Tony Levin

John Beaudin - Good morning Tony. Have you had your espresso yet?

Tony Levin - Yeah, I've had a couple.

John - Nectar of the Gods I always say! I was on your website this morning and I have to say you have one of the most interesting sites bar none!

Tony - I think it's partly because it has been up there for a while. I have been chipping away at different stuff for many years and I have other interests than just music, like coffee as you've noticed.

John - Your site (tonylevin.com) does what many web sites don't do and that it gives the fans a pretty good image of who you really are.

Tony - Well, you know what? In the early days of the web everyone who had sites, me included, they were kind of anti-commercial and it was embarrassing to be commercial in any way. So even though I offered my records for sale I did it in a subtle way and I was almost embarrassed about selling
anything.

John - I hear you.

Tony - Mainly, it was about presenting content and having links to similar sites and because I started that way, I've always stayed away from the pop-up advertising and stuff like that.

John - You know, I've followed your career first through of course Peter Gabriel but after that I discovered you've played bass on other favorite albums of mine. This new album of yours was just the catalyst to get me on to chatting with you.

Tony - Well thanks.

John - Do you take shots (pictures) of all your audience's?

Tony - Oh Yeah, but there are nights where the camera doesn't work. There have been a few shows where I didn't have time to pick up the camera and take a picture but to me it's a real interesting thing. What we see from the stage and what we feel with the energy from the audience is not only a cool thing but it's a big part of the show. You wouldn't know that if you were sitting in the audience but different audiences effect the band in different ways and help them through shows where they might have been tired and stuff like that. So, a long time ago I started taking pictures of the audience or even of the band. For instance, with Peter Gabriel I used to take pictures of the back of him and what he's looking at. I think that's one of the things that the web is really great for in that people the next day can go up and see what it looked like to the performer.

John - I don't want to analyze it too much but there is a side of your web site that shows that you don't really put yourself on a pedestal.

Tony - You know as well as anyone that I'm not too good at the perspective of what I'm about or what I'm like and it's not that important to me. I do know that I'm very much a bass player. If I'm putting out an album and I'm "the artist" or even if I'm fronting the band which is a new experience for me, it's the same as being in the back . I'm a player and I do it because I love playing whether it's for my album or someone else's. I have a web site because I love the web. I'm kind of in that niche, as an artist, as a person who is somewhat known in the field. I'm in that comfortable niche where I'm not that famous and sometimes people do need to put a barrier between them and their followers. When you're real famous you need to do that but I'm not that famous so I don't need that kind of barrier. I will say that I can't handle an email from someone who just wants to send them because with that site I think we're reaching about nine hundred thousand hits. There is that barrier and it's not like hey, send me an email and I'll write you back tonight. I try to be careful of not trying to put up barriers where there shouldn't be any. Another good example of that is with our band after the show, we go out and sign any CDs. If I'm out with Jerry Marotta and Larry Fast who go way back to the old Peter Gabriel days, usually we find people with huge piles of vinyl and it's kind of fun even if we're a little tired after the show. I think it's a treat, remember we're not playing places that big and we are not that famous that we have to disappear or have guards keeping people from us.

John - Before I was in broadcasting, the one thing that I appreciated more than anything else were bands who came to meet the fans after the show. I always knew the band was tired and it's easy to give a great show and leave for the hotel. Lets face it, that's good enough, but when they greet the audience the fans never forget.

Tony - That's a good point. Frankly, I've toured with a lot of bands and some people who are real nice guys can't handle it because you are tired after the show. If you're the lead singer like Peter Gabriel or Ritchie Sambora everybody's a little different. To appear and sign your name is not that hard, but to talk to people and give them what they want, well…

John - You see at that point, that's another level.

Tony - It is. It's hard, so even some nice guys who are pretty generous have to put a limit on it especially if they're singing four or five shows a week. They have to protect their voice. That's another thing, there's a little background singing for me when I tour with the Tony Levin band. I find after the show we have what is called the "meet and greet." After going out and signing things, I find I'm hoarse from all the talking I've had to do and it's kind of loud, so you have to shout over people.

