Interview with “Sledgehammer” bassist Tony Levin, performing with jazz quartet at the Irving Saturday, Sept. 17.
photo of Tony Levin by Joel Barrios
DAN GROSSMAN: Tony Levin is one of the most renowned bass players in music history. He has played with a who's who list of performers on the contemporary rock and pop scene from Lou Reed to Alice Cooper to Carly Simon. He has also played with many jazz performers such as Buddy Rich and David Sanborn. His longest term work has been for rock group King Crimson and Peter Gabriel. It’s Levin's bass you hear on such Peter Gabriel classic tracks as “Red Rain,” “Shock the Monkey,” and "Sledgehammer." Tony will be performing with his brother Pete as the Levin Brothers Jazz Quartet, which also features Jeff Siegel and Ali Ryerson at the Irving Theater on Saturday, September 17. Tony I'm so glad to talk to you today.
TONY LEVIN: Thank you and thank you for that introduction. I get a little tired sometimes hearing a list of what I've done. Seems like I've been at this a long time. But anyway, it's a pleasure to speak to you. Thank you. It's gonna be a pleasure to come to Indianapolis. It's always a fun concert there.
GROSSMAN: I saw a video of Levine brothers jazz quartet performing "Scarborough Fair." It’s an old song folk song that was turned into a pop song, or folk rock song, by Paul Simon. If I had to define it, I'd say it was jazz, as you go into an improvisation in the middle section. But it also seems kind of genreless to me. Is that the way you see it?
LEVIN: No, not really. But that's a good point. You're not wrong. First of all, we chose to do a Paul Simon song because Pete and I, one of the two bands we toured in together with Paul Simon's band back in the 70s, and play that song together. So we thought it'd be nice to re-vision it and do it as a jazz piece. The band is definitely a jazz band. We do a lot of originals, mostly the pieces that Pete wrote, and one or two that I wrote, and Pete's jazz arranging. He plays rock also, but he's been a jazz player for a long time and particularly-talented at arranging things. So we'll do pieces by Asia, We'll do an Eric Satie piece, "Gymnopédies"— wonderful piece, We play some classical things, but all in a jazz style. And I think the Levin Brothers has been touring and recording for quite a few years. But this is the first year we've toured with a wonderful Ali Ryerson on flute. She lends it to a great flute player, great jazz player but but also has a great stage personality and just kind of lends a sonic personality to the band that we didn't have before. So we're thrilled about this tour, and about the new album, which we recorded right before the tour with Jeff and with Ali. And our new album. Our new CD, I should say, is very much the material we're playing live.
GROSSMAN: Great. So you and your brother founded the quartet in 2013. Can you talk about your brother's career in music and how your career has intersected?
LEVIN: Sure. I wouldn't have been able to guess the year that we started. Pete's been, like I said playing jazz, notably with the Gil Evans Orchestra and with Jimmy Giuffre has probably a dozen album solo albums of his own jazz albums. While I've been doing a parallel career playing rock and playing with Peter Gabriel and Pink Floyd and with King Crimson. Through those years, occasionally we play together but some some time ago, we thought gee, it's about time we formed a band and, and interestingly, we decided for that first album, to do very much the music that we listened to when we were kids together growing up in Boston, which was, if you could believe it back in the 1950s. And it was a style of jazz called cool jazz, which had players playing very short solos and short pieces. Amazingly, that is so different than now, that the jazz piece, the track might be two minutes, three minutes long, four minutes at the longest, and four guys solo when it's just for 30 seconds each. So I was very fond of that style, and it's what got me into music. And personally I became a big fan of Oscar Pettiford, the bass player I heard doing that, so it was a treat back in 2013. to to do an album of that style, not that music because we easily wrote new music in that style. But after touring a couple tours with that music, we decided to stretch out more and do more of the things that we can do as a jazz group. And also, like I said Pete's such a great arranger and does things in different jazz styles. So we decided to feature that.
GROSSMAN: Thank you for that. Now maybe the first time I heard your bass line it I'm pretty sure it had to be Peter Gabriel's "Shock the Monkey” {released in 1982]." And at that time, that sounded like nothing else I'd ever heard on the radio. And I didn't know what to think of that at first. But, you know, after a while, I thought wow, this is just an amazing song. Can you talk a little bit about the evolution of that song and your contribution to it?
