Bass Nation

Tony Levin is one of my absolute favorite bassists. You’ve heard him as a session musician on a million different things probably without even knowing it. I recently found out that it was him playing bass on Alice Cooper’s Welcome to my Nightmare album. When Peter Gabriel left Genesis to go solo, Tony joined his band. During those recording sessions, he met Robert Fripp who invited him to join the 80’s incarnation of King Crimson. Probably the first thing I ever heard Tony’s playing was the tapping intro to Elephant Talk on Crimson’s Discipline album. It sounded like Primus, ten years before there was a Primus. When Yes split up, Tony was the bassist for Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe. He’s also an amazing solo artist. Tony is an incredibly versatile musician, constantly pushing the envelope of what can be done with a bass. He invented the Funk Fingers, which attaches drumstick tips to your fingers to strike the bass strings more percussively.

Besides bass guitar and electric upright, he also plays the Chapman Stick which for lack of a better description is like a combination of a bass, guitar and piano, all on one wide neck with a ton of strings. I just found an album that he did with a percussionist and a woodwind player where they played some improvisational mood music in a cave, using the cave’s unusual acoustics for a haunting effect.

There are tons of great examples I could show of Tony’s playing. Here he is playing Heart of the Sunrise using the funk fingers with the California Guitar Trio and Jon Anderson. More videos after the jump

Here he is with his own band doing Elephant Talk on Chapman Stick

And one last one, Tony playing with funk fingers and bowing his electric upright (embedding was disabled, but you can watch it here ).

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