“All these older blues players would come to Detroit to play local clubs. I was too young to get in, so I’d cut my hair short and glue a mustache on my face”: Tony Newton on playing with Gary Moore, Allan Holdsworth, and holding down the pocket at Motown

Tony Newton performs onstage with G-Force at the Hammersmith Odeon in London on June 23, 1980.

With fingers born to traverse all ends of his Fender Precision bass, smooth-as-butter tone, and a mastery of in-the-pocket grooves, four-stringer Tony Newton has long been in high demand, helming the low-end of tunes by – to name just a few – Smokey Robinson, Allan Holdsworth, and Gary Moore.

However, though he may have been born to play bass, that’s not where Newton began. It started with the piano, he tells Bass Player.