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| The Exclusive (and elusive!) Tony Levin Interview! |
| Why elusive, you may ask? You wouldn't believe what Tony and I went through to bring this interview to you! Let's just say that some amazing invisible text really threatened the possibility of this interview, but through Tony's determination and persistence, we found a way around the problems and the results are well worth all the headaches! Now a bit about our guest! If you are not too familiar with Tony Levin, there's still a real good bet you've still heard him play. Tony's credits include stints with John Lennon, Paul Simon, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, Paula Cole, ABWH, Alice Cooper, Carly Simon, Stevie Nicks, and, well you get the picture! Easily one of the top influential bass players of all time, Tony has decided to stretch his wings with his own touring band, playing some of the most innovative and exciting music to be heard today. Tony is truly a musican's musician. It was my honor to conduct this great interview with him. |
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| Q: Tony, thank you so much for joining Me here on My site! I wanted to start off by telling you that I recently purchased your "Pieces Of the Sun" album, and it is phenomenal! The whole band is in top form to say the least! Critical reaction has been great from what I have seen. It seems that Your solo work is finally starting to get the exposure it has deserved. What are your thoughts on this? A: Well, it's too early in the album's release to really know how much the public will hear about it. I was very pleased to see a quick reaction at Amazon.com (They have a sales ranking where my albums are usually ranked up very high in the thousands but this one started off in the 50's). When the band and I go out on tour and do some playing and interviews in a lot of the cities, then at least the Crimson and Gabriel fans will start to know about it's release. Attention to the release is important to Me, but far more important is that the music is worthwhile, and that some listeners, if only a few, will be moved by the music. To Me, that's what writing the music is all about. Q: There does seem to be a lot harder edge to a lot of the "Pieces of the Sun" material as compared to the great "Waters of Eden" album as well as some more expanded instrumentals. Did You go into making this album with the idea of expanding the music or did it just kind of happen to expand as you played and rehearsed? A: In My previous release, "Waters of Eden", I was specifically trying to do some 'World Music' influenced writing. The reason is that I had just done quite a few furious progressive instrumental albums this year (Bozzio Levin Stevens and Liquid Tension Experiment- 2 albums with each) and I was, frankly, missing a lot of the softer that I used to do a little of, mainly with Peter Gabriel. Now I'm back to my old self (!) and want to connect with my prog roots, in addition to wanting to feature the players who were on tour with Me the last 2 years in my band. Larry Fast and Jerry Marotta were both members of the Peter Gabriel band, so there is that obvious connection. And for that reason, I chose to re-make an old Gabriel song (Dog One) which we played on the original of, but it never came out! We also did our verison of an old Synergy piece (Phobos) which Larry had written long ago. Other than that, the album is very new music, but in a progressive rock style. Q: I try as often as possible to buy artist releases from their websites rather than corporate chains because I know that it really makes a difference as far as how much profit the artist gets from it. Being as how You have the Papa Bear Records store on Your site in which we can buy Your releases, how much difference does it make when we buy direct from You (which I strongly encourage all of our readers to do!) A: It's an unusual situation right now. I will carry the release on my web site, and of course, I will get much more profit when sales are through there. But I learned from the last release that when the album is new (maybe the first few months), distributors look closely at "scanned sales" (i.e. official ones) and base their re-orders on that. So, with someone like Me, whose followers mostly go to the website, most of the early sales could be through my site and therefore not go into the 'loop' for the distributor to know about, therefore, no attention from them, which means many stores would never carry the CD. Whew...anyway, this time I've decided not to carry the CD for the first months, though I do link to Amazon.com, whose sales are counted in 'sound scans'. Sorry the answer was so complicated! |