LEVIN: Sure. Well, first of all, credit goes to Peter Gabriel for being the creative think-outside-the-box person and artist that he is. So when you play with Peter Gabriel, and I have for a very long time, you don't just play your average bass parts because it's not called for. Everything about his music is progressive and unusual and comes up with new ideas. So the perfect instrument for me to play on that piece was the Chapman Stick, this 10 or 12 string beast that I play that has six that when I play now it's 12 strings has six bass strings and six guitar strings. And it's tuned differently; it's backwards from a bass and it's in fifth. And it features big jumps. But also it's a very percussive sound because it's a touch style guitar, or hammer-on… I could talk about that piece, but any piece of Peters, when I hear it, I listen to what he's done and I imagine what kind of bass part I could try to come up with that really suits the creative freshness of that piece and it's usually not something I've done before, so I might have to experiment a lot with sounds or with an instrument I haven't played much for with things like dampeners under the strings, or try different recording techniques that I haven't done. So Peter is the perfect chance to do that. It's like an R&D opportunity for my bass playing and “Shock the Monkey” is a perfect example. It didn't take me long. It could have taken long and he would have allowed me that but it didn't take me long for me to find the kind of groove on the Chapman Stick that was different than the norm and it seemed to suit that piece really well. Let me add, the hard when we play it live was whenever he's saying the word "shock' we jump. We would sing "shock" and jump. And for me to jump and sing and play the Chapman Stick which by the way, hooks into your belt, you have to stand still. So when you jump it flies out of the belt and you need to hold it down with one hand. But anyway, that was more of a challenge than recording the album version, which came along pretty easily for us in the studio.
GROSSMAN: Did it seem like you were on the verge of something really new when you were working on that album with Peter Gabriel?
LEVIN: I don't really think that to be honest. We don't think that way in the studio. You just kind of do it. I could say the same thing four years before that when i played the first album I played with King Crimson., the Discipline album, which i did a lot of it on the stick and pieces like "Elephant Talk" that became kind of a little bit of a signature for that incarnation of that band. You don't sit around thinking, Oh, we're doing this and this is going to happen really you don't know what's going to happen to the record release. It could be very popular or it could be that nobody listens to it. Most musicians in that situation, in my recollection, most musicians just focus on the music making it as good as it can and making it as as fresh and progressive as we can if that's what that album is aimed at which is certainly the case with Peter.
GROSSMAN: When I think of your your bass in those songs — forgive me I'm not a musician — I think of it having a groove and a voice, in something like "Red Rain,” for example. I mean, I can hear those basslines [in my head]. I can't recall guitar parts on the album So or the song "Shock the Monkey” but I recall the bass.
LEVIN: Yeah, well, that's nice. Thank you. That's not my aim. I think sometimes, in my opinion, or the way I look at it from the inside, from my part, is sometimes the song will allow that, as a cool thing for it. Of course, I want to play something rhythmically that is very cool and works with the drummer and suits the song, but sometimes there's room to step out a little bit on the bass to do something melodic. Certainly that's the case in a lot of the Paul Simon — we mentioned Paul Simon before. With "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," in the beginning, there was a chance for me to play some bass chords up high, which I wouldn't do if he was singing busy, but there was just kind of room for that. And sometimes in my sensibility there isn't room for that. And even though I might have a cool lick that would fit with the chords and the drums and the guitar, the vocal is busy at that point and so for me it's musically wrong to to intrude on that with my bass part. That's something I hope I'm musical enough to never do.
GROSSMAN: In preparing for this interview, I listened to a performance, I think it was a Les Paul tribute. And you were playing with Eddie Van Halen. And maybe that's an example where you want to play a more supporting role. I'm just guessing.
LEVIN: {Laughs] First of all, that was great fun. He was a great guy and he mostly played with his band. He didn't jam around with other players. Much so he was kind of excited about doing it. And he had written unlike everyone else on the bill. He had written a piece for it, I think, that's my memory and it was just really fun. And yes, you're exactly right. I didn't need to step out too much on the bass there was there was plenty being done by the guitarist.
GROSSMAN: And yeah, it looks like you are all were having a really good time on that one.
