BECKY BALDWIN Explains How She Landed Gig Playing Bass On TONY IOMMI's New Solo Album

U.K.-based bassist Becky Baldwin spoke to Jamie Westwood and Tom Stevens of The Chronicles Of Podcast about her appearance on BLACK SABBATH guitarist Tony Iommi's upcoming solo album, "From The Dark". The 35-year-old Baldwin, who is best known as a recent addition to Danish metal veterans MERCYFUL FATE is joined on "From The Dark" by Iommi, drummer Karl Brazil, who has worked with pop icons Robbie Williams and James Blunt, and Norwegian singer Jørn Lande.

Asked how she landed the gig playing on Iommi's new album, Baldwin said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I got an e-mail first on just some random Wednesday or something. And I was just sat on my sofa just, like, 'Oh, today sucks.' And, yeah, an e-mail came through saying — I think 'Tony Iommi' was the subject. I'm, like, 'Oh, what's this?' And it said, 'Yeah, I'm Tony Iommi's manager. And would you be interested in coming to the studio and listening to some stuff and seeing if you might like to work together with us?' And I'm, like, 'What?' And I'm, like, 'This is fake. Surely this is fake.' Looking for every reason why I could justify that it's fake. But, yeah, I checked the person's name, their website, and the e-mail, how the e-mail is laid out. And, like, 'No, hang on, this is real. Let me give this person a call.' [Laughs] And, yeah, it was a real person, and it was a real job opportunity."

Regarding how she got on Iommi's radar in the first place, Becky said: "Yeah, I did ask that. So it was the producer, Mike Exeter, he's just been keeping his eye out for bass players. Well, they all have been, but he says he follows musicians that he comes across, just to see what they're doing in their career, and, yeah, just to see if it might be of use to him in his album production and stuff. And he said he'd been following me for a few years. And so when Tony was looking for someone, and I'd been posting all my classic metal bass covers, including some BLACK SABBATH, he had something perfect to be, like, 'Oh, I know a bass player who's pretty local, and you want someone local. So here's Becky's cover of 'Children Of The Sea'.' So he showed Tony that, and Tony was, like, 'Yeah, okay. Let's bring her down for a jam and see if she likes the songs.'"

After one of the interviewers noted that Becky's bass covers on YouTube seem to be "opening doors" for her in terms of landing her job opportunities, Baldwin concurred. "People like it, fans like it, obviously," she said. "People who are interested in bass, people who are interested in music but never have heard the bass line so isolated and prominent in the mix, they all really enjoy it. And that was a kind of secondary reason to do it. But, actually, the reason why I started doing [the bass videos] in the first place was I wanted to show people in the industry that I can actually play, and the kind of music that I like to play, and this is the kind of music I want to do, and please hire me. So, actually, it worked. It took quite a few years to work. I was doing it many, many years, and it wasn't really getting me any job hires and stuff. But it was just growing an audience, and I was, like, 'Well, this is kind of cool.' Like, cool secondary reason to do it. And it was helping me get endorsements and all sorts of other kind of stuff, but it felt like it was never gonna get me actually to work with the people that I wanted to work with. Because most jobs like that come through networking and come through you have to know the right people. People wanna hire people that they know personally or they know someone who knows someone personally because, yeah, it's going blind into a kind of job situation where you don't really know how this person is going to be. Like, they might be just really annoying [laughs] or —I don't know — they might just have an anger issue, and you're then locked on a tour bus with them for five weeks and find it completely intolerable. So, yeah, most people do hire just from people they know, but how do you get into that circle of people who know the people? So, I was, like, 'Well, I don't know any of these people, so I'm just gonna make videos.' And that built an audience, and then eventually it did kind of go through to the right people. It went through to [MERCYFUL FATE guitarist] Hank Shermann for MERCYFUL FATE, and it got through to Mike Exeter for Tony Iommi. And I think once you then are seen, 'Well, those people trust you, so maybe we can trust you for this.' So, yes, all those things just open doors along the way, I suppose."

