Update from Pulse Productions: Tony Levin has rescheduled the July 19 show to Dec. 9, 2025. All tickets purchased for July 19 will be honored at the new date. Same time, same venue.
When King Crimson took the Santa Cruz Civic stage in 1984, it was Tony Levin who rocked and rumbled the crowd with the low thunder of a Chapman Stick.
If you’ve never been introduced to the Stick, prepare to be blown away by the sight and sound of this revolutionary stringed beast of an instrument as the UCSC Music Center will host an exceptionally rare event.
Stick Men, featuring King Crimson drummer Pat Mastelotto, touch-guitar master Markus Reuter, and special guest Reeves Gabrels—acclaimed guitarist with The Cure and David Bowie—will perform music from the new album, Brutal, and from the Crimson catalog. Everyone will get a chance to meet the group in the lobby after the concert.
Due to an ongoing medical issue, Tony Levin is taking a health-related break from the current tour but the legendary bass guitarist sat for an interview with Good Times to share memories of a career that has stretched from Peter Gabriel’s theatrical visions to King Crimson’s thundering precision and gigs along the way with Lou Reed, Paul Simon, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Alice Cooper, James Taylor and many more luminaries.
It’s been a journey that has often led to Santa Cruz: the Civic with King Crimson, at Palookaville with the California Guitar Trio, and past shows at Moe’s Alley with Stick Men.
It all began in a New York orchestra. A classically trained musician from an early age, Levin played double bass in the Rochester Philharmonic, seemingly to be a lifelong career. But his love of jazz led him to accept an invitation from the legendary drummer Buddy Rich to play jazz on the road.
When Rich changed his mind about having a new bass player, Levin found himself without a gig, and fatefully went to New York to find work.
“Had it not been for the kerfuffle with Buddy Rich, I might never have left Rochester,” Levin says. “So I accidentally became a studio musician early in my 20s.”
His classical training gave him technical skills that many rock musicians lacked, and his experience with jazz instilled a groove that separates great session work from merely competent playing.
A second life-changing moment came when Levin was called in to play on former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel’s first solo album. Gabriel found a bass player who met his artistic ambitions with technical precision, while Levin gained a creative partner who would challenge him for decades to come.
Significantly, those Gabriel sessions introduced Levin to Robert Fripp, the King Crimson guitarist whose complex compositions and innovative approach to rock music would provide the perfect showcase for Levin’s evolving musical voice.
Stick Men draws inspiration from Crimson’s complex rhythmic structures and echoes the band’s tradition of innovative instrumentation and complex, cerebral compositions that challenge traditional rock convention, falling somewhere between Art Rock, Progressive Rock, and Progressive Metal.
The early days produced some legendary moments. Levin recalls with particular fondness a performance at the tiny Roxy Theater in Hollywood, where Gabriel performed with the enigmatic Fripp “trying to hide off the side of the stage.” Levin watched as Gabriel stepped off the stage, mid-song, to stroll across the audience’s cocktail tables.
“Young Peter,” Levin smiles, “always adventurous, and still surprising us with what he does on stage.”
When Levin officially joined King Crimson in 1981, he faced a crucial decision that would define his sound for the next four decades. Meeting the band’s uniquely gifted players—Bill Bruford, Adrian Belew and Fripp—Levin recognized that his traditional bass playing wouldn’t match their innovative approaches.
He immediately reached for his Chapman Stick, with odd tuning and touch-style playing that seemed suited to the band’s unconventional musical language, and the Stick became Levin’s signature instrument.
“It’s touch style instrument—a little bit more like a piano than like a guitar,” Levin explains. “So by touching the strings—with both hands—you’re playing the notes.
“Watching someone play seems pretty outlandish and weird,” Levin admits. “Frankly, if I see a video of myself, I’m like, what am I doing? But actually, when you’re playing it, it’s pretty simple.”
Today, Levin continues to tour with multiple projects, while developing new material with Stick Men. The power trio recently completed work on Brutal, a name that reflects Levin’s desire to explore the band’s harder-edged musical territory.
The title came about through the kind of playful collaboration that defines the band’s creative process: Levin wrote some aggressive riffs, then imagined drummer Pat Mastelotto sampling the word “brutal” spoken by bandmate Marcus Reuter with his German accent, creating an improvisational tool that could appear in any performance.
Asked if he has advice for young artists seeking a career in music, he defers to their knowledge of the world they are growing into.
“They know they don’t need me to tell them the challenges,” he says. “You have some good breaks, and you have some very bad breaks.”
One of those bad breaks for Levin came after hooking up with Pink Floyd to play on their Momentary Lapse of Reason album. David Gilmour invited Levin to join the band, but scheduling conflicts with a Peter Gabriel tour forced him to decline.
Levin seems to view such choices as simply part of the freelance musician’s life. A similar conflict once prevented him from joining John McLaughlin’s jazz fusion group, the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
“In the end,” he says, “if you’re lucky enough to have your life’s work be making music, that’s a win. That’s a great, great blessing.”
The Saturday concert is also an opportunity to experience the UCSC Recital Hall, which rarely presents outside artists. The acoustics are designed for voice, piano and violin recitals with no amplification, and over the years the hall has been customized for recitals of computer music and electronics.
One of Santa Cruz’s best-kept secrets, it features a surround-sound system, LED fixtures that can light an elegant piano recital one day and a rock show the next, and a beautiful setting with views of rolling fields and the Monterey Bay.
Stick Men at the UCSC Music Center Recital Hall, 402 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz.
Update from Pulse Productions: Tony Levin has rescheduled the July 19 show to Dec. 9, 2025. All tickets purchased for July 19 will be honored at the new date. Same time, same venue.
Tickets at pulseproductions.net
