Tony Levin - Biography

Tony Levin (born June 6, 1946, Boston, Massachusetts) is an American progressive rock musician, specializing in bass guitar, Chapman stick and upright bass (although he also sings and plays synthesizer).

Levin is best known for his work with progressive rock pioneers King Crimson and Peter Gabriel. He has also been a member of Liquid Tension Experiment; the King Crimson-related bands Bruford Levin Upper Extremities, ProjeKct One and ProjeKct Four; and currently leads his own Tony Levin Band.

A prolific session musician since the 1970s, Levin has played on five hundred albums, including those of Cher, Alice Cooper, John Lennon, Sarah McLachlan, Stevie Nicks, Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Buddy Rich, The Roches, Todd Rundgren, Seal, Yes and Warren Zevon. Additionally, he has toured with artists including Paul Simon (with whom Tony appeared in Simon's 1980 film One Trick Pony), Gary Burton, James Taylor, Herbie Mann, Judy Collins, Carly Simon, Peter Frampton, Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, Peter Gabriel, Tim Finn, Richie Sambora, and Claudio Baglioni.

Levin helped to popularize the Chapman Stick and the NS upright bass. He also created "funk fingers", modified drumsticks attached to fingers used to hit the bass guitar strings (which sounds similar to slap style bass).

Levin is also one of the first bloggers, as he began sharing his tour experiences in a diary way as early as in 1996, one year before the terms "weblog" and "blog" were coined.

1 Early life and education
- 1.1 1970s-1980s
- 1.2 1990s-2000s
2 Selected discography
3 External links

Early life and education

Levin was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in the suburb of Brookline. He began playing double bass at 10 years old, primarily studying classical music. In high school, he learned tuba, soloing with the concert band, and also started a barbershop quartet.

After high school, he attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY and played in the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. Also at Eastman, he studied with drummer Steve Gadd. He traded in his Ampeg electric upright "Baby Bass" for a Fender Precision Bass; his first bass amplifier on early days was an Ampeg Portaflex B-15.

Tony's brother, Pete Levin, is a New York keyboardist and writer who is best known for his work with Gil Evans. In the 1970s, Tony and Pete collaborated with Steve Gadd in the comedy band The Clams. Levin has stated that some of the Clams's material may eventually be released.

1970s-1980s

In 1970, Levin moved to New York City, joining a band called Aha, the Attack of the Green Slime Beast, with Don Preston of The Mothers of Invention. Soon after, he began working as a session musician, and through the 1970s he played bass on many albums, including Buddy Rich's big band jazz album, The Roar of '74.

In 1976, Levin joined with Steve Gadd on drums to create the lush textures the two created on Andy Pratt's critically acclaimed "Resolution" album that included other A-list studio musicians like Arif Mardin, Andy Newmark, Hugh McDonald, and Luther Vandross. Allmusic.com and Rolling Stone Magazine rated this album as one of the best singer/songwriter albums of the 1970s.

In the late 1970s, Tony joined Peter Gabriel's band. He had met Gabriel through producer Bob Ezrin (with whom Tony had recorded Alice Cooper's Welcome to My Nightmare and Lou Reed's Berlin). Levin has been Gabriel's bass player of choice ever since, both on the road and in the studio. On Gabriel's first solo album, Levin played tuba as well as bass, and directed a short barbershop quartet version of a song.

In these early years with Gabriel, Levin developed his playing of the Chapman Stick. In 1986, the song "Big Time", from Gabriel's So album, inspired the development of funk fingers, which are chopped off drumsticks used to hammer on the bass strings. Levin credits Gabriel with the idea, and Andy Moore, his tech at the time, with actually making them workable.

In 1978, Levin moved to Woodstock, New York, to join the band L'Image, which included his old friend Steve Gadd, as well as Mike Mainieri and Warren Bernhardt. The band broke up after a year, and Levin stayed in Woodstock, where he still lives. While recording and touring Peter Gabriel's first album, Levin became acquainted with Robert Fripp, and in 1980, after having played on Fripp's solo album, Exposure, he became a member of the 1980s incarnation of King Crimson. He also played all of the bass guitar and Chapman Stick parts on Pink Floyd's 1987 album A Momentary Lapse of Reason as a session player.

