
Prog’s premier bassman, Tony Levin, with his Three of a Perfect PairErnie Ball Music Man StingRay—which shares the same design as the cover of the third album by King Crimson’s ’80s reincarnation.
The king of prog rock’s low end discusses his storied career and how he approaches both bass and Chapman Stick, his tenure with King Crimson and Peter Gabriel, his creative relationship with guitarists and drummers, his new album Bringing It Down to the Bass, and, of course, the much-anticipated upcoming BEAT Tour with Adrian Belew, Steve Vai, and Tool’s Danny Carey.
There’s a good reason why Tony Levin has played with many of the world’s most thrillingly creative musicians—a list that includes Peter Gabriel, Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Paul Simon, Bill Bruford, Manu Katché, David Torn, Tom Waits, Warren Zevon, Richard Thompson, Allan Holdsworth, David Bowie, Vinnie Colaiuta, Bryan Ferry, and more.
He’s one of them.
In the six decades since Levin graduated from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and joined a freaky band led by members of the Mothers of Invention, he has brought his open-minded mastery of the bass and Chapman Stick to hundreds of sessions and thousands of performances, ranging from Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” to the magical ’80s incarnation of King Crimson. Even after all of that, the tall, shaven-headed, and prominently mustached Levin insists that “Everything about my playing is evolving. I’m much more a student than a teacher. Also, I’m very lucky to often play with great drummers and guitar players who, sometimes by their work ethic alone, but often by their musicality and talent, inspire me to try to deserve to be in a band with them.”
“The musical inspiration from really special players is what I’m here for, and King Crimson has been an unbelievable experience for me in that sense.”
The feeling is presumedly mutual, at least judging by the signposts along the path he’s taken since studying classical music and jazz. In the early ’70s, he played with Gary Burton and Herbie Mann, and became an in-demand pop and rock session player. (In 1971, he declined John McLaughlin’s invitation to join the Mahavishnu Orchestra, because he’d just taken the Burton gig.) In that decade, he contributed to such important albums as Lou Reed’s Berlin and Alice Cooper’s Welcome to My Nightmare, and cut tracks for Carly Simon, Don McLean, Phoebe Snow, Ringo Starr, Art Garfunkel, and Laura Nyro. He also began his long and still-ongoing association with Peter Gabriel, who’d left Genesis for a solo career and pressed Levin into service for his now-classic debut album.
Say hello to Mr. Natural, Tony’s Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay with most of its finish sanded off, “the way we did with Fender basses in the ’50s and ’60s,” he says.
Photo by Tony Levin and Avraham Bank
Always searching for the ultimate bass sound, Levin was an early adopter of the Music Man StingRay in the mid ’70s, which increased his popularity with studio engineers, who were perpetually on the hunt for more and better lows in their tracks. His distinctive approach, derived from playing upright, also helped, with his authoritative fundamentals, slides and slurs, hammer-ons, and bends bringing character to the basslines he recorded.
Similarly, Levin acquired a Chapman Stick shortly after he learned of its existence, and that bass-guitar hybrid became an important part of his sound on King Crimson’s Discipline album, the 1981 declaration that Robert Fripp’s historic prog-rock project had returned to active duty. Many consider the Fripp-Levin-Bruford-Belew period, and in particular that album plus 1982’s Beat and ’84’s Three of a Perfect Pair, to be King Crimson’s zenith.
Levin’s days with Crimson, which, with a few breaks, extended to the group’s final tour in 2022, along with his tenure with Gabriel are enough to qualify him as prog- or art-rock’s reigning bassist. But there’s more evidence of his right to that crown found in albums by Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, Yes, the Crimson spin-off ProjeKct One, Liquid Tension Experiment, Steven Wilson, his band Stick Men with Crimson drummer Pat Mastelotto and touch-guitar player Markus Reuter, and his solo recordings.
On September 13, Levin will deliver a new solo album, the voraciously creative Bringing It Down to the Bass. Within, he shatters the genre-barrier, with elements of jazz, rock, blues, classical, and ambient music woven into its colorful fabric. There’s even a barbershop quartet arrangement, “Side B / Turn It Over,” with Levin—who is an exceptional harmony singer—vocalizing with himself. (For hardcore fans, it’s a reminder of his wonderful lead vocal turn on that first Gabriel album, the song “Excuse Me.”) The cast is, of course, stunning: guitar heroes Dominic Miller (from Sting’s band), Steve Hunter (who Levin has collaborated with since they played on Gabriel’s debut), Earl Slick, David Torn, and Fripp; drummers Katché, Jerry Marotta, Colaiuta, Mike Portnoy, Steve Gadd, and Mastelotto; Levin’s older brother Pete and the legendary Larry Fast on keys; and the violinist L. Shankar.
Bringing It Down to the Bass rocks, weirds, and entrances. The ambient piece “Floating in Dark Waters,” with Fripp and Marotta, is beautifully meditative, with Levin’s prayerful, semi-sweet-chocolate bass tones gently singing. “Bungie Bass,” with Torn, is a wild, expressionistic ride—full of playful cat-scratch and hide-and-seek melodies. And “Beyond the Bass Clef,” with Shankar’s sonorous lines in the lead, is a poetic journey through inner space.
“Just think about where Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew are sonically. When you hear them, you know who it is because of the way they sound.”
Something else that’s audible in Levin’s eighth solo album is his sense of joy. It’s long been ingrained in his musical character—audible in his tone and the way he reaches for high notes on bass, and in the melodies and rhythms he taps out on Chapman Stick, and in the driving, rock ’n’ roll pleasure of his album’s duet with Colaiuta, “Uncle Funkster.” It’s also in the bold horn arrangements on the title track, which sounds a bit like the theme for an imaginary ’60s TV detective series, and the glorious thunder of “Road Dogs.”
Joy will be in the house—onstage and in the seats—on the dates of the upcoming BEAT Tour, which ignites in mid September. It reunites Levin and Belew, playing that sacrosanct ’80s Crimson repertoire with new teammates Steve Vai and Tool drummer Danny Carey. It might not be the biggest tour of 2024, but it is one of the most anticipated, and it’s hard to imagine a better rock quartet.
Tony Levin's Bass Gear
Tony Levin onstage with Stick Men—a band named for Tony’s use of the Chapman Stick, of which he was an early adopter, and Markus Reuter’s deployment of touch guitar.
Photo by Mike White
Basses
- Ernie Ball Music Man StingRays (4 and 5 string)
- Ernie Ball Music Man Sabre
- Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay Specials
- Ernie Ball Music Man DarkRay
- Chapman Stick (10- and 12-string instruments)
- NS Design NS Design EU Series Upright bass
Amps
- Ampeg SVT
- Ampeg SVT Plugins
- Various Ampeg combos and cabinets
- Kemper Profiler
Effects
Strings
- Ernie Ball Regular Slinky (.050–1.05)
Returning to the playful, ambitious, and elegant music onDiscipline, Beat, and Three of a PerfectPair is a challenge that Levin embraces. “It’s going to be really exciting and it can go in a whole lot of different ways,” he says, as we speak via Zoom from his home in upstate New York—his recording setup and a flotilla of basses behind him. “I’ve got a huge list of pieces that we had to choose among. Where Steve and Danny are going to take it, I don’t know. Me and Adrian started together playing this music in the ’80s, but I am more than willing to go in different directions. I can’t wait till we rehearse at the end of August.”
Meanwhile, here is our conversation, which ranges from tone to Levin’s choice of instruments to the BEAT Tour, and through the past, present, and future.
Tony, you have a highly personal vocabulary. How did you develop your tone?
I never gave it any thought. It’s only when I’m asked about my playing that I ask my brain, “What in the world is it that I do?” Of course, we all make decisions with every note we play. And the tiniest movement of one’s fingers on the strings up and down, or which part of the fleshy part of your finger you use if you don’t play with a pick, affects it. I haven’t done the analysis. I started on upright and I’m no different than anyone who started on upright. You fashion the sound with your fingers and get as good an instrument as you can.
When I first got an electric bass, it was a Fender Precision. I found it had less latitude for sound than upright. In my opinion, all electric basses have less latitude. They’re going to sound a little bit more like themselves no matter what you do. When I started on electric, I put a little extra effort into making more extreme changes with my fingers in relation to how close to the bridge or neck I played—to try to not make it sound like the upright, but to be able to get the amount of variation that I was used to wanting musically.
As a kid in Rochester, in classical music school, a jazz band came to town. The bass player, Andy Munson, was playing this thing called the Fender bass. I didn’t know what the heck it was. I went up to him and said, “Tell me about that bass you’re playing. It seems to be electric and it sounds pretty good.” He said, “Here’s what you need to do. Go to Dan Armstrong’s in the Village and buy a used one.” There was no such expression as a “vintage” one. He said, “A used one will be $180; a new one would be $220.” I’m talking about in the 1960s. So, I got a used, ’55 Precision, a wonderful instrument, not realizing how lucky I was and how precious that instrument was. Before that, I had played an Ampeg Baby Bass electric, through a flip-top Ampeg B-15 amp, but it didn’t fulfill much of anything for me except you could hear it.
