Level 42’s Long‑Awaited Australian Debut Showcases Four Decades of Classics

This January 2027 marks a landmark moment as LEVEL 42 make their long‑awaited Australian debut, performing songs from World Machine alongside a set of their greatest hits. For the first time ever, Australian audiences will experience the band’s unmistakable blend of technical brilliance, chart‑topping songwriting, and infectious live energy. Released in 1985, World Machine stands as one of Level 42’s most celebrated achievements, a sophisticated blend of jazz‑funk precision, pop sensibility, and progressive ambition that pushed the band onto the global stage. Decades on, World Machine remains a benchmark of the era, a record that critics still hail for its innovation, groove, and timeless polish.

With a career spanning more than four decades, Level 42 remain one of the UK’s most influential and enduring acts. Led by the unmistakable bass mastery and vocals of Mark King, the band have sold over 30 million albums, delivered 18 UK Top 40 singles, and earned a reputation as one of the tightest and most electrifying live bands on the planet. Their Australian tour will showcase their signature sound and progressive musicianship that defined their rise and with a setlist stacked with classics including Lessons in Love, Something About You, Running in the Family, Hot Water, and Love Games, it offers fand a rare opportunity to witness one of the greats in action. Still performing with the same precision, fire, and world‑class musicianship that made them global favourites, Level 42’s long‑overdue arrival promises to be a masterclass in groove and energy; and Australia is finally about to experience it. Founding member Mike Lindup speaks to Rob Lyon about this long awaited tour.

I had to do a double‑take when I saw the press release come out, because I thought never in a million years would I ever be thinking that Level 42 would get to tour Australia.
Well, I mean, it’s not for the want of trying, because I think this is probably our fourth attempt to come to Australia. The last time… you know, 2020 was our fortieth anniversary year, so we had this big tour planned, and of course we all know what didn’t happen in 2020. I think the first time I heard that we were hopefully going to go to Australia was in the mid‑’80s. We were supposed to be on Molly Meldrum’s show?

Oh yeah?
Countdown? But yes, for some reason that never happened. But anyway, I’m so glad that we’re finally coming to play, and I’ve not been to Australia before, so it’s several firsts, basically.

Is there a whole other level of excitement to touring somewhere you actually haven’t toured before?
Oh, absolutely, yeah. It’s one of the biggest pleasures I have from the job, if you like to travel to new places, see places you’ve heard and seen on TV, and see them with your own eyes, and get to really experience the place and the people. It’s a huge blessing to meet people from all over the world, find out how much you have in common, and then be interested in the ways you differ, and just observe cultures first hand rather than hearing about it through the media.

With the way the tour dates are scheduled, will it give you a little bit of time to put the tourist hat on and explore while you’re here?
Yeah, it’s always the way, the economics of touring dictate that we can’t have lots of days off to go sightseeing, but you grab what you can. I’m pretty good by now at getting an impression fairly quickly and picking up the vibe. So I’m really excited to be coming.

Does it feel like the planets just aligned perfectly this time around to make it happen?
Well, to be honest, when Mark King told me that this tour was going to happen, I almost had to pinch myself, because like I said, we’ve been here before, scheduled to go, and then something’s got in the way. So yeah, I’m really looking forward to it.

Cramming forty years, or a little bit over forty years, into a set list is a nice problem to have in terms of bringing Australian audiences up to speed with the entire Level 42 back catalogue?
Well, exactly, forty six years and counting since Mark and I started the band. We’ve got about fourteen albums’ worth of material to choose from. So half the set is always going to be the biggest hits, because there’d be complaints if we didn’t do those. But then we can fill the rest of the set with a variety of material, so we can change it up and make it fresh for us. Depending on where people got on board with Level 42, a lot of people don’t know the stuff from the earlier albums, so it’s almost like new material to them. Plus, we have our instrumental side as well as our song writing side. So we can hopefully put a set together that gives everyone the best of all worlds of Level 42 as a first‑time live experience.

You might need to play for four or five hours, because there’s a wealth of material there. I’ve been going back through all the albums and there are some great songs deep in those records.
Thank you, thank you, yeah.