LEVIN: A very good time, that's for sure.
GROSSMAN: And it seems like you're okay with those who who see the supportive role of the bass as as their role more than stepping out, like I remember that seems to be the the philosophy of Gary Tallent, that Bruce Springsteen's bassist. It's like, keep the song going.
LEVIN: Yes, for me, I don't have one rule or one way it's got to be. I actually, frankly, play a lot of very simple music; folk music and people's ballads that don't require much and I play a lot of very complex progressive rock things and jazz things which called for the bass doing plenty sometimes. So I don't have rules about that. Like many bass players. I'm a fan of a lot of bass players I've heard on record sometimes i don't know their name. Sometimes I do know their name, and I hear everything they do. And some of the players i mentioned Oscar Pettiford back from when I was a kid. He played very simply, and his solos were wonderfully melodic. But then later, there was Jaco Pastorius who reinvented what you can do on the bass. And I admire them equally. I learned from them equally and sometimes I'll even hear on some record on the radio I'll hear something where I don't like what the bass player did very much and I will learn from that I will learn and I'll think somewhere, maybe not consciously, but in the back of my mind, I'll feel like well, if I'm in that situation, I'll be sure not to do that because somehow it didn't seem to work when I heard heard on the radio. So I don't have that many rules about how to play bass but I try to work on my craft and I hope that I can if nothing else, be musical with all my efforts.
GROSSMAN: Is there still room for good bass playing with some of the more, shall we say synthetic, stuff you hear on the radio these days?
LEVIN: Yeah, I don't listen to the radio much but on on YouTube, my god, there's amazing physical revolution of young bass players, men and women, thank goodness who are fantastically adroit and have technique way beyond anything i ever even dreamed of. So I watch that a lot. Not all the time, not obsessively. But again, I try to learn from it even if it's — I'm laughing as I say this — but even if it's a 14-year-old, playing with technique that I could never match in my whole life, even if I start practicing it. I'm smiling as I say that but there's still things to learn from it from technique if I can see the way they hold their hands and things like that. And I think it's a fun thing about the bass and about music in general. You can play it very simply, and you can be happy with what you play, or you can spend your whole life practicing and trying to learn to do it better. And each of those approaches is valid, or me. It's the second one. I keep trying to do my job a little better and to learn musically from what I hear.
GROSSMAN: What are funk fingers?
LEVIN: I don't have them alone in this tour because of the jazz tour. By the way on this tour, I'm playing mostly the upright bass, the NS electric guitar, which is suitable for jazz but I also have brought an old Gibson bass guitar reminded this fun and has an unusual sound. Recording with Peter Gabriel on the So album we did one piece we recorded one piece called “Big Time” where I asked the drummer Jerry Marotta to drum on the bass strings while I fingered the left hand. That's not an idea I invented but it just kind of popped itself into my head and it seemed appropriate for that piece. But that's the way we recorded "Big Time." And then live i found i had a problem because I can't play with two drumsticks on the bass at the same time as I'm fingering the bass. And one day at soundcheck on the tour, which would be I guess 1986, Peter Gabriel walked by me on stage as I was practicing with one drumstick trying to play that part and he said to me just very simply said, “Well, why don't you put two drumsticks on your fingers, chop them off,” and put them on your fingers and I did exactly that. It took quite a while and there was a different experimentation with stretch Velcro to hold it on. If it was too tight, my fingers would turn purple and if it was too loose... What I later named funk fingers would go flying into the audience so I had good fun with it. Eventually after that tour, I got kind of better, technically at using them. And I played them on other pieces with King Crimson in other contexts. Never a whole lot. I remember touring with Bruford, Wakeman, and Howe, the band generally known as Yes, and trying to cop Chris Squire — the wonderful bass player Chris Squire's amazing bass parts played with the pick — and I'm not that good with the pick. So I decided to do that whole tour with the funk fingers and I had to practice a lot and it was fun. To me there were a percussive way to play the bass and in some situations they're just right and and in others I would maybe would reach for something different. That's probably more than you ever want to know about from funk fingers.