“I have names for all my basses.”
When I was at the Eastman School in Rochester, New York, I auditioned my first year for the Rochester Philharmonic. And the conductor just kept asking me to play louder. I had a nice little Italian bass that sounded beautiful—let’s call it a chamber bass. I think it was three-quarter size. I didn’t get the job, and I got a very large bass that was very loud, but, frankly, sounded pretty good but not as mellow as my other bass. Then, I auditioned and got the job. I had such a large and loud upright, and boy that helped when I started playing jazz gigs.
I probably overcompensated when I switched to the Fender bass and tried to get as many sonic variations as I could get out of it. And without thinking about it, I guess I gravitated towards a lot of slides to try to negate the frets. That’s a good album title: “Negate the Frets.”
Today, I have a number of StingRays and I have a couple of Sabres, which are like the StingRay, but with two pickups. I happened to play the Sabre on Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer,” so for all of his tours since—even though I could play it on a fretless StingRay—I’ve used the Sabre. By the way, I love what Peter does and his new music is extraordinary, but it’s still a hoot to play “Sledgehammer,” even after so many years in concerts.
Another of Tony’s favorite instruments is his Graffiti Bass, shown here with its road case and a pair of his Funk Fingers—an invention suggested by Peter Gabriel that he brought to life with the help of tech Andy Moore.
Photo by Tony Levin and Avraham Bank
Who was in your ear when you were 10 and started playing bass?
My older brother, Pete, was and is my guide. He played classical before I played classical and he played jazz before I played jazz. Pete is a keyboard player now. When I grew up, he was a French horn player. Pete had landed on the wonderful records of Julius Watkins, the jazz French horn player. Julius Watkins played with the same rhythm section on a number of albums, including the bass player Oscar Pettiford. So, I grew up listening to Oscar Pettiford. His playing was fundamental and had just the right notes, and he was melodic when that was called for. In a way, I’m trying to do what I loved about Oscar Pettiford’s playing.
Do you feel like you’ve had any recent epiphanies or revelations?
This week [chuckles]? Seriously, though, there are some songs on my new album where I’m trying different things. For instance, hammer-ons, which is certainly the way I play on the Chapman Stick all the time.... I used the technique on a song called “Bringing It Down to the Bass.” Also, sometimes I play with fingernails and that’s a pretty distinctive sound, and I took one piece and kind of devoted it to a fingernail bass solo in the middle. That allows you to get various overtones from each note. There are also the Funk Fingers I developed years ago—a way of playing the bass with drumsticks attached to my fingers that, technically, can be a tad difficult and interesting. I have a long way to go to get better at that, even though I kind of invented it.
“An instrument that just gives you joy on the low notes is pretty special.”
What led you to the StingRay?
Very interesting story. Joel Di Bartolo and I were friends when I lived in Rochester, and he moved to L.A, and got the gig playing The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He befriended Leo Fender when Leo started Music Man, and Joel kept telling me, “You’ve got to try this bass. It’s got more low end. It’s got more of what you want.” And I was not being open-minded. But I was recording a lot in New York and engineers were always wanting more low end. When I finally started showing up with a bass that had it, the StingRay, the engineers were very happy.
The early ones Leo made had maybe too much high end, and would pick up a static electric noise. I had to keep the headphone wire very far away from the bass, or the bass would start picking up the click out of the headphone mix. But eventually those issues were worked out.
Tony Levin has long been a proponent of cutting edge instruments like those developed by Emmett Chapman and Ned Steinberger. Here, Levin plays his NS Design EU Series Upright bass.
Photo by Matt Condon
Let’s talk about Emmett Chapman and the Chapman Stick. How did that association begin?
I used to play the bass with a hammer-on technique on studio sessions—and maybe a little obnoxiously between takes. So, I was known by my studio pals for noodling and playing more than I should. And when Emmett announced that he had this new instrument designed for playing touch-style, simultaneously five or 10 guys that I worked with said, “Oh, you’ve got to check this out.” The next time I was in Los Angeles, I contacted Emmett about buying a Stick from him. I didn’t really want to try it. I said, “Let me buy it.”
The next time I was in L.A., we got together for a lesson, but also to just chat about the instrument and what it could do. And subsequently, Emmett saw me with Peter Gabriel and saw for the first time his instrument with a few thousand folks in the audience. And he was, as you can imagine, very pleased. So, we’re both friends and colleagues, and I think we’ve both learned from each other. I used it for the tour of Peter Gabriel’s first solo album, so that’s ’76.
I went to use it on that album’s sessions, which included Robert Fripp—a guitar player I did not know at the time. I pulled out the Stick to play it on one piece and the producer, Bob Ezrin, said, “Put that thing away. I don’t even want to see it.” So, I did not play the Stick on Peter’s first album. But when we played live, I began learning the Stick better by playing it on the simpler songs. It was a little hard to control at that time, to keep the open strings from ringing in a loud rock context. The instrument really had not been played in a rock context yet. And frankly, the pickups were so active that any amp would pick up footsteps on the stage. And there were plenty of footsteps on the stage with Peter Gabriel running around. So, I had to adjust it for that. And when I shared that information with Emmett, he quickly changed the pickups, and it became an ideal instrument for live shows.
“Imagine a band with Danny DeVito, among others, wearing only a diaper and body painted red, improvising dancing around the stage.”I got it to play as a bass, and what appealed to me was not just the technique that you play it with, but it has a different sound that I envisioned being useful for me in the progressive rock world, which I was becoming more and more involved with—especially with King Crimson. So, by ’81 when I was writing music with King Crimson, the Stick became probably 50 percent of the time the tool that I went to. The tuning in fifths [on the bass side] is very different, being strung backwards from a regular bass. All of that helped me break away from the usual habits I had as a bass player and helped me be a more progressive player, which is what I sensed I needed to be in that context.
Peter Gabriel and his band live at the Bottom Line in New York City on October 4, 1978. At left: Robert Fripp and Tony Levin.
Photo by Ebet Roberts
Since we’re talking about playing percussively—and progressively—let’s talk about the invention of Funk Fingers. You first used those on a Peter Gabriel recording?
Yes and no. In ’85, we recorded Peter’s So album, and one of the pieces on that is called “Big Time.” And I asked, for no particular reason, while we were recording, the drummer, Jerry Marotta, to drum with his drumsticks on the strings of the bass while I fingered with my left hand. Just seemed like a good idea to attack the piece that way. And we had fun. It ended up only being used on the intro to the piece, which, frankly, disappointed me. But it was very cool and very effective.
Fast forward to the next year, when we were touring, and I am practicing in between pieces. I was trying to play with one drumstick in my right hand what Jerry had done with two drumsticks. Of course, I couldn’t do it, but I was trying my best. And Peter—I vividly remember the soundcheck I was practicing at—walked by me and looked at me and he said, “Why don’t you put two drumsticks on your fingers?” So, with that sentence, he invented the Funk Fingers. I turned to Andy Moore, my bass tech at the time. I said, “Andy, can we do that?” The two of us experimented with stretch Velcro and chopping down sticks. If the sticks were too heavy, they would break the string. If they were too light, they would just bounce off. If the Velcro was too tight, my fingers turned purple. If it was too loose, they would go flying into the audience, which happened a lot on that tour. Eventually, we got just the right formula. I then decided to make them myself to try to share them with other bass players to see where it could go. I got tired of making them pretty quickly, and somebody else got interested in making them, which is great. But for years now they haven’t been made, but I’ve had great fun through the years with the Funk Fingers, and I still use them. But how about Peter? Talk about thinking outside of the box. That’s just the perfect example of it. But he’s done that musically, his whole career.
Let’s talk about your new album, Bringing It Down to the Bass. What struck me immediately is how eclectic it is and how wonderful all the playing is. I also enjoyed that you worked in a little barbershop quartet—which made me reflect on how joyful your playing often sounds.
Well, I love hearing that. And I think the album encompasses a lot—some of it serious, but then some of it, especially the photos that go with it, whimsical and humorous. That’s just the way I am. And if it comes out in my music, that’s the way it should be, I think.
This photo was taken before the historic 1981 line-up of King Crimson went onstage at the Savoy in New York City on November 7 of that year. From left to right, that’s Tony Levin, Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford, and Robert Fripp.
Photo by Ebet Roberts
There is such a large cast that file-sharing had to be involved.
Yes, and it came together over a period of years, even though the last three months I’ve been intensely working on finishing it. I have this problem about making a solo album, and it’s a very good problem to have: I get called to tour a lot. I get the opportunity to play live, which is my very favorite thing. I haven’t done the math, but if I’m home two months in a year, then a few of those weeks I’m working on my solo stuff and on other people’s music.