Regarding whether the original invite was to record the full album or if it was initially supposed to be just a couple of songs, Becky said: "Well, the invite was to just come and play a song and just get a feel for each other, I guess. They wanted to hear how I approach writing a bass line, how I am under the stress of the red-light recording button being on. And I guess it was all right because they asked me to do the rest of the album. But I think it was always the intention to have the same bass player on the whole thing. I think, actually, initially, when Tony was writing some stuff, similar to [his 2000 solo album 'Iommi'], that album of lots of different collaborations with a lot of different musicians, that's such a cool album, but when he wrote more, he was, like, 'Actually, this feels like it should fit with just one singer, one drummer, and make the whole album sound cohesive together. And so, yeah, that was brilliant. So I got to do the whole thing. [Laughs]"

Asked if the bass lines for "From The Dark" had already been written or if she got to write them and put her own spin on them, Becky said: "I got the opportunity to write whatever I liked, really. There was already, like, a guide bass. The producer, he plays a little bit of bass, and he had put some bass on the tracks on all the songs just as something to kind of sound right, fill up that low end so that when they're recording the solos, it kind of sounds right and it sounds supported in the kind of lower frequencies. But then when they wanted me to come in and play something, they were, like, 'Well, let's play it to you without those bass guide tracks on. Because there's something there, but we wanna know how a proper bass player, someone who plays bass and only bass or has bass as their main instrument, how that person would approach the bass line, because Mike is more, like, piano, keyboard, songwriting — he'll play a little bit of everything. So he's coming at it from a perspective of keyboards and knowing the chords inside out. So he'll be, like, 'Okay. Well, I would maybe accentuate these notes and do that.' But from a bass player, you're, like, 'Okay, the riff, the bass riff has to go like this.' But between us, we came to what is now on the album. So I'd be, like, 'Well, this is what I think I would play if I wasn't influenced by anything else.' And we'd record that. We'd have a few ideas down doing that. And then afterwards we'd listen to the guide bass track, what Mike put down, and then we'd see, 'Actually, is there some bits here that we prefer? Or just maybe there's some notes in particular or just little particular melodic ideas or rhythmic ideas that would actually improve what we've already done, what I've already put down?' And so, yeah, together we kind of patchworked through his ideas and my ideas to make what it is now. So, yeah, I did get to write stuff, but, yeah, it was all overseen by Mike and by Tony and myself, and we all just kind of agreed on what [we wanted] the bass lines to be. So we did get to spend quite a lot of time on each song, which was great."

As for whether there are plans for Tony to release more material or perform live in support of "From The Dark", Becky said: "I think Tony just really wanted to do an album, and I think he just wants to see how it goes, really. I don't know if he's planning another album. He's got loads of material — he's always writing riffs and he's always got ideas coming — but I think he's just gonna see what comes of this album and then see how he's feeling in maybe a couple of years and maybe he'd do something else. But he's focusing on this thing for now. And there wasn't a plan to tour or anything, so we'll see about that."

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Iommi stated about Baldwin: "Becky lives in Birmingham, and she's a really good player. And she's certainly a fan of Geezer [Butler, BLACK SABBATH's bassist], and she plays in Geezer's style. And that's what I wanted. She's really good."

Asked if he had considered working with Geezer on "From The Dark", Tony said: "I wanted him to play on this album, but he couldn't do it. He's doing his own album, I think. Or at the time, something happened there, so he couldn't come to England. I wanted to get it done and finally get it out, really. Because Becky's, as I say, a fan of Geezer, and she plays in that style, I though let's give it a try. And she was good."

In January 2024, MERCYFUL FATE announced that it had recruited Baldwin as its permanent new bass player. The Birmingham, England-based musician previously toured with MERCYFUL FATE in the fall of 2022 as the temporary replacement for Joey Vera who was unable to make the dates due to a scheduled conflict with his longtime group ARMORED SAINT.

After playing the piano as a child, Becky picked up the bass guitar as a teenager and began performing with bands at school. In 2009 she moved from Trowbridge to Bristol to study at BIMM Bristol and became closely involved in Bristol's music scene. Becky holds a BA Honours degree in Professional Musicianship and now lives in the birthplace of heavy metal — Birmingham, U.K.

Becky is an energetic live performer and efficient recording musician who specializes in fingerstyle bass guitar playing, and rock and metal genres. Since 2012, Becky has performed approximately 100 gigs per year, offering her skills for a wide variety of bands (including covers and original bands, genres ranging from metal to folk, urban, funk, pop, jazz and more.) Music has taken Becky all over Europe and into the USA for touring and recording sessions.

Becky is a co-founder of specialist private tuition company Bristol Rock Centre, which runs a teaching and rehearsal studio in Mangotsfield. She has aided exam board Rockschool in the writing and proofing of tuition/exam books including "Let's Rock Bass", the "Popular Music Theory" collection and the 2014 Vocal syllabus. She has led workshops with Bristol Rock Centre and Rockschool, and has given lectures at BIMM Bristol, ACM Birmingham and Access Creative College. Becky has received tuition from top musicians such as Stuart Clayton (CARL PALMER band),Damon Minchella (OCEAN COLOUR SCENE, PAUL WELLER) and Jim Barr (PORTISHEAD, GET THE BLESSING).

Photo of full band and producer by Tina K