GROSSMAN: Well, no. I think people will be really interested in that and thank you for the great description. You've worked with some of the great rock and pop performers, such as Lou Reed, Paul Simon, David Bowie, Robert Fripp, very different performers but who want different things from you, I assume. Right? And it seems like you're perfectly okay with whatever they want.
LEVIN: Oh well, I've done a lot of recording sessions through the years. They're each different. There's a producer who has his ideas and usually it's the producer who chose the musicians who come in not always but usually. Sometimes it's the artists who chose. Sometimes, in the case of both David Bowie's and John Lennon's album, i did Double Fantasy. Neither of them knew who i was when the producer called me to come in and it was kind of kind of... how should I describe it, the feeling of meeting either of those guys.... I could see on their face and I could feel that they're a little bit doubtful of, it's kind of like they say, “This guy's good. I hope he doesn't just play overplay and ruin my music.” I could sense that they felt that way. And I wasn't worried because I knew I wouldn't do that. John Lennon's first words to me when he met me in in the Hit Factory in New York City, where he said, "They tell me you're good. Just don't play too many notes." I said, "Don't worry, I won't." [Laughs] And I had a ball on that on that record.
But anyway, each each one, to go back to how I started this; each session has its own path and its own way. It'll come together. Some of them only take a day. Some sessions take a month on a few songs. So it really varies a lot. So and again, there's no rules for in my experience, I enjoy just coming up with the bass part, but I also enjoy doing it in a group way where the artists, especially the songwriter, has something to say about what he or she had in mind when they wrote the song for the bass part. And hopefully we come up with the best of both worlds with their idea of coming to fruition but also with my sense of being a bass player. Also my sense of the sound on the bass. So I've talked a little bit about the approach and hearing the instrument and the notes but but the sound of the bass has a lot to do with how I conceive of what will go with the song. And there's a lot of little subtle ways that a bass player can change his sound by where he puts his finger or by which instrument issues is and sometimes by literally putting foam rubber under the strings or hitting it with a stick as in the case of funk fingers.
GROSSMAN: It seems like, from my point of view, with some of the world music that you've done; it must be really fascinating to get together with people like Shankar and I remember the first piece I heard by the double violinist Shankar on Peter Gabriel's “Passion Sources.” It's not his music but music he found inspirational for his album Passion, the soundtrack. for the film The Last Temptation of Christ. And I was just blown away by this guy. That piece of his on Passion Sources [“Sankarabaranam Pancha Nadai Pallavi”], I never get tired of it. It's such a beautiful piece. I'm wondering what it was like our recording with him and your your thoughts? On playing bass in this genre of world music in general?
LEVIN: Yes, it's it's been a mind-expanding experience, musically expanding. After a whole bunch of years, decades playing music, you tend to start feeling like you kind of know what's going on. And then suddenly, if you're playing with, let's say, African musicians or Indian musicians, or some of the many others that Peter Gabriel would interact with and bring into the band, and bring into our sphere of making music, you play with them and you start to play with them and you realize you only know some of what's going on and there's a lot to learn and a lot of cool mingling to be done. So in the case of Shankar, Shankar is a good friend of mine and I played on some of his albums in addition to Peter's. It was a great learning experience and just great fun making music with him and being on tour with him. But there have also been Youssou N'Dour and the African bands that opened for Peter's show and then played along with Peter in the show. And goodness, probably too many worlds musicians that I've met through Peter and then had relationships with afterwards. Musical relationships. I'm terrifically lucky to have had that experience. And that's part of what makes Peter Gabriel such a special artist. It's not just his music, but his inclusive sense of being an artist is extraordinary. And so how lucky am I that i just kind of got to be there on the stage or in the background and got to meet and experienced the music of all these wonderful, wondrous players.
GROSSMAN: Out of curiosity. I didn't think of this one doing my research for this, but it was Baaba Maal [who sings on the song “Wakanda”] one of those that you've played with?
LEVIN: Yes, for sure.
GROSSMAN: Wow. Amazing voice, beautiful voice. So you're, you have this quote that I got from, it's the Southbank Show {a British television show] and it was a basically we're showing Peter Gabriel's process putting together the Security album in in the early 80s. And you were interviewed in it and you said once you get a groove going, you want to keep doing it because I'm a bass player. i spend my whole life looking for a groove. Is that still your philosophy?