An interesting thing about this album is how it displays your command of so many genres: blues, jazz, rock, prog, vocal quartet.... There’s also a world-class group of guitar players, including Robert Fripp, Earl Slick, David Torn, and Steve Hunter. You played with both Steve and Robert on Peter Gabriel’s debut solo album in 1977—a fruitful recording for you.
The word genre comes up a lot. The genre of this album is bass. It’s all about the bass because the bass player and the sense of bass is consistent. My overall rule for this album was, “Don’t be afraid. Break the rules.” I could give you a number of examples where I did that, and one of them is genre.
Steve and I trade files often, usually for his music, and I heard him right away as the guitar player I would most like to have on “Me and My Axe,” sharing lead with my fretless bass in a kind of duet. And I decided on that track to reunite the original Peter Gabriel band alumni, with Larry Fast on synth and Jerry Marotta on drums. So, to me, that has extra resonance. If you’re lucky and get to make a record the way you want to, there are a lot of distinct joys. As a bass player, the chance to groove with these extraordinary drummers alone is enough to celebrate and give me a whole year of pleasure. And then reassembling the alumni of Peter’s band from way back was another pleasure. [Marotta, Vinny Colaiuta, Mike Portnoy, Jeremy Stacey, Steve Gadd, and Pat Mastelotto all play on the album.]
I especially love what David Torn does on “Bungie Bass.” His playing is so spacious, and the way he uses harmonics and varied tones makes for a real sonic playground.
David Torn and I are sort of neighbors. He lived in Woodstock and I’m nearby, and I lived in Woodstock for a long time. We met when he asked Bill Bruford and I to play on his Cloud About Mercury [1986], when he had the idea of asking two rock guys to come into what would’ve been otherwise a jazz album to see what happens. We’ve done a lot. He was in our band Bruford Levin Upper Extremities. You never know what he’s going to do, but it’s going to be wild.Men in black: This fall’s BEAT Tour players are, left to right, Tony Levin, Steve Vai, Adrian Belew, and Danny Carey, performing the music of King Crimson’s troika of classic ’80s albums.
“Bungie Bass” is also one of the songs on the album where you play cello. Did you study that instrument as well?
Not at all. I own a cello—that’s how I’ll put it. I have it tuned in 4ths, like a bass, and I just kind of make my hands small and pretend it’s a bass, and I’m very comfortable. Oscar Pettiford, the first bass player I really dug—he puts down the bass and he plays the cello for a solo on his records. Ron Carter is also a very good cellist.
Returning to great guitar players, you’re about to revisit your ’80s King Crimson catalog with two of them—Adrian Belew and Steve Vai—for the BEAT Tour, along with Tool drummer Danny Carey. Simply … wow.
So far, we got together to discuss things, and Adrian and Steve got together to discuss guitar. There is a lot of work to do, and Robert Fripp is not there, so Steve has to play what Robert did or change it to be himself. When I’m in a context with the really, really special players, it pushes me to up my game and to try not to settle back into what I played in the ’80s. Although, frankly, I’ve been listening and some of those Stick parts are damn hard. I’ll be a little challenged just to learn what in the world I was doing! But okay—the Stick part is hard, but then add a vocal in a whole different time signature. That’s really tricky.
I loved the music we created for Discipline. It’s been a great thing to be musically inspired by Adrian, Robert, and Bill, and they’ve all changed my playing to some extent. And Pat Mastelotto, who joined the band in ’96—I’ve probably played more shows with Pat than with anybody.
In a way, I’m trying to do what I loved about Oscar Pettiford’s playing.
The musical inspiration from really special players is what I’m here for, and King Crimson has been an unbelievable experience for me in that sense. I had a bittersweet last tour in Japan in 2021, knowing it was the end of that incarnation and maybe any incarnation of King Crimson. I was counting down the shows and knowing this was the end of the many times I’ve played these pieces and it just kind of hit me—I was feeling the spirits of all of the bass players who had been in that band through the years and had inspired me and given me the unusual challenge of playing a part that’s iconic and yet trying to make it my own. When we started doing the classic material, I didn’t want to change it, but I did need to. And that’s a different kind of challenge than just trying to make up your own really good parts to a piece.
"I have this problem about making a solo album, and it’s a very good problem to have: I get called to tour a lot,” Levin says.
Photo by Tony Levin & Avraham Bank
How did you join King Crimson’s Discipline band?
I had toured with Robert in Peter’s band, and then Robert asked me to play on his solo album, [1979’s] Exposure. Which was not a King Crimson album at all, but darn, it sounds like King Crimson to me. And then, I got the call from Robert—not to join King Crimson, but to meet him downtown in New York City and play some music with some other guys. I found, a decade later, that I was being auditioned and passed. So, we started playing and they pulled out “Red,” a piece that I didn’t know. Of course, they all knew it. Maybe Adrian didn’t know it too well, but they wanted to hear how I sounded on that. Fortunately, in those days when I was a lot younger, I could learn things very quickly. They were pleased with what I did and we formed a quartet called Discipline. That was the name of the band. And Adrian and I, the two Americans, were kind of scratching our heads saying, that’s not a great name for a band. Then Robert decided to change the name of the band to King Crimson. So, I joined King Crimson in a backwards way. I joined the band that then became King Crimson because as always, Robert’s sense of what music is or isn’t King Crimson is the sensibility that determines what is King Crimson.
Well, it was a wonderful band, and I feel privileged to have been able to have heard it live as often as I did.
Thank you. And, of course, I was privileged to be in it. In 2000, when King Crimson were about to tour, I was busy on tour and couldn’t do it. Robert said, “Well, we’ll tour without you, and you can consider yourself the fifth man in the group. ” I love his sense of humor. Now people get to see his sense of humor on YouTube and Facebook. But they used to think of him as serious, serious Robert. But we in the band knew that he has quite a sense of humor. So, for a few years, I was the fifth man in a four-man group.
Robert’s sense of what music is or isn’t King Crimson is the sensibility that determines what is King Crimson.
You also played with Allan Holdsworth in the improv band HoBoLeMa, with Terry Bozzio and Pat Mastelotto. Did that band record?
We recorded every night. We formed that band and it was glorious from the first note of the first show. He was such an awesome improviser, unlike anybody else. And we loved it all. But Allan didn’t. He was great about us and very respectful, but he didn’t like his playing on any of it. That’s the built-in thing that he arrived with. We did a few tours, and after almost every show, Terry very enthusiastically said, “We got it. We got it on tape. This is going to be fantastic. Can we please release it? This is an album.” And Alan would say something to the effect of, “Oh no. I hate what I played.” That’s why we never put out an album. It’s an honor to play with him. Very inspiring.
You’ve sort of become, to my thinking, the leading bassist in prog- or art-rock. Was that a conscious choice or circumstances?
I fell into an open doorway. I played with Peter Gabriel because the producer Bob Ezrin thought I played well with Alice Cooper and Lou Reed on his recordings with them, so thought I would be the appropriate kind of bass player for Peter’s new direction. So, I fell into that and met Robert. And then when I played on Robert’s Exposure, that might be the first time I really was fully reacting to that style of music. And then in King Crimson in ’81, I was exposed to three guys who think in different ways musically than most of the guys I had played with, who really don’t want to play anything like the way it’s been played. Just think about where Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew are sonically. When you hear them, you know who it is because of the way they sound. So, thrown in that musical situation, I was given that challenge and went in that direction. I fell through that doorway and very happily.It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No! It’s one of Tony Levin’s Ned Steinberger-designed basses in flight! Levin and Steinberger have a decades-long association.
Photo by Tony Levin & Avraham Bank
I feel you’ve also brought a progressive sensibility to other styles of music as well, like Paul Simon’s, for example. I know when I hear you onStill Crazy After All These Years.
Very interesting process working with Paul, because the way he uses players to get the music that he knows will be right for him is very internal. He’d go up to us one at a time in the studio and play his song on guitar and sing. And with me, he would play it and kind of sing the bass part that he envisioned, which was usually very melodic. And we would quickly come up with a wonderful part that I would’ve never come up with on my own—that was more melodic than I usually played at that time. A good example is “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” I played, not all roots, but long, high stuff, and at least some of that is based on what Paul sang to me. But then when it goes into the B section, the chorus, that just Mr. Bass Player, down Low.
Well, let’s talk about your gear. Shall we start with strings and work from there?
Well, I am a bass player. I never change my strings [laughs]. I think when I go on tour and I have a tech, which is about one tour out of five, he changes the strengths. And I look at him and I say, “Did you change my strings?’ And he says, “What? I always change them! [laughs].” I use the green Ernie Ball sets.
My go-to bass is a relatively new StingRay Special. They’re made with every element of the StingRay, but lighter weight. For StingRays, they just tweak the output a little bit in the low end in a way that, oh, I care a lot about. And so that’s my go-to. It doesn’t mean that I don’t play the other basses.