Is there a greater focus on World Machine on this tour? When you look back on an album like that, what does it mean to you now?
Well, it was a kind of breakthrough album for us. It was our fifth album, in effect. We were signed initially to a very small label in London called Elite Records, we did an album which didn’t come out at the time but later came out as The Early Tapes. That was our first go at recording. Andy had made it quite clear that he needed singles and he wanted songs, because we were an instrumental band initially. We were inspired by people like Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, Weather Report… those sort of bands. That’s what we started out wanting to be, but in order to get a record deal, we needed to become songwriters.

We established quite early on a good reputation as a live band. always quite dynamic on stage, Mark with his bass playing, and me being an ex‑drummer, and then having a drummer… there were three drummers in the band. It was very exciting. But what happened with World Machine was suddenly what we were doing as songwriters and recording artists hit a bigger audience organically. We started playing bigger venues, the record company wanted to spend more money on videos… we kind of moved into the big time. But fortunately, because we already had five years and four or five albums in the business, when it came, we were ready for it. We were prepared, and we had the experience to capitalise on it.

Being the fifth album in, do you start to feel the pressure that you had to be songwriters and create something that’s obviously going to reach and connect with a lot more people to build a career out of it?
I mean, we were quite lucky in a way, in that from our very first eponymous album, we were able to sell enough records that the record company trusted us with the song writing. Funnily enough, with World Machine, that was the first time that a question was asked, because a sort of work‑in‑progress tape had leaked to one of the guys at Polydor via our management, they started to question whether we needed to get some other songwriters in and stuff like that. Because as long as we provided an album with two or three single‑material tracks, then it was fine. But there was a big question mark asked halfway through World Machine.

At the time, we hadn’t finished the work on the song Something About You and shortly after that tape got leaked and the doubt was cast on us, we got really riled up about it and thought, right, we’ve got to really pull the stops out here. We started to work on that song and beef up the backing track, and then Boon came along one day out of the blue, because Boon and his brother Phil, the guitarist and drummer, wrote most of the lyrics for the band. It was kind of like, okay, I’ll do these songs and you do those songs. So Phil had come up with the title Something About You and was writing the lyric, and then Boon came in with these amazing lyrics.

Mark and I looked at them, and Mark kind of went, we’ve got to try these out and Phil’s nose was a bit put out of joint because it was his baby, but as soon as we put the vocals on, suddenly the song just went wow. We got the A&R guy in from Polydor into a listening session, and he listened and went, yep, that sounds like it to me. Then it became one of our biggest ever songs and really led that thing. So yeah, that was the first time we really had pressure put on us, because previous to that and actually subsequent to the success of World Machine, again it was like, okay, you guys know what you’re doing, as long as you come up with what we need, then that’s fine.

Was that the golden era for music, do you think? Sort of the mid to late ’80s?
I think that’s always a very subjective question. It depends who you’re asking, what generation they are, and what kind of music they’re into. Duke Ellington said it best, and other people after him, there are only two kinds of music: good music and bad music, and it’s collectively what people like. I think it’s always going to be a thing where the older generation look at the younger generation’s choice of music saying, it’s not like it used to be, where’s the tune, where’s the melody, where’s the lyrics, it all sounds the same. Those tropes have been spoken about generation after generation. I’m just the same, some of the stuff I hear on the radio, I think, God, it’s money for old rope, they’re using the same chords, blah blah blah. But if you talk to someone who’s into those particular artists, they’d probably defend them vigorously.

But I’m really glad that we came up when we did because of the whole apprenticeship structure that I don’t think exists in the same way. We were signed to Polydor Records in 1981 as a result of them doing distribution on the first two singles we did with the independent label. They were kind of like, okay, there’s this underground jazz‑funk thing we’d become a part of, let’s sign a couple of the bands and see if they’ve got legs. So they signed us and they signed Shakatak. They signed us for a five‑album, five‑year deal, which gave us an apprenticeship structure to learn in the studio, how to be recording artists, how to write songs, how to mix and produce, and then how to promote it by going out live. In those days, the money was in the record sales, and the live shows supported that, whereas now it’s completely the other way around. The record company took care of all the promotion and marketing. So it was an amazing place to learn, and because we were successful enough in selling records, we had that experience. So when the big time came, we kind of knew what we needed to do.