LEVIN: I think it almost is. Yeah, let me think about it a minute. I know I'm often embarrassed to hear what I said in previous interviews, especially one in holes in the last century, decades ago in the last century. But that's not a bad I'm not embarrassed by it. Let's put it that way. Yes, so I think maybe it's not at the top of my consciousness much of the time but I am looking for grooves and when the chance to have a good groove pops up, it kind of overrides everything else that's for sure.
GROSSMAN: Great and out of curiosity, what albums did you play with David Bowie?
LEVIN: There was only one piece on the album that was … his second to last one. [The album is titled The Next Day and the song Tony Levin wanted to mention is titled “Where Are We Now”.]
GROSSMAN: Oh gosh. I can't remember. I can picture the album. I just can't picture the title. We can look it up. I could look it up later. Second to last album.
LEVIN: That album was done in secret. I could talk all day about that album. I'm not his bass player. His bass player. Gail Ann Dorsey, by the way, fantastic bassist. She was busy doing something else for one week of the recording process. And they brought me in for that week and I never thought that i would be on too many of the tracks because the album was ongoing for a year. But I ended up on quite a few of them. I'm very happy about that. And it was secret sessions because David had been not making records for quite a while. And the production want to be sure that I didn't tell anybody that i was doing the sessions, which i didn't. And a whole year went by after that and frankly I forgot about it. I forgot I've even done it. When one night, the producer emailed me right at midnight and he said this piece, and with its consequent video is coming out right now right this minute. And it was a great feeling to watch that very special song and to realize I'm on it playing bass on it. It was really an honor. So that was quite an experience for me ...
GROSSMAN: In one of the interviews, I saw with you, you describe a lot of your musical career as happenstance, like you meet the right people at the right time. And that leads to something like in the case of King Crimson and Peter Gabriel that's led to a very long term collaborations.
LEVIN: Yeah. I agree with what seemed to have said sometimes just lucky like almost any other field, sometimes. Bad luck because you're not available for the thing that would have been great and sometimes good luck is you are available when someone else wasn't available. And that happens probably in music more than in anything else in my career that I've been lucky breaks and there have been unlucky breaks where I didn't get to do something I would have loved to do because i was already booked for something else.
GROSSMAN: Can you talk a little bit about your setlist on the 17th Or have you discuss that with your brother?
LEVIN: It's right here within reach and that's unusual.
GROSSMAN: Where are you now by the way?
LEVIN: I'm in Milwaukee, Milwaukee. Okay, central time. Yep, although the show's not until tomorrow, We will do a piece of piece we'll start with and then we'll do our version Eleanor Rigby, which we call “Eleanor Funkbeat.” We'll do a Jimi Hendrix piece, then we'll do Eric Satie's Gymnopédies. Wonderful on the flute. We'll do our version of Steely Dan's “Asia.” We'll do a Lenny White piece. We'll do a song I wrote, titled “Ostropil”, the town in Ukraine that our mother was born in, “Scarborough Fair,” as you had mentioned. I see another Hendrix. There’s quite a bit of material, really different and quite a bit of Pete's pieces that he composed in what I think is an audience-pleasing kind of jazz. It's not extremely loud. And it's my feeling is that you get the sense of the personality of the musicians. We're not just up there being remote from the audience and…
GROSSMAN: … playing with your back to the audience and such …
LEVIN: Let me put it in a better: playing only for ourselves. We're very aware of how the audience feels about what we do. And like I said, it's a thrill to come back to the theater and to be back in Indianapolis. And I think the audience will enjoy the show a lot.
GROSSMAN: I think we have ourselves a really good interview here. Thank you so much. Is there anything you want to add?
LEVIN: Oh, no. I want to tell you, I appreciate the homework you did and your expertise and the quality of questions that make it way easier for me.
GROSSMAN: Oh, well, thank you. I'm no expert in anything and my only instrument is the harmonica but you know …
LEVIN: It's an instrument.
GROSSMAN: It's an instrument. I enjoy playing.
LEVIN: Well, it’s very nice speaking to you. Thanks very much. can't thank you enough.
GROSSMAN: Thank you, Tony Levin. I really appreciate your talking to me today. Take care and have a good show.
LEVIN: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Bye bye. We'll speak again.