I fell into an open doorway. I played with Peter Gabriel because the producer Bob Ezrin thought I played well with Alice Cooper and Lou Reed on his recordings with them, so thought I would be the appropriate kind of bass player for Peter’s new direction.You can see here in the studio, in the assortment I’ve got there next to the recording console, is the bass that I’m using today on a track. I call that bass Mr. Natural [a StingRay Special with most of its body finish removed]. I have names for all my basses. At first, I said, “I don’t care about the lighter weight.” But the first rehearsal I did with it was, like, six hours, and it was great. I didn’t realize how sore my back got. Not from playing a two-hour show, but from a six-hour rehearsal. And I love rehearsing so that’s why I use it. I ordered the bass in yellow to match my Three of Perfect Pair bass. And on tour, it just hit me to sand the paint off the way we did with Fender basses in the ’50s and ’60s. Ultimately, though, I play it because it sounds fantastic.
Eat your heart out Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Here’s Levin and Bank’s take on the famed impressionist’s painting, Reclining Nude on a Couch.
Photo by Tony Levin & Avraham Bank
I play the NS upright electric, by Ned Steinberger, on a lot of records. Bass players will totally relate to this. You just play a low E on it, and everybody lights up. Everybody says, “that’s what I wanted on this piece.” They haven’t heard a part yet. I’ve just played a note. I don’t know what the science is, but it gives you what you want from the low notes on an electric upright bass. And an instrument that just gives you joy on the low notes is pretty special.
The Chapman Stick I have has 12 strings. I’m stuck with the 12-string only because some of the pieces I wrote for Stick Men involve the 12-string. So, I can’t go back to the 10 string, even though I’d kind of like that.
I usually don’t need many pedals for bass, but with the high-end of the Stick, I need a lot. Gradually I’ve gone to the Quad Cortex as my go-to effects pedal. I was using two Kempers and loving them, and I still love their sound and record with them, but the Quad Cortex has a wonderful thing for my playing the Stick—two inputs and two completely separate outputs. This wouldn’t matter to most bass players and guitar players, but the Stick is essentially two instruments in one. You’ve got to either have two completely different chains or one of these multi-units. And this one gives you two completely separate outputs. When I hit one button, suddenly I have different sounds on both the top and the bass end of the Stick.
You just play a low E on it, and everybody lights up. Everybody says, 'that’s what I wanted on this piece.' They haven’t heard a part yet.
I do use other pedals—especially in recording. On tour, it depends on what kind of tour. If it’s the BEAT Tour, I can take a trunk of pedals if I want. But if it’s a Stick Men tour, where I have a maximum weight when we fly or the whole budget of the tour gets affected, you just can’t take much. So multi-effects units are perfect. Same with Levin Brothers—the jazz band where I go easy on the pedals. Darkglass makes two bass preamp pedals that I really love that I rely on for distortion. I have a Music Man bass—the DarkRay—that has one installed in it, that I use with Peter Gabriel.
Live, when I use an amp it’s an Ampeg. I’ve still got my SVT for recording, although now I have SVT plugins, which I love. And when I tour with my jazz band, I take an extraordinarily lightweight 12-inch combo. More and more, it’s about what’s in your monitors and it doesn’t matter what you have onstage. And sometimes you have it miked—maybe for the drummer who wants to feel the low end. When I toured with Seal, that’s the last time I toured with an 8x10, because he wanted to feel the bass.
I‘m a classic science fiction buff, and there’s a great B-movie called The Green Slime, so I need to ask: Where did the name of the first band you joined after music school, Aha, the Attack of the Green Slime Beast, come from?
It was the name of the first band I was in when I moved to New York City, with members or former members of the Mothers of Invention, led by [keyboardist] Don Preston. Billy Mundi was the drummer and Ray Collins the singer. We had an extraordinarily unsuccessful career: one gig. But a lot of rehearsing and offers of record deals, which we turned down. I don’t remember why. I was the new guy in town, so I was going by whatever they said to do. We did one very interesting gig in Philadelphia, and then we went our various musical ways.
Don would have been very aware of that movie. If we weren’t enough weirdness for one gig, Don’s friend, Meredith Monk, and her dance troupe improvised to the whole show on stage with us. And one member of her troupe was a young and out-of-work actor named Danny DeVito. So, imagine a band with Danny DeVito, among others, wearing only a diaper and body painted red, improvising dancing around the stage while Don Preston plays this thing called a synthesizer that nobody had seen, with a Van de Graaff generator on top and a big green translucent dildo. When he pushed a red button, a flashing light would go up through the dildo. There were two people in the audience, because it wasn’t well promoted, to put it mildly, and one of them got intimidated and left. So, somewhere there is the one person who made it through that show. Kidding myself, I like to think it was the right band at the wrong time [laughs].- Stick Men: The Indeterminacy of Sticks ›
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Stevie Van Zandt with “Number One,” the ’80s reissue Stratocaster—with custom paisley pickguard from luthier Dave Petillo—that he’s been playing for the last quarter century or so.
With the E Street Band, he’s served as musical consigliere to Bruce Springsteen for most of his musical life. And although he stands next to the Boss onstage, guitar in hand, he’s remained mostly quiet about his work as a player—until now.
I’m stuck in Stevie Van Zandt’s elevator, and the New York City Fire Department has been summoned. It’s early March, and I am trapped on the top floor of a six-story office building in Greenwich Village. On the other side of this intransigent door is Van Zandt’s recording studio, his guitars, amps, and other instruments, his Wicked Cool Records offices, and his man cave. The latter is filled with so much day-glo baby boomer memorabilia that it’s like being dropped into a Milton Glaser-themed fantasy land—a bright, candy-colored chandelier swings into the room from the skylight.
There’s a life-size cameo of a go-go dancer in banana yellow; she’s frozen in mid hip shimmy. One wall displays rock posters and B-movie key art, anchored by a 3D rendering of Cream’s Disraeli Gearsalbum cover that swishes and undulates as you walk past it. Van Zandt’s shelves are stuffed with countless DVDs, from Louis Prima to the J. Geils Band performing on the German TV concert seriesRockpalast. There are three copies ofIggy and the Stooges: Live in Detroit. Videos of the great ’60s-music TV showcases, from Hullabaloo to Dean Martin’s The Hollywood Palace, sit here. Hundreds of books about rock ’n’ roll, from Greil Marcus’s entire output to Nicholas Schaffner’s seminal tome, The Beatles Forever, form a library in the next room.
But I haven’t seen this yet because the elevator is dead, and I am in it. Our trap is tiny, about 5' by 5'. A dolly filled with television production equipment is beside me. There’s a production assistant whom I’ve never met until this morning and another person who’s brand new to me, too, Geoff Sanoff. It turns out that he’s Van Zandt’s engineer—the guy who runs this studio. And as I’ll discover shortly, he’s also one of the several sentinels who watch over Stevie Van Zandt’s guitars.
There’s nothing to do now but wait for the NYFD, so Sanoff and I get acquainted. We discover we’re both from D.C. and know some of the same people in Washington’s music scene. We talk about gear. We talk about this television project. I’m here today assisting an old pal, director Erik Nelson, best known for producing Werner Herzog’s most popular documentaries, like Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Van Zandt has agreed to participate in a television pilot about the British Invasion. After about half an hour, the elevator doors suddenly slide open, and we’re rescued, standing face-to-face with three New York City firefighters.
As our camera team sets up the gear, Sanoff beckons me to a closet off the studio’s control room. I get the sense I am about to get a consolation prize for standing trapped in an elevator for the last 30 minutes. He pulls a guitar case off the shelf—it’s stenciled in paint with the words “Little Steven” on its top—snaps open the latches, and instantly I am face to face with Van Zandt’s well-worn 1957 Stratocaster. Sanoff hands it to me, and I’m suddenly holding what may as well be the thunderbolt of Zeus for an E Street Band fan. My jaw drops when he lets me plug it in so he can get some levels on his board, and the clean, snappy quack of the nearly 70-year-old pickups fills the studio. For decades, Springsteen nuts have enjoyed a legendary 1978 filmed performance of “Rosalita” from Phoenix, Arizona, that now lives on YouTube. This is the Stratocaster Van Zandt had slung over his shoulder that night. It’s the same guitar he wields in the famous No Nukes concert film shot at Madison Square Garden a year later, in 1979. My mind races. The British Invasion is all well and essential. But now I’m thinking about Van Zandt’s relationship with his guitars.
Stevie Van Zandt's Gear
Van Zandt’s guitar concierge Andy Babiuk helped him plunge deeper down the Rickenbacker rabbit hole. Currently, Van Zandt has six Rickenbackers backstage: two 6-strings and four 12-strings.
