I’ve been fortunate enough to meet a number of my musical idols. Being that I’m not all that famous myself, it’s cool that so many of them are down-to-earth enough to have a conversation with a relative nobody like myself. Here, first entry in an occasional series about my brief encounters with musical “heroes.”<\/p>\n
Tony Levin is generally considered to be a very cool, somewhat quirky guy. He’s a great bassist and an innovative musician (among other instruments, he also plays a Chapman Stick). His book “Beyond the Bass Clef” is a fun read, with gig anectdotes and studio stories – and the odd crazy invention (bass rig with capuccino machine) and oatmeal cookie recipe(!) It was during a book signing that I got to have a brief conversation with him, and I just so happened to have a fun story to tell, which he quite clearly appreciated.<\/p>\n
As you may have read in a previous post, I own several pair of Tony’s “Funk Fingers” (small drumsticks that attach to a bassist’s fingers for a percussive sound.) Tony used them on several tunes with Peter Gabriel. In the meantime, I actually used them on two of Second Story’s more popular tunes, and as a result, if you came out to see us, you were quite likely to see them in action at least once.<\/p>\n
A friend and regular audience member came up to me after a show one evening all excited – he told me that, the previous weekend, he had watched Peter Gabriel’s “Secret World Live” video. “And his bassist – he had those crazy drumstick thingies like you have!” I, of course, filled him in that Tony was actually the inventor<\/em> of those “drumstick thingies.” As you can imagine, when I recounted that story, Tony got a nice laugh out of it.<\/p>\n I found him to be generous with his time, attentive to his fans, and quite friendly overall. Cool guy. And he signed my book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been fortunate enough to meet a number of my musical idols. Being that I’m not all that famous myself, it’s cool that so many of them are down-to-earth enough to have a conversation with…<\/p>\n