Tony Levin: Profiles in Education

The legendary bassist on his school-band experiences, his greatest teachers and how his mustache led to the end of his tuba career. Plus: Inside Levin’s BEAT touring rig

Around 2019, Tony Levin was deep into another tour with King Crimson, playing some of the most complex and intimidating prog-rock ever recorded. Warming up backstage after soundcheck, his bandmates practiced their instruments, working through a setlist that included staples like “Red” and “The Court of the Crimson King.” Then there was Levin, a revered musician in his mid-70s, continuing his education on YouTube—watching instructional bass videos to refine his technique just that tiny bit more.

“I’m playing one note at a time really slowly on one string, just to relearn the basics of bass playing,” he says. “And then I’m going onstage to play a King Crimson show.” His fans and peers consider him a master: For proof, hear his new album, Bringing It Down to the Bass, an adventurous fusion LP featuring Robert Fripp, Steve Gadd, Mike Portnoy and other virtuosos. But Levin is also a lifelong student. 

Before the Bass

Levin, a Boston native who currently resides in Kingston, N.Y., is best known as a journeyman of the low end, both as a session ace (John Lennon, Paul Simon) and dynamic-shifting band member (King Crimson, Peter Gabriel), venturing from the upright to the electric bass to the extended-range Chapman Stick. But he started his musical life, like many talented kids, with piano lessons.

“My parents said, ‘You have to practice! You can’t take piano lessons and not practice!’ Maybe an hour a day or something like that,” he recalls. “I liked playing it, and I loved the classical music I was learning a lot—I still listen to classical piano music. But I didn’t love practicing. If I can trust my vague memories, my parents asked me if there was an instrument I’d like to play other than the piano, and I chose the bass and started taking lessons—then things changed for me. I really enjoyed practicing. I learned with a pretty rigid classical technique. I probably practiced my hour a day without fuss, and nobody made me do it. The difference is that it was something I wanted to do, rather than something that was imposed on me.” 

The Magic of the Upright

Levin isn’t exactly sure what attracted him to the upright, but he has theories. Growing up, he was “exposed to a lot of classical music” and attended a couple of solo concerts by classical bassists, which “undoubtedly had a big influence.” Another key inspiration: the record collection of his older brother (and future collaborator) Pete Levin, who later racked up his own impressive résumé as a jazz keyboardist. “I was listening, like it or not, to his records because I wasn’t buying them yet,” Tony recalls. “There was some really good bass playing on those records, although they were jazz—not the genre I wanted to play particularly, although later I would play it. But still, good music is good music, so in a way I was raised on Oscar Pettiford’s bass playing and cello playing. I was very lucky to be immersed in that and in classical music.”

That immersion also motivated Levin to pick up the tuba, which enabled him to play in the high-school concert band and marching band. “Having a great big sousaphone wrapped around you and trying to keep it warm so you can actually make a sound from it during the cold Thanksgiving football games—I think of it as an American ritual of being in high school,” he says. “I got pretty good at tuba, and at some point I was one of the soloists with the concert band. I learned some valuable lessons—including that, when you get nervous, your mouth can dry up and it becomes very hard to hit the high notes in a cadenza. I found out the hard way playing concerts with my high-school band. Later, I talked Peter Gabriel into using it on one piece [‘Excuse Me,’ from 1977], and I got to play one on the road with a rock band, which was good fun. When I consistently started having a mustache, that’s not technically a good idea for a tuba player, because that mouthpiece doesn’t fit well under a mustache. I gradually gave it up.”

Learn From the Best. Don’t Worry About Being the Best

Facial-hair interference aside, Levin was already staying busy with constant practice on the bass—and he was constantly pushed to improve by the more experienced players around him. “When I was in high school, I was good enough to be in the orchestra and to be in a Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra of very good players,” he recounts. “Was I the best? No, far from it. When I auditioned and went to be in the Eastman School of Music [in Rochester, N.Y.]—again, I was good enough to get in and hold my weight. Not the best in my class by any means. There were awesome bass players in my class, way better than me. Then I played in the Rochester Philharmonic—same deal, maybe eighth chair. I was never, that I can recall, the best bass player in the room, so to speak, with a large room. But I was never focused on being the best player in the room—I was focused on being a better bass player, and I still am.”

So much of that drive is internal—you can’t become great at your instrument unless you invest the sweat equity. But Levin’s also had some great teachers along the way—ones who knew the importance of a well-timed compliment but could also sense when he needed a firm push.

“If I think back to the very good teachers I had, they had a sense of when to ease up and encourage you that you’re doing OK, even if that week’s practicing didn’t work out that well,” he says. “[They also had] a sense of when I was becoming complacent and feeling like I’m good and not working hard enough. Another way of putting it: a sense of when I was ready to step up to another level and improve my playing.”

Tough Love in Adult Education

One of Levin’s most effective teachers didn’t even play the bass. “As an adult, as a 30-something-year professional musician in New York City, I decided to take up classical guitar, to study with a guy that all my guitar-player friends were studying with,” he recalls. “They said he was one of the best guitar teachers in New York City—an elderly Russian guy who was trained in Russian classical music tradition. When I came in with my gig bag with my bass in it, he would say, ‘OK, put that thing down, sonny boy, and let’s work on the real instrument.’

“I laughed about it,” he continues, “and it was a joke, of course. But it was his way of saying, ‘Let’s get serious here.’ He really had a sense—if I’d practiced a lot and was feeling good about that, he would suddenly start picking apart how I was holding the guitar on my left leg and the exact position of my hand and things like that. I thought I was OK at those things, but he had a sense of ‘This guy’s feeling good about his playing. He did a lot of homework this week, a lot of practicing. It’s time to bring him back to the basics, where things aren’t perfect.’”

Levin, despite his stature as one of our elite bassists, will probably never think his playing is perfect. And that’s why he’s still searching, still educating himself, still seeking out the occasional YouTube lesson. “I loved playing the bass [as a kid], and I wanted to become better at it,” he says. “I don’t practice as often nowadays, but essentially I haven’t changed much through all these years. I still love playing the bass, and I endeavor to get better at it.”

Tony Levin, Steve Vai, Adrian Belew and Danny Carey (from left) are BEAT, currently on tour. 

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