Tony Levin bass parts are recognisable across four decades and several bands that otherwise have nothing in common, and the reason is partly that he does not play one instrument. He moves between electric bass, the Chapman Stick and an electric upright, and he invented a way of hitting the strings with sticks strapped to his fingers. This is the inventory: what each instrument is, where it came from, and which records it belongs to.

The player, in dates

The band credits set the frame. Levin has worked with Peter Gabriel since 1977. He was in King Crimson from 1981 to 1984, returned across the later line-ups from 1994 to 1998, and was part of the group again in 2008, 2011 and from 2014 to 2021. He has played in Liquid Tension Experiment in three separate periods from 1997, and has led Stick Men since 2010. Almost every instrument below is tied to one of those chapters.

The electric bass

His early instruments came out of the jazz and session world: he traded an Ampeg upright for a Fender Precision, and his first amplifier was an Ampeg Portaflex B-15. The bass he is now associated with is the Music Man StingRay, and Guitar World describes the five-string StingRay as his main instrument. Beyond that the record thins out: precise dating of which bass appears on which album is not documented in any source worth quoting, so it is not claimed here. What is clear is the type of instrument – an active, mid-forward bass that stays audible in a dense mix, which is exactly what a King Crimson arrangement requires.

The Chapman Stick

Levin is the reason most rock listeners have heard a Chapman Stick at all. He began using it in the Peter Gabriel period and it became structural to King Crimson from Discipline (1981) onwards, through Beat (1982) and Three of a Perfect Pair (1984). The instrument is played by tapping strings against the fingerboard with both hands, so one player can state a bass line and a melodic part at once – which is why it suits a band built on interlocking parts rather than solos. How it works, how it is tuned and who else plays it is covered in my piece on the Chapman Stick.

The electric upright

The third instrument is the NS electric upright bass, which Levin helped popularise. It is worth understanding what it is not: not a double bass with a pickup, and not an electric bass stood on end, but a purpose-built instrument with the scale length and the bowed-instrument geometry of an upright and none of the body. For a touring musician who wants the articulation of an upright without carrying one, it solves a real problem.

Funk fingers

The idea most often credited to Levin is the one he is careful to share. Funk fingers are shortened drumsticks strapped to the fingers of the right hand, so that the strings are struck rather than plucked – the sound of a drumstick on a bass string, but with a bassist’s control over which note and when. Levin credits Peter Gabriel with the concept and Gabriel’s technician Andy Moore with making the things workable. Gabriel is also the source of the nickname that follows Levin around, the “Emperor of the Bottom End”.

It is a small invention with a clear logic behind it. A plucked bass note has a soft attack; a struck one has a hard transient at the front. Drummers get that for free and bassists do not, and funk fingers are the shortest route to it without overdubbing a percussionist.

Two bass players at once

The oddest situation Levin has had to arrange for came with the King Crimson line-up of the mid-1990s, the six-piece the band called the double trio: two guitarists, two drummers and two players on the low end, Levin alongside Trey Gunn on touch instruments. THRAK (1995) is the studio record of that configuration. Splitting the bass register between two musicians only works if they are not doing the same job, and the division of labour there – one player on electric bass and upright, the other on a touch instrument – is the clearest demonstration of why Levin carries the collection he does.

Why the multi-instrument approach matters

There is a temptation to file all this under gear eccentricity. It is better understood as a response to a specific musical problem. The bands Levin has spent most of his career in do not use the bass the way a rock band does – as the bottom of a chord – but as one line among several equal ones. That kind of writing needs a bass player who can be a second guitar, a percussion voice or a cello depending on the bar, and the fastest way to do that is to change instrument rather than to change technique. The inventory is the method.

Where to hear each one

For the Stick as the point of the arrangement: Discipline. For funk fingers: the Peter Gabriel records of the late 1980s. For the electric bass doing conventional work extremely well: the Liquid Tension Experiment records. For all of it at once: Stick Men, from 2010 onwards.

Go deeper

The instrument itself is covered in the Chapman Stick, and the wider survey is in the guide to prog rock gear. For the playing, see the best prog rock bassists and the best bass solos in prog rock. For the band, start with the best King Crimson albums. The British scene that King Crimson belongs to is the subject of Beyond the Thames, the second book in my Beyond the Sound series.

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