Even now, does it make it really difficult to contemplate a new album, particularly with the way the whole structure of the industry now really doesn’t support artists in the same way anymore?
I think for us it’s also different for me and Mark, but making new music now is definitely a labour of love. We don’t have a record company, basically you’re paying out of your own pocket if you want to make new music. It’s challenging to market stuff, even though we have an audience. They’re not necessarily going to hear the music before they buy the album. Airplay doesn’t really exist in the way it did. You can obviously put stuff on social media, but that requires a lot of work and a mindset we didn’t grow up with. We had no training in how to self‑promote. I would very much say I was an artist where it’s like, I write the music, someone else does all the selling, I don’t sell. Whereas now you kind of have to do that and there are some people who are very good at it, and some who are not so good at it. So I’m kind of glad we came out of the era we did. I’m not sure if we started now where our path would have led. It’s a case of right place, right time.

Do you feel the pressure to have to deliver new material? From my perspective, there’s more than enough in the back catalogue there.
Like I say, we’ve got fourteen or fifteen albums’ worth of material, and yeah, we can sort of change it up and do instrumentals, and bring rototoms on stage, or do an acoustic segment and bring the guitars out. So, ywe’ve got such a good catalogue of material, it’s like we don’t need to write anything new. Mark said to me, you know, I would only contemplate doing some new recording if we’d written stuff that was kind of lifting up the hairs on the back of my arm. I’m doing some solo stuff, I’ve done a solo album recently, and I’ve just finished recording a solo piano album. So for me, the muse is still alive, but in another direction to the Level 42.

The power of the legacy of the music of Level 42, that must blow you away in terms of how impactful and how much it actually means to a lot of people, including myself. That must be mind‑blowing and humbling at the same time?
It’s amazing, we went recently to South America to do shows in Chile and Argentina, and I remember getting on stage in the first gig we did in Santiago, and it was like the love that was coming off the stage, it was almost like, where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you all our lives. It’s like thirty years into our career, we’re playing there for the first time, and it was just incredible. It was so emotional. Sometimes people say, aren’t you bored with playing Lessons in Love, Something About You and Running in the Family for the hundredth time? It’s never that, because you can just see how it lands, and how people get lit up by it, and you get so much energy from that. It makes you really present to the fact that this is a song that really means a lot to people.

With what you just said, is there any other particular songs that you play live that you see hit emotionally harder than any of the others?
Well, we’ve all got our favourites, and it’s different from gig to gig. Sometimes you’ll play a song and it seems to go down particularly well. Some of the ballads, like It’s Over or Leaving Me Now for example, sometimes they really seem to resonate. It depends on the night. But the bigger hits, certainly, that’s when you see the phones coming out and stuff like that, so you kind of know that means a lot to them. Although, of course, I sometimes wish people would not get their phones out and just actually enjoy it there and then, and just have the memory of it.

What is it about the spirit of Level 42 that’s been able to keep going for so long and the bond between yourself and Mark ? Is there a secret to that longevity?
If there was, I’d probably try and bottle it and sell it and make a bit of money, to be honest. I think we’ve been through a lot, and maybe it works because our friendship is… we don’t go out and hang out with each other. We live in different parts of the country, but even before that, we enjoy being together, working together, we’ve had loads of experiences, but we’re not living in each other’s pockets.

When you’re on tour, of course you are, we’re on a sleeper bus these days, and you get to know each other’s little peccadillos, and you get annoyed by this habit of theirs, and they probably get annoyed with that habit of yours, but you sort of put up with it. When we’re not working together, we have our own separate lives. Maybe that, and the fact that the music seems to be as popular as ever, and we seem to be getting booked more and more now as a live band that keeps the relationship good. Also, by now, we’re at a certain age, we’re both sixty seven, and it’s amazing that we can still do this and people still want to come and see us. There’s no pressure, because there isn’t any new material. In the high times, it was all about, how’s the next single doing? What’s the midweek? How’s it charting? What’s it doing against its rivals? There’s none of that now. So we’re actually enjoying ourselves even more on stage than we ever did when we took ourselves a bit too seriously. That translates to the audience, they can see we’re having fun, and if something goes wrong, Mark will make a joke about it. Whereas if something went wrong in the mid‑’80s, we’d have a steward’s inquiry in the dressing room afterwards. So that’s all banished, and it’s a much more pleasurable experience.

Hopefully this sets the scene to come back even sooner, back to Australia once this tour’s done, and that you might be able to be more regular and go through all the other albums in the back catalogue as well?
Well, that would be lovely. I’m up for it. Like I say, I love travelling, and it’s one of the real perks of this job, so yeah, I’d love to come back and see more.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Level 42 on the following dates, tickets from Destroy All Lines…