Bass maestro Tony Levin has worked with a lot of the big guns. He looks back on some of those sessions in an interview with Vulture. On recording The Next Day with David Bowie:
I had to be working on a Sunday, which was the wedding day of a close friend of mine. I was to be the best man at that wedding. This close friend was a David Bowie fan. Here was my conundrum: What do I tell him? Do I turn down the session to be there for the wedding or do I do the opposite? Should I tell him at all? I was sworn to secrecy by the production team, so it was tricky. The compromise I came up with was I did say no to the Sunday session, but I did the Saturday session, which meant I wasn’t there for the rehearsals of the wedding. And I didn’t tell my friend. I had to be like, “I’m sorry, I can’t be your best man. I can only be there at the wedding.” So how’s that for a cryptic compromise? About a year later, I had, frankly, forgotten about this secret session and the album coming out. But the producer, Tony Visconti, emailed me at midnight of the day it could be spoken about. Immediately, I called my friend and said, “Remember when I couldn’t make the rehearsal dinner? I was doing a David Bowie session. I hope you appreciate that and forgive me for not telling you about it.” He did, thank God.
His new solo album Bringing It Down to the Bass is available here.
