Mark King

Mark Raymond King (born 20 October 1958) is an English musician.

He is the lead singer and bassist of the jazz-funk band Level 42.

King is known for his slap style of playing the bass guitar, with MusicRadar describing him as "the guy who put the slap in pop during the 80s".

In 1974, when he was fifteen, King met his future Level 42 bandmate Phil Gould, who remembers the young King "came and sat in with the band that I formed, at one of the gigs we were doing. He brought his kit down and blew me off, blew me off the stage because he was so much faster than me".

Gould also remembers the young King as being a budding multi-instrumentalist, a "really good guitarist" who would "play around with programming, synth stuff. He was one of those natural musicians."

King received encouragement to pursue a career in music from his music teacher at middle school, but was asked to leave Cowes High School at the age of 17 when he came to school wearing denim jeans.

King recalls in a magazine interview: "It didn't go down very well, and I was told my schooling had run its course."

King then left home and stayed at a friend's house for two weeks, sleeping on the floor, before getting a job on a production line at a Ronson lighter factory.

After quitting this job, King became a milkman, but he was still determined to "prove [he] was not a failure".

So, aged 19, King moved to London, along with his milk van, in hope of finding a career in music.

He played drums for the band Re-Flex in their early years, before starting his career as a bass-player.

King moved to London at the age of 19, subsequently forming Level 42 in 1979 with Phil Gould, keyboard player Mike Lindup and Phil's guitarist brother Boon.

The first Top 40 single, "Love Games", was released in 1981, heralding the band's first appearance on Top of the Pops.

Level 42 supported The Police in 1981, followed by tours with Steve Winwood and Queen in 1986 and Madonna in 1987.

The big breakthrough came with the release of "The Sun Goes Down (Living It Up)" in 1983.

While in Level 42, King found his bass-playing services in some demand.

Although a drummer, King found himself having to learn bass after landing a job at Macari's. In an interview with the magazine Music U.K (Issue May 1984), he states:

I kept up playing drums until I moved to London.

I'd always wanted to be a good drummer and it's just ironic that I've turned out to be a bass player.

The way I started playing bass was that when I arrived in London I was looking for a job, and the only place I could find one was in Macaris in Charing Cross Rd. I wanted to get something involved in music, and that seemed like a good place to be.

But Macaris didn't sell drums, and so I lied and said I could play bass.

They said, "Fine, you sell the basses, and sweep up and get the coffees and whatever".

Nevertheless, King's natural rhythmic intuition probably contributed to his distinctive bass playing style, along with the popularity of jazz-funk in Britain at the time.

At one of their first gigs, at the La Babalu club in Ryde, Level 42 were spotted by Andy Sojka, the head of small independent record label Elite and signed them.

The next year, they were signed to Polydor and King spent the next nine years recording and touring with the band.

He was invited by Nik Kershaw to play on his second album The Riddle (1984) and by Midge Ure to play on his albums The Gift (1985) and Answers to Nothing (1988).

In 1984, he released his first solo album Influences, which was followed by One Man in 1998.

In 1999, he issued a collection of unused songs in the form of the album Trash; the name hinted at the rough, unpolished nature of the recordings (which were rejected by Virgin Records in favour of the tracks which would ultimately appear on the One Man album).

Trash was a historic release as it was issued without a record company and initially offered to fans via a low-key guestbook entry, made by King, on www.level42.com.

King recalled in a 2006 newspaper interview, "it was post-war, with one brass tap, an outside toilet and a zinc bath in front of the fire".

He later lived on the Camp Hill and Albany prison estates on the outskirts of Newport.

He attended Kitbridge Middle School where he met his childhood sweetheart Tracey Wilson, later writing a song about her.

He then went to Cowes High School.

Originally, King began his musical career as a drummer (starting aged nine after his father bought him his first kit for £10) and learning guitar aged 11.

Level 42 released the album Retroglide in 2006 and a European tour followed.

Level 42 (line up: Mark King, Mike Lindup, Gary Husband, Nathan King, Sean Freeman) toured in autumn of 2008.

King received a BASCA Gold Badge Award in October 2015 in recognition of his contribution to British music.

He won the "Outer Limits" award at the 2017 Progressive Music Awards.

King was born and brought up in Cowes, Isle of Wight, off the south coast of mainland England.

His father, Raymond King, was a dairyman, and the family lived in a tied dairy house.