John - Obviously, if you're doing twenty thousand seat arena's you can't greet that many people!

Tony - Even a one thousand seat arena you can't go out and meet 500 people.

John - Do you find that because you've played with so many big artists that the media immediately asks you about Peter Gabriel or John Lennon?

Tony - Yeah, they do and it's fine. The first one is usually John Lennon and what he was like or if they're King Crimson fans they'll ask what's Robert (Fripp) really like. I don't mind at all.

John - You wrote a book on this didn't you?

Tony - Yeah, I wrote a book once about some anecdotes of things that happened to me on the road.

John - Well, John Lennon is hard to resist.

Tony - Sure. There were a number of years that I had a problem with the John Lennon issue because of the way he died right after I worked with him and the way the press wanted quotes right after his death, in fact every anniversary of his death ever since. So, I went for about ten years being touchy and saying I really don't want to talk about that and finally I came to grips with it and my own issues about it and that's even hard to talk about.

John - Sure.

Tony - So, for me I have to maneuver the interview around to talk about my own album. I do have a record out and if I'm talking with the press I'm happy to talk about what it's like to be a bass player and whatever project I'm doing at the moment. I'm about to tour with my own record. The Peter Gabriel tour could be later this year. I've heard rumors that he might go out and if he does I'll happily do that. That will be the focus of my attention on the road and musically for as long as he tours.

John - Have you worked on his new album?

Tony - I have but that doesn't mean that the release is eminent. We started recording tracks in 1996
if you can believe that.

John - He scraps whole albums sometimes and starts from scratch, doesn't he?

Peter - Yeah. We had dozens and dozens of tracks way back in 1997 and ever since I've been just waiting. I don't really communicate that much with Peter so I've been waiting to hear that he's finished the vocals and chosen the ten of fifteen tracks. It's been a lot of years and I haven't heard anything definitive but I have heard rumors from other people that he's getting closer to finishing now. Maybe by the end of this year he'll be touring and I'm pretty confident that I'll be touring with him.

John - When you wrote your book did you find it easy leaving the negative stuff out?

Tony - I know that I always have a harder time talking about something I don't like rather than the positive because when you get positive it carries you through your writing. In the book I talk about a lot of guys in a lot of different situations and there's a whole lot more that I don't talk about. I started to write about the disasters, the ones that make somebody look bad and I found them very hard to write so I didn't do it.

John - From a diary/journal point of view it can be very therapeutic but it doesn't mean it has to be shared with everyone.

Tony - I gripe to my wife a lot. (laughing) My poor wife has to listen to how I really feel about everything. It's been quite a few years since I've kept a private journal.

John - Your road updates on your site are cool.

Tony - Well, that's a public journal and that doesn't say the terrible stuff! (Laughing ) Generally, I don't dwell too much on the bad stuff. I have to admit I'm in a lucky fortuitous time of my career where I'm putting out my own record and touring. I am also waiting for the Peter Gabriel tour to come along and occasionally playing with King Crimson, that's not bad stuff.

John - No kidding. So do you get people coming up to you, touching you and saying, 'Oh, you're Tony Levin, I'm not worthy" (laughing)

Tony - (laughing) Only occasionally. Once in a while I do and it's awkward, I really don't relate to that at all.

John - You must be able to understand it a little bit. You have worked really hard at what you do and you're very good at what you do.

Tony - Like I said it's only once in a while and it's awkward because I'm not that kind of guy and you know another thing, when you live your life you know you really think of yourself in what you did, like here's what I've done. I don't carry that around with me. When I go to a record session I don't think I'm Tony Levin and I did this or that. I just go to it, listen to the music and think about what I'm going to play in the present and when I go home at night my dreams are nothing about what I did ten years ago but what I'm going to do next year. As in terms of my bass playing, I think a lot about new ideas that I can come up with and new technique's I can use in the future.