Guitars
- 1957 Fender Stratocaster (studio only)
- ’80s Fender ’57 Stratocaster reissue “Number One”
- Gretsch Tennessean
- 1955 Gibson Les Paul Custom “Black Beauty” (studio only)
- Rickenbacker Fab Gear 2024 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Model (candy apple green)
- Rickenbacker Fab Gear 2023 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Model (snowglo)
- Rickenbacker 2018 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Fab Gear (jetglo)
- Two Rickenbacker 1993Plus 12-strings (candy apple purple and SVZ blue)
- Rickenbacker 360/12C63 12-string (fireglo)
- Vox Teardrop (owned by Andy Babiuk)
Amps
- Two Vox AC30s
- Two Vox 2x12 cabinets
Effects
- Boss Space Echo
- Boss Tremolo
- Boss Rotary Ensemble
- Durham Electronics Sex Drive
- Durham Electronics Mucho Busto
- Durham Electronics Zia Drive
- Electro-Harmonix Satisfaction
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- Voodoo Labs Ground Control Pro switcher
Strings and Picks
- D’Addario (.095–.44)
- D’Andrea Heavy
Van Zandt has reached a stage of reflection in his career. Besides the Grammy-nominated HBO film, Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple, which came out in 2024, he recently wrote and published his autobiography, Unrequited Infatuations (2021), a rollicking read in which he pulls no punches and makes clear he still strives to do meaningful things in music and life.
His laurels would weigh him down if they were actually wrapped around his neck. In the E Street Band, Van Zandt has participated in arguably the most incredible live group in rock ’n’ roll history. And don’t forget Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes or Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul. He created both the Underground Garage and Outlaw Country radio channels on Sirius/XM. He started a music curriculum program called TeachRock that provides no-cost resources and other programs to schools across the country. Then there’s the politics. Via his 1985 record, Sun City, Van Zandt is credited with blasting many of the load-bearing bricks that brought the walls of South African apartheid tumbling into dust. He also acted in arguably the greatest television drama in American history, with his turn as Silvio Dante in The Sopranos.
Puzzlingly, Van Zandt’s autobiography lacks any detail on his relationship with the electric guitar. And Sanoff warns me that Van Zandt is “not a gearhead.” Instead he has an organization in place to keep his guitar life spinning like plates on the end of pointed sticks. Besides Sanoff, there are three others: Ben Newberry has been Van Zandt’s guitar tech since the beginning of 1982. Andy Babiuk, owner of Rochester, New York, guitar shop Fab Gear and author of essential collector reference books Beatles Gear and Rolling Stones Gear (the latter co-authored by Greg Prevost) functions as Van Zandt’s guitar concierge. Lastly, luthier Dave Petillo, based in Asbury Park, New Jersey, oversees all the maintenance and customization on Van Zandt’s axes.
“I took one lesson, and they start to teach you the notes. I don’t care about the notes.” —Stevie Van Zandt
I crawl onto Zoom with Van Zandt for a marathon session and come away from our 90 minutes with the sense that he is a man of dichotomies. Sure, he’s a guitar slinger, but he considers his biggest strengths to be as an arranger, producer, and songwriter. “I don’t feel that being a guitar player is my identity,” he tells me. “For 40 years, ever since I made my first solo record, I just have not felt that I express myself as a guitar player. I still enjoy it when I do it; I’m not ambivalent. When I play a solo, I am in all the way, and I play a solo like I would like to hear if I were in the audience. But the guitar part is really part of the song’s arrangement. And a great solo is a composed solo. Great solos are ones you can sing, like Jimi Hendrix’s solo in ‘All Along the Watchtower.’”
In his autobiography, Van Zandt mentions that his first guitar was an acoustic belonging to his grandfather. “I took one lesson, and they start to teach you the notes. I don’t care about the notes,” Van Zandt tells me. “The teacher said I had natural ability. I’m thinking, if I got natural ability, then what the fuck do I need you for? So I never went back. After that, I got my first electric, an Epiphone. It was about slowing down the records to figure out with my ear what they were doing. It was seeing live bands and standing in front of that guitar player and watching what they were doing. It was praying when a band went on TV that the cameraman would occasionally go to the right place and show what the guitar player was doing instead of putting the camera on the lead singer all the time. And I’m sure it was the same for everybody. There was no concept of rock ’n’ roll lessons. School of Rock wouldn’t exist for another 30 years. So, you had to go to school yourself.”
By the end of the 1960s, Van Zandt tells me he had made a conscious decision about what kind of player he wanted to be. “I realized that I really wasn’t that interested in becoming a virtuoso guitar player, per se. I was more interested in making sure I could play the guitar solo that would complement the song. I got more into the songs than the nature of musicianship.”
After the Beatles and the Stones broke the British Invasion wide open, bands like Cream and the Yardbirds most influenced him. “George Harrison would have that perfect 22-second guitar solo,” Van Zandt remembers. “Keith Richards. Dave Davies. Then, the harder stuff started coming. Jeff Beck in the Yardbirds. Eric Clapton with things like ‘White Room.’ But the songs stayed in a pop configuration, three minutes each or so. You’d have this cool guitar-based song with a 15-second, really amazing Jeff Beck solo in it. That’s what I liked. Later, the jam bands came, but I was not into that. My attention deficit disorder was not working for the longer solos,” he jokes. Watch a YouTube video of any recent E Street Band performance where Van Zandt solos, and the punch and impact of his approach and attack are apparent. At Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., last year, his solo on “Rosalita” was 13 powerful seconds.
Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen’s relationship goes back to their earliest days on the Jersey shore. “Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity,” recalls Van Zandt. “At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to Telecaster. At that point, I was ready to switch to Stratocaster.”
Photo by Pamela Springsteen
Van Zandt left his Epiphone behind for his first Fender. “I started to notice that the guitar superstars at the time were playing Telecasters. Mike Bloomfield. Jeff Beck. Even Eric Clapton played one for a while,” he tells me. “I went down to Jack’s Music Shop in Red Bank, New Jersey, because he had the first Telecaster in our area and couldn’t sell it; it was just sitting there. I bought it for 90 bucks.”
In those days, and around those parts, players only had one guitar. Van Zandt recalls, “Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity. At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to Telecaster. At that point, I was ready to switch to Stratocaster, because Jimi Hendrix had come in and Jeff Beck had switched to a Strat. They all kind of went from Telecaster to Les Pauls. And then some of them went on to the Stratocaster. For me, the Les Paul was just too out of reach. It was too expensive, and it was just too heavy. So I said, I’m going to switch to a Stratocaster. It felt a little bit more versatile.”
Van Zandt still employs Stratocasters, and besides the 1957 I strummed, he was seen with several throughout the ’80s and ’90s. But for the last 20 or 25 years, Van Zandt has mainly wielded a black Fender ’57 Strat reissue from the ’80s with a maple fretboard and a gray pearloid pickguard. He still uses that Strat—dubbed “Number One”—but the pickguard has been switched to one sporting a purple paisley pattern that was custom-made by Dave Petillo.
Petillo comes from New Jersey luthier royalty and followed in the footsteps of his late father, Phil Petillo. At a young age, the elder Petillo became an apprentice to legendary New York builder John D’Angelico. Later, he sold Bruce Springsteen the iconic Fender Esquire that’s seen on the Born to Run album cover and maintained and modified that guitar and all of Bruce’s other axes until he passed away in 2010. Phil worked out of a studio in the basement of their home, not far from Asbury Park. Artists dropped in, and Petillo has childhood memories of playing pick-up basketball games in his backyard with members of the E Street Band. (He also recalls showing his Lincoln Logs to Johnny Cash and once mistaking Jerry Garcia for Santa Claus.)
“I was more interested in making sure I could play the guitar solo that would complement the song. I got more into the songs than the nature of musicianship.” —Stevie Van Zandt
“I’ve known Stevie Van Zandt my whole life,” says Petillo. “My dad used to work on his 1957 Strat. That guitar today has updated tuners, a bone nut, new string trees, and a refret that was done by Dad long ago. I think one volume pot may have been changed. But it still has the original pickups.” Petillo is responsible for a lot of the aesthetic flair seen on Van Zandt’s instruments. He continues, “Stevie is so much fun to work with. I love incorporating colors into things, and Stevie gets that. When you talk to a traditional Telecaster or Strat player, and you say, ‘I want to do a tulip paisley pickguard in neon blue-green,’ they’re like, ‘Holy cow, that’s too much!’ But for Stevie, it’s just natural. So I always text him with pickguard designs, asking him, ‘Which one do you like?’ And he calls me a wild man; he says, ‘I don’t have that many Strats to put them on!’ But I’ll go to Ben Newberry and say, ‘Ben, I made these pickguards; let’s get them on the guitar. And I’ll go backstage, and we’ll put them on. I just love that relationship; Stevie is down for it.”
Petillo takes care of the electronics on Van Zandt’s guitars. Almost all of the Strats are modified with an internal Alembic Stratoblaster preamp circuit, which Van Zandt can physically toggle on and off using a switch housed just above the input jack. Van Zandt tells me, “That came because I got annoyed with the whole pedal thing. I’m a performer onstage, and I’m integrated with the audience and I like the freedom to move. And if I’m across the stage and all of a sudden Bruce nods to me to take a solo, or there’s a bit in the song that requires a little bit of distortion, it’s just easier to have that; sometimes, I’ll need that extra little boost for a part I’m throwing in, and it’s convenient.”
