Tony Levin Opens Up on Biggest Challenges of Rehearsing ’80s King Crimson Songs, Reveals How Beat Will Plan Setlists – No Treble

The 1980s King Crimson material is so tough that even Tony Levin, who originally played this material, had a hard time getting back into it for the Beat tour.

Joined by his former bandmate Adrian Belew, as well as Steve Vai on guitar and Tool’s Danny Carey on drums, the new prog rock supergroup will finally take the stage today, Thursday, September 12.

As we patiently waited for this day to happen, we got the chance to chat with the almighty bassist and Chapman stick maestro. Among other things, Levin reflected on rehearsals and how things went down for this new quartet.

“We started at Steve Vai’s home studio with a remarkable array of guitars on the walls, as fans of his know,” he offered. “And now we’ve moved to normal production rehearsal place — a bigger place.”

Of course, our chat with Levin took place a couple of weeks ago while Beat was still rehearsing. Looking back at it, the bassist praised the new guys and how they approached this material.

“It’s going very well,” Tony said on the rehearsals. “It’s still early days as you and I are speaking. But the main thing is — the players are great, and Steve and Danny really did their homework and learned this material. There’s still a lot of adjustment and [to] see where it goes, and there’s a lot to do.”

“We gave ourselves a considerable amount of rehearsal time. Good thing we did, but that’s the conscientious thing to do — to spend the money, to spend the time and really get it to be a real valid band and act before you start the first show.”

“In the old days, we used to do a warm-up week or a bunch of warm-up shows. But nowadays, people are gonna hear about those shows and come to them. [Laughs] You didn’t wanna be bouncing ideas off them that aren’t valid.”

It’s no secret that these three albums — Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair — are filled with super difficult stuff to pull off. Although revealing that rehearsals were “going well,” Levin added:

“I was a little bit late revisiting my parts from the ’80s, and some of them are damn tricky. I forgot that. I really forgot.”

“Many of them I’ve been playing ever since. ‘Elephant talk’ — I don’t have to practice that. That’s fine.”

“I wasn’t thinking it would be easy, but I forgot the number of pieces with counter rhythms on the top of the stick and on the bass side in different time signatures. And then sometimes, singing harmony with Adrian at the same time in a third time signature or out of time.”

“Technically, to do that, you’ve kind of got to just have it under your fingers so you don’t pay attention to the seven and six that you’re singing. [Laughs] Concentrating on singing in tune is always the best idea. So I’m practicing that. And it’s a good thing we have a lot of rehearsals. And I’ll be fine — still weeks to go.”

“I’m in my hotel room as we speak and I’ll be bringing the stick back most nights and practicing that,” Levin revealed. So the obvious next question was what they’ll play every night. Three albums might not seem like too much to pull from, but for King Crimson fans, coming up with the perfect setlist would be like a kid getting into a candy store and trying to fit their limited budget. Asked on the matter, Levin replied:

“What we have now is a very long list of all of the potential songs. We will learn them all and have them at hand. And then, the next thing we need to do is start fashioning setlists — tentative set lists.”

“And you notice I’m not saying anything about the songs because that would ruin it for a lot of people. Tentative setlist, try them out, see if they work.”

“And then the third thing is to time them and make sure that the whole show, as a whole show, works,” he continued. “And we don’t know the timings because they won’t be the same as they were. Not like we’re exactly copying the original. Well, anyway, King Crimson live was different than the original albums.”

“And then the third or fourth thing — it was deciding how much do we vary it each night. I know we won’t be doing exactly one.”

“Peter Gabriel, once he finds the set list — nothing wrong with this — once he finds it, that’s the show every night. It’s the same show. This will not be like that. There’ll be some variations. Of course, we realize that many people are coming to more than one show and that matters to us.”