In 1989 Bruford asked Levin to play in Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, a splinter group of the band Yes. Because of the obvious emphasis on this being a band of former Yes members, Levin was never invited to become an official member, but played on ABWH's eponymous album (as well as the accompanying tour), and also on Yes' 1991 album Union.

In 1984 Tony released Road Photos, a collection of black & white photos taken during his travels with Crimson, Gabriel, Simon and others. Another book of photos focusing on King Crimson's travels in the 1980s, The Crimson Chronicles volume 1, was released in 2004. There has been no word yet on the release of volume 2, which will cover the 1990s and possibly 2000s versions of the band. Levin has also written a book of career anecdotes and road stories called Beyond the Bass Clef.

Tony was part of King Crimson up until the mid-1990s breakup of the "Double Trio" line-up of the band which consisted of Tony Levin, Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Trey Gunn, Pat Mastelotto and Bill Bruford. Fripp then reformed King Crimson as a quartet, without Levin and Bruford. Levin also took part in two of the post-breakup experimental sub-groups, ProjeKct One (1997) and ProjeKct Four (1998).

1990s-2000s

In 1998, Levin and Bruford formed Bruford Levin Upper Extremities with trumpeter Chris Botti and guitarist David Torn; the group released albums in 1998 and 2000. Levin also continued producing albums with his own band, the Tony Levin Band. This band consists of Jerry Marotta, Jesse Gress, Larry Fast and his brother, Pete Levin.

In 1997, Levin teamed up with Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci, members of Dream Theater, as well as future Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess, for a project called Liquid Tension Experiment. The combo released two albums, Liquid Tension Experiment and Liquid Tension Experiment 2 in 1998 and 1999 respectively, as well as playing short tours in 1998 and 2008. There have also been two CDs of material released under the name Liquid Trio Experiment; the first composed of studio jams from the LTE2 sessions sans Petrucci (Spontaneous Combustion), released for the band's tenth anniversary, and a live recording from a 2008 Chicago gig where Rudess's rig crashed and the other three covered for it with a nearly hour-long improvisation (When the Keyboard Breaks).

Levin also regularly plays live and occasionally records with the California Guitar Trio when schedules permit.

In 2004 Trey Gunn left King Crimson, and Fripp reinstated Levin as the bassist, although the band remained inactive until 2008. In 2006, Levin released Resonator an album which features long time band mates Jerry Marotta, Jesse Gress, Larry Fast, with the addition of his brother Pete Levin. The album is the first to feature Levin's singing.

2007 saw the release of Stick Man, an album of pieces recorded on the Chapman Stick, which was followed up in the winter of 2008-09 with a tour also including King Crimson drummer Pat Mastelotto and fellow Chapman Stick player Michael Bernier. This group, under the name Stick Men, toured Europe in late 2009 and America in May 2010. To coincide with the tour, Stick Men's first album Soup was released on May 9, 2010. Meanwhile, they have released a limited edition CD billed as a preview of the upcoming album, which was sold only during their autumn 2009 tour with Porcupine Tree. Michael Bernier left the group shortly after the release of Soup and was replaced by Markus Reuter in early August 2010. Subsequent to the band's South American tour in March 2011 Reuter was working with Levin and Mastelotto on learning the old material, as well as writing and recording the EP Absalom.

A re-formed King Crimson played eleven live dates in August 2008, but no further plans have been announced.

In 2009, Levin reunited with his band from 1973, "L'Image", featuring Mike Mainieri, Warren Bernhardt, David Spinozza and Steve Gadd. The group performed at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City, toured Japan, and released the album "L'Image 2.0".

In 2010 Levin toured with HoBoLeMa, a super group consisting of Allan Holdsworth on guitar, Levin on bass, and Pat Mastelotto and Terry Bozzio on drums. They performed sets completely of improvisation with no prewritten music.

Selected discography

Levin has played on about five hundred records as session musician or guest artist. The following records are those on which he is credited as a fully contributing band member or composer.