In recent times, Van Zandt has branched out from the Stratocaster, which has a lot to do with Andy Babiuk's influence. The two met 20 years ago, and Babiuk’s band, the Chesterfield Kings, is on Van Zandt’s Wicked Cool Records. “He’d call me up and ask me things like, ‘What’s Brian Jones using on this song?’” explains Babiuk. “When I’d ask him why, he’d tell me, ‘Because I want to have that guitar.’ It’s a common thing for me to get calls and texts from him like that. And there’s something many people overlook that Stevie doesn’t advertise: He’s a ripping guitar player. People think of him as playing chords and singing backup for Bruce, but the guy rips. And not just on guitar, on multiple instruments.”
Van Zandt tells me he wanted to bring more 12-string to the E Street Band this tour, “just to kind of differentiate the tone.” He explains, “Nils is doing his thing, and Bruce is doing his thing, and I wanted to do more 12-string.” He laughs, “I went full Paul Kantner!” Babiuk helped Van Zandt plunge deeper down the Rickenbacker rabbit hole. Currently, Van Zandt has six Rickenbackers backstage: two 6-strings and four 12-strings. Each 12-string has a modified nut made by Petillo from ancient woolly mammoth tusk, and the D, A, and low E strings are inverted with their octave.
Van Zandt explains this to me: “I find that the strings ring better when the high ones are on top. I’m not sure if that’s how Roger McGuinn did it, but it works for me. I’m also playing a wider neck.”
Babiuk tells me about a unique Rick in Van Zandt’s rack of axes: “I know the guys at Rickenbacker well, and they did a run of 30 basses in candy apple purple for my shop. I showed one to Stevie, and purple is his color; he loves it. He asked me to get him a 12-string in the same color, and I told him, ‘They don’t do one-offs; they don’t have a custom shop,’ but it’s hard to say no to the guy! So I called Rickenbacker and talked them into it. I explained, ‘He’ll play it a lot on this upcoming tour.’ They made him a beautiful one with his OM logo.”
The purple one-off is a 1993Plus model and sports a 1 3/4" wide neck—1/8" wider than a normal Rickenbacker. Van Zandt loved it so much that he had Babiuk wrestle with Rickenbacker again to build another one in baby blue. Petillo has since outfitted them with paisley-festooned custom pickguards. When guitar tech Newberry shows me these unique axes backstage, I can see the input jack on the purple guitar is labeled with serial number 01001.“Some of my drive is based on gratitude,” says Van Zandt, “feeling like we are the luckiest guys in the luckiest generation ever.”
Photo by Rob DeMartin
Van Zandt also currently plays a white Vox Teardrop. That guitar is a prototype owned by Babiuk. “Stevie wanted a Teardrop,” Babiuk tells me, “but I explained that the vintage ones are hit and miss—the ones made in the U.K. were often better than the ones manufactured in Italy. Korg now owns Vox, and I have a new Teardrop prototype from them in my personal collection. When I showed it to him, he loved it and asked me to get him one. I had to tell him, ‘I can’t; it’s a prototype, there’s only one,’ and he asked me to sell him mine,” he chuckles. “I told him, ‘It’s my fucking personal guitar, it’s not for sale!’ So I ended up lending it to him for this tour, and I told him, ‘Remember, this is my guitar; don’t get too happy with it, okay?’
“He asked me why that particular guitar sounds and feels so good. Besides being a prototype built by only one guy, the single-coil pickups’ output is abnormally hot, and the neck feels like a nice ’60s Fender neck. Stevie’s obviously a dear friend of mine, and he can hold onto it for as long as he wants. I’m glad it’s getting played. It was just hanging in my office.”
Van Zandt tells me how Babiuk’s Vox Teardrop sums up everything he wants from his tone, and says, “It’s got a wonderfully clean, powerful sound. Like Brian Jones got on ‘The Last Time.’ That’s my whole thing; that’s the trick—trying to get the power without too much distortion. Bruce and Nils get plenty of distortion; I am trying to be the clean rhythm guitar all the time.”
If Van Zandt has a consigliere like Tony Soprano had Silvio Dante, that’s Newberry. Newberry has tech’d nearly every gig with Van Zandt since 1982. “Bruce shows move fast,” he tells me. “So when there’s a guitar change for Stevie, and there are many of them, I’m at the top of the stairs, and we switch quickly. There’s maybe one or two seconds, and if he needs to tell me something, I hear it. He’s Bruce’s musical director, so he may say something like, ‘Remind me tomorrow to go over the background vocals on “Ghosts,”’ or something like that. And I take notes during the show.”
“Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity. At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to a Telecaster.” —Stevie Van Zandt
When I ask Newberry how he defines Van Zandt’s relationship to the guitar, he doesn’t hesitate, snapping back, “It’s all in his head. His playing is encyclopedic, whether it’s Bruce or anything else. He may show up at soundcheck and start playing the Byrds, but it’s not ‘Tambourine Man,’ it’s something obscure like ‘Bells of Rhymney.’ People may not get it, but I’ve known him long enough to know what’s happening. He’s got everything already under his fingers. Everything.”
As such, Van Zandt says he never practices. “The only time I touch a guitar between tours is if I’m writing something or maybe arranging backing vocal harmonies on a production,” he tells me.
Before we say goodbye, I tell Van Zandt about my time stuck in his elevator, and his broad grin signals that I may not be the only one to have suffered that particular purgatory. When I ask him about the 1957 Stratocaster I got to play upon my release, he recalls: “Bruce Springsteen gave me that guitar. I’ve only ever had one guitar stolen in my life, and it was in the very early days of my joining the E Street Band. I only joined temporarily for what I thought would be about seven gigs, and in those two weeks or so, my Stratocaster was stolen. It was a 1957 or 1958. Bruce felt bad about that and replaced that lost guitar with this one. So I’ve had it a long, long time. Once that first one was stolen, I decided I would resist having a personal relationship with any one guitar. But that one being a gift from Bruce makes it special. I will never take it back on the road.”
After 50 years of rock ’n’ roll, if there is one word to sum up Stevie Van Zandt, it may be “restless”—an adjective you sense from reading his autobiography. He gets serious and tells me, “I’m always trying to catch up. The beginning of accomplishing something came quite late to me. I feel like I haven’t done nearly enough. What are we on this planet trying to do?” he asks rhetorically. “We’re trying to realize our potential and maybe leave this place one percent better for the next guy. And some of my drive is based on gratitude, feeling like we are the luckiest guys in the luckiest generation ever. That’s what I’m doing: I want to give something back. I feel an obligation.”
YouTube It
“Rosalita” is a perennial E Street Band showstopper. Here’s a close-up video from Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park last summer. Van Zandt’s brief but commanding guitar spotlight shines just past the 4:30 mark.
At home in the shop at Gibson USA, where DeCola is R&D manager and master luthier.
The respected builder and R&D manager has worked for the stars—Eddie Van Halen, Paul McCartney, and others—while keeping his feet on the ground, blending invention, innovation, and common-sense design.
As a teenager, DeCola fell in love with surfing, but growing up in Indiana … no ocean. So, skateboarding became his passion. When a surf park called Big Surf—replete with rideable waves—opened up near his sister, who he was visiting during spring break at Arizona State University, she treated him to a day at the man-made sea.
Jim DeCola paid for his first guitar with his nose.
“When the first wave came, it scooped us all up, and I was tumbling under and something hit me bad,” he recounts. “So, I’m in a daze, and my sister runs up to me and says, ‘Oh my god, you have a bloody nose!’” When DeCola looked in the bathroom mirror, his nose was broken and the skin was split. The surf park’s medic sent him to a hospital. “Whatever the bill is, give it to us and we’ll double it,” DeCola recalls being told. “Just please don’t sue.” When a check for $880 arrived, his mother suggested he use it to buy the electric guitar he was pining for. “I ended up with a Gibson SG, because George Harrison had one, but they didn’t have a cherry red one, so mine was ebony.” He also got a Roland Cube practice amp because it had a master volume. “I still have both, and it’s still a great little amp and a great guitar. And that,” he says, “set me on my course.”
It’s been an epic journey in guitar creation: from his apprenticeship at a Lansing, Illinois, shop—which led to a dramatic and well-chronicled bridge fix for Randy Rhoads—to his years with Peavey, Fender, and now Gibson, where he is R&D manager and master luthier. DeCola blanches a bit at the master luthier title, observing that he’d prefer, simply, “guitar guy,” but that’s like calling a tiger a cat. DeCola is an apex builder. Instruments he designed are world-renowned and he’s collaborated with an enviable list of greats that includes Eddie Van Halen, Paul McCartney, Slash, Adrian Vandenberg, Rudy Sarzo, Neil Schon, and Randy Jackson.
