probably great now, but I haven’t even had time, I’m a fan and I haven’t had time to check them out lately, but that’s a band that excited me and inspired me in the way I want to write my music some, so that’s an example of that. I think, if I’m writing, let’s say I’m taking a long drive and I have a lot of time on my own, I actually need silence a lot and I’ll have music paper next to me and I’ll stop and write down ideas of my own. When I play music, it’s very likely to be classical music, just to take my mind off the rock scene, and put me in a good place so I can have some ideas to write. So I’m sorry it’s not a more wonderous answer, with three or four groups, and I know and appreciate that there’s a lot of great music being made, but I’m not the guy who’s on top of the scene in knowing what’s going on.
DM: No, that’s great. That’s actually the answer I was expecting. I would have been more surprised if you’d been able to spit out your five favorite bands of the last six months. Just because as a musician I know you got to take the breaks and just let your ears kinda breath.
TL: Your ears and frankly even in King Crimson it’s a tremendous amount of homework. We have a gigantic catalog now that we play. Like I mentioned, next week we’re going to be rehearsing and we’re going to add over material, either new or from classic Crimson that I have never played. So I need to be up and running on them and I need to get back to being up and running on what we did on the last tour leg. Yes it does involve some homework.
DM: I’m sure. I could see Robert Fripp as a schoolmaster you know, an unhappy school master….
TL: Yeah, yeah. When we got out of school we thought we were done doing homework and it’s different than school because if it’s something you love, it should, the homework is not the best word for it.
DM: That’s right.
TL: Legwork or something like it. It’s something you love, you enjoy doing it and spend all hours doing it. It’s not quite like homework but it is something that must be done for me. And it does take away from just listening to whatever that most people have.
DM: Great. I think that covers everything I had and it should be more than enough.
TL: Thank you. I appreciate your wonderful questions. They’re very nice and it helps me a lot to answer some questions. And good luck with your bass playing and your music.
DM: Thank you. I appreciate it. And I look forward to the show in couple of weeks.
TL: Well thank you. That’ll be great. Take care
DM: Thanks. Have a good one. Bye.