John - So, you really work on that as a player, that's pretty cool.

Tony - Oh yeah. It's all I think about as a player. First I react to the music assuming I'm not writing and if someone has me play on their record I just listen to it and I don't really think. I just try to come up with a bass part that works really well for that particular music. Sometimes, it can call for some new bass thing that I haven't done, a new sound or new direction, I'll really try to work with that. The reason I think that way is partly because I've played with some real progressive players in the old sense of that word, like old acts like King Crimson and Peter Gabriel. It's great when everybody in the band is really pushing themselves individually and as a band not to do what we did before. On an unsuccessful track it will sound like what I did before, where trying to do things we haven't done before because that's what progressive music should be.

John - I talk to a lot of musicians who seem to be in a comfort zone. Some are big pop act's who have been doing their own thing for a long time and they still sell a lot of records and that's okay. A few days before Christmas last year I spoke to Bruce Hornsby again and …

Tony - He's a real talented guy, I've played with him.

John - Now there's a guy like you who practice's and tries to think of ways to reinvent a tune. I think he wants to look at the center of the pie from a different angle all of the time.

Tony - Oh yeah, I know what he's like. He's much more talented than what people know of him from his hits.

John - I'm a very average drummer and truly have never considered myself as a musician. I've had so many musician friends and you know I can tell the ones easily who have that edge, the hunger to be better because they never park. They are never satisfied, they simply know there's more inside. As for drummers, you've worked with Bill (Bruford) and Jerry (Marotta) and as drummers go, they strike me as the work horses that keep getting better.

Tony - Yeah. Those two guys are good examples. Bill doesn't carry around the old, "here's what I do and that's that." He and Robert Fripp have had big theoretical arguments, Robert will want Bill to play electric drums and Bill will feel his musical momentum is carrying him to play acoustic drums and this is a big thing. It's not about where he's been and what he did before, he just internally needs to keep pushing ahead. Jerry Marotta on this album is actually playing a lot. Jerry and I talk a lot, we're not only friends but we're neighbors. I was pushing him to play a lot of cross time things that he can do but that's not the way he generally plays, so that's a good example of Jerry pushing himself. Jerry has a very distinctive sound.

John - He sure does.

Tony - And this is a new style for him and he wasn't comfortable doing it at least not before we went into the studio. Like any great player he's not going to say I don't do that he just challenges himself and figures out a way to make something distinctive out of that kind of playing.

John - This morning I was playing the new album (Pieces Of the Sun) and with the first track 'Apollo' I couldn't help but think this is a driving tune for spacemen it's a fast truckin' tune.

Tony - What I had in mind when I wrote that piece was the ballet by Stravinsky. I haven't seen it in decades but I just had an image of it. I wasn't trying to copy it but that's a good example how it starts off with this mellow theme and suddenly it rocks. On the record my friends, The California Guitar Trio came in and overdubbed but live we don't have them with us but doing that song will be a lot of fun.

John - Aquafin has a classical feel to it.

Tony - Yeah, a lot of my stuff has classical elements. I grew up as a classical player so you can't just subtract that from your sensibility. I think what I'm aiming at with this album is less of a classical sounding album than the last one. I'm trying to blend my progressive rock roots and maybe the form of classical music. I like the introduction of a theme in classical music, in Rock and Pop you have a verse that repeats and the chorus, which is the more accessible part and maybe another verse and then a bridge, something different and then you go back. In Classical you have these themes that can come back and they can be twisted a little bit. Actually 'Apollo' is a good example of this. The theme is faded in the beginning with all kinds of sections. I think the piece is seven to eight minutes long but then at the end that theme comes back different, it comes back in a real appropriate way and then there's the counter theme that's been heard before and not featured and stuff like that. I get that from classical so even if it doesn't sound classical it has some classical form influence.

February 27th 2002

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