Jim DeCola at the Gibson USA offices in Nashville. He spearheaded the company’s current two-pronged product orientation, with original and modern instrument lines.
Photo by Ted Drozdowski
In the Beginning…
DeCola’s family was musical. His dad played many instruments but trumpet was his main squeeze, and his older brother and sister exposed Jim to the Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Cream, and other deities of the ’60s guitar-rock canon. Thus fueled, at 15, in his second year of wood shop, he decided to build a guitar. Inspired by a photo of Scorpions’ Matthias Jabs, he settled on an Explorer body shape. A friend who already played guitar detailed where the bridge needed to go and what parts were required, and DeCola reverse engineered from there. He even cut the pickguard from a sheet of gray smoke Mirrorplex. But despite two years of electronics classes, he opted to bring his creation to the Music Lab, that guitar shop in Lansing, where he was taking lessons, for the wiring.
“The guy who did repairs wired it up for me, and when it was ready he called and said, ‘Hey, I want to talk with you when you come in,’ ” DeCola recounts. “He asked me to apprentice with him. It was learn while you earn, and while I did learn some stuff from him, really, I was wet sanding guitars and doing that kind of grunt work.” DeCola was at Music Lab part-time for 18 months, and graduated from high school just as the tech left. The owners of the store asked Jim to take over, and, as Suetonius told Caesar, the die was cast.
In January ’82, a caller made DeCola think he was being pranked—until he became convinced it really was Randy Rhoads and Rudy Sarzo’s tech Pete Morton. They explained that Bruce Bolen, then at Chicago Musical Instruments, had suggested him to fix Rhoads guitar in time for the night’s Ozzy Osbourne performance. DeCola grabbed his tools and drove through the snow for 50 miles to the Rosemont Horizon arena, where Rhoads was having trouble keeping the vibrato bridge on his polka-dot Sandoval custom V in tune. After a quick round of introductions, DeCola took apart the vibrato bridge and used a technique inspired by G&L guitars, deleting two of its bridge’s four screws and cutting a pivot with a V-file to countersink the bridge plate. Next, he was treated to a soundcheck of “Mr. Crowley” by Rhoads, Sarzo, and drummer Tommy Aldridge. As the opening act played, Rhoads asked DeCola to make the vibrato “a little slinkier,” and he completed the mod just before Ozzy’s downbeat. DeCola—still in his teens—was standing just off to the side when the iconic photo of Ozzy carrying Rhoads that appeared on the cover of the 1987-released Tributealbum was taken.
Six years later, DeCola received offers from Kahler and Peavey, and he opted to relocate to Meridian, Mississippi, to work with Hartley Peavey as his R&D tech. “I learned a lot,” he reflects. “Hartley was a great mentor. At any time, I’d have a stack of books and magazines, or just single pages ripped from magazines, a foot high on my desk, and he’d expect me to read and give him a report on everything,” says DeCola. “Sometimes it was related to guitars, amps, and effects; sometimes it might be antique radios.” After a few years, DeCola was promoted to supervisor of guitar engineering and began designing instruments. DeCola minted some of Peavey’s most lauded guitars, including the Tele-like Generation, with dual humbuckers, a mahogany body and neck, and a 5-way switch. That guitar gave the company a toehold in the country music market, but was also embraced by Steve Cropper and Dave Edmunds.
“We looked at each other and said, ‘The decade of the “superstrat” is over.’”
Every Best Les Paul Sound
Another pivotal experience during his years at Peavey happened at a summer NAMM show in Chicago’s McCormick Place, when a celestial Les Paul tone suddenly emerged from the exhibition hall’s PA system. “It was ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ by Guns N’ Roses,” says DeCola, “and we’re looking up thinking, ‘Who the hell is this?’ It was every best Les Paul sound wrapped up into one. We looked at each other and said, ‘The decade of the “superstrat” is over.’ And it really was.”
That inspired DeCola to create the Les Paul-Tele-style hybrid Peavey Odyssey. He also worked with Adrian Vandenberg on set-neck and neck-through versions of the Dutch guitarist’s signature models, and a host of other artists—including Eddie Van Halen. Peavey’s artist relations head heard that Van Halen had a falling out with Ernie Ball Music Man and sensed opportunity. DeCola quickly made a prototype inspired by Eddie’s EBMM signature model and took it to a gig in Florida, where the band was kicking off the Balance tour. “Eddie rehearsed with it and said, ‘Okay, now I know you can do it; let’s come up with a design.’”
During the development process, DeCola learned that Eddie’s son Wolfgang had a birthday coming. So, as a gift for Wolfie, he decided to make a 3/4-size example of his signature concept for Eddie. Mid-build, Eddie made a surprise visit to Meridian. DeCola invited EVH into his office and showed him Wolfie’s guitar.
“I thought this would be the direction we’d use for your new model,” DeCola explained. “He said, ‘Yeah, I love it! Just make it full size, then.’ And for the headstock, Eddie had done some napkin drawings in the hotel that were like Flying V’s, but smaller.” That wouldn’t work, thanks to the U.S. Patent Office. More ideas were exchanged. DeCola was coincidentally working on a new build for himself at the time, with a three-to-a-side headstock. He painted that headstock black, and then sanded a scoop in its tip. And that was it. Eddie was happy. DeCola wanted to get a prototype into Van Halen’s hands as quickly as possible, so when he found out the virtuoso was leaving Meridian the next day after lunch, he worked through the night.
“When he showed up the next morning at 11 a.m., I was just tuning it up,” DeCola recalls. “It was raw wood, but he played it and said, ‘That’s it.’” Thus, the Peavey EVH Wolfgang was born. “After that, the engineering took longer than making the guitar, because I had to do the blueprints and totally spec out everything,” DeCola adds.
Another important encounter he had in Meridian was with the blues historian and record collector Gayle Dean Wardlow, noted for, among other things, finding the death certificate of Robert Johnson. After they met, DeCola started going to Wardlow’s home weekly to talk about the roots of the genre he’d begun studying as a young player, listen to rare old 78s, and absorb the techniques preserved in their shellac. That study paid off. Hearing DeCola play metal-bodied resonator guitar is a high-order experience, although he also sounds terrific rocking the hell out on a Les Paul. DeCola is humble about his playing, but, really, he doesn’t need to be. “It’s a great release, and great therapy,” he says.
DeCola’s tenure at Peavey ran its course. “I was making P-90 and 12-string versions of existing guitars, a 12-string baritone … and they were turning my operation into a custom shop, which I didn’t want to do, because that’s just low-volume manufacturing. I wanted to stick with designing new stuff,” he says. “I wanted a change. It was five years with a lot of pressure. I wasn’t getting credit for designing and building Eddie Van Halen’s guitars. So, I went to Fender in Nashville, who had what they called the Custom Shop East at the time.”
“Musicians and skaters have the same kind of soul, the same mindset,” DeCola says. “It is something you can do by yourself, as a form of expression, but when you’ve got your crew and you’re skating, it’s like being with your band.”
Photo courtesy of Jim DeCola
“I came up with the idea of teaching people how to use things that every guitar player is going to have around the house for tools—coins or picks—and MacGyver their instruments.”
On to Gibson
There, he worked with Bruce Bolen and pickup guru Tim Shaw. But after Bolen retired in 2011 and Fender decided to close that Nashville location, DeCola found out about openings at Gibson and applied. In June, he was hired as master luthier.
“Gibson’s been a great ride,” DeCola attests. Although it hasn’t always been easy. When DeCola came onboard, the notoriously controlling, sometimes-volatile Henry Juszkiewicz was CEO. “It was fine for me, because Henry respected me, but it was an environment where I felt I had to be measured in my responses,” he says. There were also notorious design gaffes, like “robot tuners” and the dreadful Firebird X—both pet projects of Juszkiewicz that almost literally no one else, especially customers, desired.
“I got blamed for some of that stuff, but I was just the messenger,” DeCola says. But as James Curleigh and, now, Cesar Gueikian took over Gibson’s leadership, DeCola had an opportunity to proactively get his thoughts on the direction for the company’s products before more receptive CEOs.
“I made a bullet list and at one point had maybe 40 things on there, like going back to a thin binding on certain models and changing features,” he relates. “But my main message was, ‘Give the people what they want; we’re not here to dictate what people want.’” Many of DeCola’s ideas were manifested in the roster of guitars at the Gibson display at NAMM 2019—instruments that honored and built upon the company’s legacy. DeCola also had the idea of splitting Gibson’s model line into original and modern categories. “My concept was, we have the original models, which we’re determined to improve, and the modern line where we could have locking tuners, push-pull pots, and blueberry burst finishes—features that aren’t rooted in the golden years of the ’50s.”
Gueikian embraced that practice for Gibson USA and the Custom Shop, and expanded it to the acoustic Custom Shop in Bozeman, Montana, and to the Mesa/Boogie amp line. But DeCola was already on the case with amplification. Before Curleigh stepped down, he’d asked DeCola to look at Gibson’s amp line, and, again, DeCola looked back andforward at once. Inspired by his personal collection of vintage Gibson amps, he mapped out a new product line for 10-, 20-, and 40-watters. “I based my thinking off the greatest hits of those classic amps, and focused on the Falcon, because I have a ’62 Falcon, and when I looked into its history, the revelation was that it was the first amp with both reverb and tremolo,” he says. “So, I thought that would be a cool amp to make.” Then Gibson bought Mesa/Boogie under Gueikian’s stewardship, and the project went to that company’s Randall Smith, who created a stellar original design. Gibson unveiled the power-switching Falcon 5 (which won PG’s coveted Premier Gear Award) and Falcon 20 in January 2024.
DeCola is skilled in every aspect of guitar building, including working in the spray shop, where he is seen here training the gun on a model year 2024 blueberry burst Les Paul Studio.
Photo courtesy of Gibson
Mr. Fix-It
While the profile of most people in the guitar industry went down during the pandemic, DeCola’s went up thanks to a series of how-to videos he made for Gibson’s YouTube channel. They cover such topics as how to adjust action and pickup height, and how to do a proper setup. “I wanted to do something for the guitar community when things were shut down, so I came up with the idea of teaching people how to use things that every guitar player is going to have around the house for tools—coins or picks—and MacGyver their instruments,” he says. These videos have hundreds of thousands of views, and have given him a kind of celebrity status that’s rare among luthiers.
When asked what makes a great guitar, including the signature models he’s worked on at Gibson for Paul McCartney, Slash, and others, DeCola talks about achieving a commonsense, holistic balance of design, materials, and craftsmanship. He adds that there is no shortage of fine instruments now available, and that, moving ahead, he sees the kind of balance between tradition and invention that he has promoted at Gibson remaining its norm. “There are a lot of boutique builders and trends like 7- and 8-string guitars, fanned frets, and different scale lengths today,” he notes. “Some of it can be cyclical. There was a period in the ’80s and ’90s, for example, when a lot of people were adopting 7-strings, and now I see a lot of them again.
“Gibson was built on innovation,” he continues. “Orville Gibson, our founder, got his first patent creating a mandolin built completely different than other mandolins. Prior to that, they were typically gourd instruments, but he applied the carved back and top method from the violin and cello. And with the jazz-box electric guitars, there were so many Gibson innovations, like the adjustable neck and bridge, the humbucking pickup…. But because we’re a legacy company, we have to tread a bit lighter on some of the innovation, which our previous leadership was too forward on, with features the market wasn’t ready for. But in defense of that, I’ll go back to our heritage instruments. The Flying V and Explorer were all designed out of the space race, but initially commercial flops—too ahead of their time. So that’s why I wanted to split the model line—so we have the latitude to come up with some new things, but can still honor what’s expected of Gibson. Right now, we’re looking at some innovation in electronics and other features we will be bringing to the market.”
Now in his early 60s, DeCola is also still working on his skateboard moves. He tries to get to Nashville’s municipal Two Rivers Skatepark and Rocketown once a week. There, he’s found a coterie of fellow veteran skaters—many of whom are also in the music business, as players, producers, and engineers. “I’d say musicians and skaters have the same kind of soul, the same mindset,” he says. “It is something you can do by yourself, as a form of expression, but when you’ve got your crew and you’re skating, it’s like being with your band. It’s even more fun, and it inspires you. It can make you better.”DeCola performs a neck adjustment on an ES-335.
Photo courtesy of Gibson
Some of these are deep cuts—get ready for some instrumental bonus tracks and Van Halen III mentions—and some are among the biggest radio hits of their time. Just because their hits, though, doesn’t mean we don’t have more to add to the conversation.
Naturally, every recording Eddie Van Halen ever played on has been pored over by legions of guitar players of all styles. It might seem funny, then, to consider EVH solos that might require more attention. But your 100 Guitarists hosts have their picks of solos that they feel merit a little discussion. Some of these are deep cuts—get ready for some instrumental bonus tracks and Van Halen III mentions—and some are among the biggest radio hits of their time. Just because their hits, though, doesn’t mean we don’t have more to add to the conversation.
We can’t cover everything EVH—Jason has already tried while producing the Runnin’ With the Dweezil podcast. But we cover as much as we can in our longest episode yet. And in the second installment of our current listening segment, we’re talking about new-ish music from Oz Noy and Bill Orcutt.
John Doe and Billy Zoom keep things spare and powerful, with two basses and a single guitar–and 47 years of shared musical history–between them, as founding members of this historic American band.
There are plenty of mighty American rock bands, but relatively few have had as profound an impact on the international musical landscape as X. Along with other select members of punk’s original Class of 1977, including Patti Smith, Richard Hell, and Talking Heads, the Los Angeles-based outfit proved that rock ’n’ roll could be stripped to its bones and still be as literate and allusive as the best work of the songwriters who emerged during the previous decade and were swept up in the corporate-rock tidal wave that punk rebelled against. X’s first three albums–Los Angles, Wild Gift, and Under the Big Black Sun-were a beautiful and provocative foundation, and rocked like Mt. Rushmore.
Last year, X released a new album, Smoke & Fiction, and, after declaring it would be their last, embarked on what was billed as a goodbye tour, seemingly putting a bow on 47 years of their creative journey. But when PG caught up with X at Memphis’s Minglewood Hall in late fall, vocalist and bassist John Doe let us in on a secret: They are going to continue playing select dates and the occasional mini-tour, and will be part of the Sick New World festival in Las Vegas in April 12.
Not-so-secret is that they still rock like Mt. Rushmore, and that the work of all four of the founders–bassist, singer, and songwriter Doe, vocalist and songwriter Exene Cervenka, guitarist Billy Zoom, and drummer D.J. Bonebreak–remains inspired.
Onstage at Minglewood Hall, Doe talked a bit about his lead role in the film-festival-award-winning 2022 remake of the film noir classic D.O.A. But most important, he and Zoom let us in on their minimalist sonic secrets.Brought to you by D’Addario.
Gretsch A Sketch
Since X’s earliest days, Billy Zoom has played Gretsches. In the beginning, it was a Silver Jet, but in recent years he’s preferred the hollowbody G6122T-59 Vintage Select Chet Atkins Country Gentleman. This example roars a little more thanks to the Kent Armstrong P-90 in the neck and a Seymour Duncan DeArmond-style pickup in the bridge. Zoom, who is an electronics wiz, also did some custom wiring and has locking tuners on the guitar.
More DeArmond
Zoom’s sole effect is this vintage DeArmond 602 volume pedal. It helps him reign in the feedback that occasionally comes soaring in, since he stations himself right in front of his amp during shows.
It's a Zoom!
Zoom’s experience with electronics began as a kid, when he began building items from the famed Heath Kit series and made his own CB radio. And since he’s a guitarist, building amps seemed inevitable. This 1x12 was crafted at the request of G&L Guitars, but never came to market. It is switchable between 10 and 30 watts and sports a single Celestion Vintage 30.
Tube Time!
The tube array includes two EL84, 12AX7s in the preamp stage, and a single 12AT7. The rightmost input is for a reverb/tremolo footswitch.
Set the Controls for the Heart of the Big Black Sun
Besides 3-band EQ, reverb, and tremolo, Zoom’s custom wiring allows for a mid-boost that pumps up to 14 dB. Not content with 11, it starts there and goes to 20.
Baby Blue
This amp is also a Zoom creation, with just a tone and volume control (the latter with a low boost). It also relies on 12AX7s and EL84s.
Big Bottom
Here is John Doe’s rig in full: Ampeg and Fender basses, with his simple stack between them. The red head atop his cabs is a rare bird: an Amber Light Walter Woods from the 1970s. These amps are legendary among bass players for their full tone, and especially good for upright bass and eccentric instruments like Doe’s scroll-head Ampeg. “I think they were the first small, solid-state bass amps ever,” Doe offers. They have channels designated for electric and upright basses (Doe says he uses the upright channel, for a mid-dier tone), plus volume, treble, bass, and master volume controls. One of the switches puts the signal out of phase, but he’s not sure what the others do. Then, there’s a Genzler cab with two 12" speakers and four horns, and an Ampeg 4x10.
Scared Scroll
Here’s the headstock of that Ampeg scroll bass, an artifact of the ’60s with a microphone pickup. Doe seems to have a bit of a love/hate relationship with this instrument, which has open tuners and through-body f-style holes on its right and left sides. “The interesting thing,” he says, “is that you cannot have any treble on the pickup. If you do, it sounds like shit. With a pick, you can sort of get away with it.” So he mostly rolls off all the treble to shake the earth.
Jazz Bass II
This is the second Fender Jazz Bass that Doe has owned. He bought his first from a friend in Baltimore for $150, and used it to write and record most of X’s early albums. That one no longer leaves home. But this touring instrument came from the Guitar Castle in Salem, Oregon, and was painted to recreate the vintage vibe of Doe’s historic bass.