Mercyful Fate and Fury bassist Becky Baldwin is no overnight success. She spent years cutting her teeth with sessions and tours, all the while building an online community.
Then she caught the attention of a group she had admired for decades.
Mercyful Fate, one of extreme metal’s most influential bands, were urgently looking for a bassist when – call it faith or pure coincidence – they came across Baldwin's playthrough videos on Instagram.
“Hank Sherman, one of the guitarists, said, ‘I’ve seen this bassist who's more of a metal-style player on Instagram, and maybe you should check her out.’ This was in August 2022, just before they played Bloodstock,” she recalls.
“The band and the management were watching some of my videos, and they were like, ‘Yeah, let's ask her. This is a good idea.’ Then they came across my posts saying, ‘At Bloodstock. Going to watch Mercyful Fate this weekend,’ and they decided they would offer the job to me there and then at the festival.”
It was everything Baldwin had been building towards since she got her first bass on her 13th birthday.
“My main influences then were Metallica, Cliff Burton, [and] Lemmy with Motörhead,” she recalls. “I think I focused more on old-school ’80s and ’70s, heavy metal, and thrash metal. That was the direction I was heading in.”
Many people would know you from your bass covers on YouTube and social media. How did it all start? Did you ever think it would blow up?
“Not at all. Occasionally, I tried to film videos playing along to something, and it never really took off too well. But I had really bad recording equipment. As I got slightly better technology, I was actually getting better videos, and I started putting them up just to entertain my friends.
“I didn't expect it to pick up as much as it did, where a lot of people that I didn't know personally were starting to follow my page. And that was quite different. I had no idea how any of these things work, like hashtags and trending and going viral.
“And yeah, it suddenly started capturing groups of people who thought it was something a bit different, like the kind of songs I was covering and the way I played them, and also it being bass.
“They like to hear the bass in isolation and bring it more to the forefront of the song because a lot of songs have great basslines, but you can barely hear them. Once it started happening, then I was like, ‘Yeah, this is fun. Let’s see how far this can go.’”
You're associated with the Rickenbacker – or as your fans call it, the Rickenbecky. How did it become your bass of choice?
“I've got the 4001. And then the other one is the 4003. I kind of use both. I mean, my favorite is the vintage one [the 4001], because it's got a lot of history. The first bass players that I was really following, Lemmy and Cliff Burton, used them. I guess not many people play them nowadays, so when you see them, you associate them with that era of music.
“I think it was in 2018 that I got the 4001. I'd been looking at it on eBay for a while and realized that I actually wanted to bid on it. But then figured out that I knew someone who was also trying to bid on the same bass.
“I decided not to go for it as it was quite expensive. But they didn't actually pay for it in the end so it came back online. It was the day that one of the old Motörhead guitarists, Fast Eddie Clarke died… and then the bass came back on eBay. And I was like, ‘This is a sign I'm supposed to have it.’ It just felt like destiny to have this bass.
“They have both been modified. I think it makes more sense as a metal player to swap the pickups, so I've swapped the bridge pickup for a Seymour Duncan. Cliff Burton did a similar thing with his, and Lemmy also had a signature Seymour Duncan pickup. Also, visually, I've got a different pickguard.”
It was the day that one of the old Motörhead guitarists, Fast Eddie Clarke died… and then the bass came back on eBay. And I was like, ‘This is a sign I'm supposed to have it’
And in terms of other gear?
“I've got the Darkglass A0900 head and DG212N cab. It's really light, so I love using that. Some of the people who were working at Darkglass moved over to Neural DSP. I still use the Darkglass amp, but instead of the [Alpha Omega] Photon pedal, I'm now using the Quad Cortex.
“It has Darkglass sounds already loaded into it, but it's just got other useful things like a tuner, a drop-tune button, and loads of effects that you could spend hours playing around with, but I keep it simple. Just one distortion, maybe a little boost here and there.
“I also use the D'Addario NYXL strings, 45 to 105 gauge. And then I use one of their heavier ones on the other bass, because that's the bass where I do more D standard tuning.”
You've got a very specific fingerstyle technique that lends itself well to bass. How did you develop it?
“It's basically just playing as hard as you possibly can. And yeah, I just try to stay consistent in whacking the strings. I use two fingers, and it's alternating between those two. I haven't really tried developing a three-finger technique with picking, as it didn't feel quite right. It was harder to get the accents that I wanted and get the dynamics right. So I stuck with that.
“Once someone made a comment saying like, ‘Oh, yeah, girls playing bass. They always just tickle the strings. They don't play properly.’ And I was like, ‘You're kidding me!’
“I think from then on, I was trying to prove a point to play hard, play punk and metal, and really do it justice and make sure that when those people see how girls can play bass, they'll change their minds.”
Once someone made a comment saying like, ‘Oh, yeah, girls playing bass. They always just tickle the strings. They don't play properly.’ And I was like, ‘You're kidding me!’
Onto the big one. How did the Mercyful Fate gig come about?
“It was the Instagram, YouTube, Facebook… all this stuff. Having a presence there paid off. I never expected it to go this way. And it was great when it meant that I could work with more brands and stuff. And I thought, ‘Oh, that's a great perk.’
“But I didn't think the people I'd be showing my playing to would be one of the most influential extreme metal bands of the early ’80s.
“They had a bass player called Joey Vera and they had some tours moved around because of Covid delays and everything. And it turned out that the tour they had clashed with Joey's other band, Armored Saint.
“They had this American tour and they needed someone to step in. And they asked around a little bit, and their management suggested a bunch of people. They said nobody on this list seemed like a good fit for the band, like in terms of playing style, or visually, or just in the other things that the bass player had done.
“They also noticed that everyone on that list was a guy, and they said, ‘It doesn't necessarily have to be a guy. We can look at anyone.’ Then I think they noticed that Whitesnake had a new bass player called Tanya O'Callaghan, a woman from an era of music that's completely different from Whitesnake, but the fans accepted her and she was a great fit for the band.
“So they were like, ‘If they could do something like this, maybe we can do that as well.’ It's cool to see how another woman's success opens the door for more people to do it.”
So what was it like getting the call? Did you have to audition for the role?
“I'd just got my camping ticket for Bloodstock, and I go in and on the day that they play, I'm wandering around the bar or something, and someone comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, can you come and speak to this person?’ ‘Yeah, sure.’ I don't know who that is. But then I realized I'm going backstage… of the main stage.
“I'm like, ‘Whoa, what's going on here? Where are we going? Who are we meeting?’ And then I start to realize that I was probably going to be meeting Mercyful Fate because they're on in a few hours and I didn't know any of the other bands. But that would be the most logical thing going on here.
“Once I came backstage and met them, they said, ‘Do you know why you're here? We need you to go on tour with us. We need a bass player. We need someone to play in Mercyful Fate. You think you could learn our songs and come on tour with us in a couple of months?’
“I was just depping at that point. I did that tour. And then after that, we had some festivals in Mexico a few months later. This year, we played in Brazil and Chile. They understood that Joey's priorities are with his own band, because he's one of the original members of that band, so then they offered me to join permanently.”
They said, ‘We need you to go on tour with us. We need a bass player. We need someone to play in Mercyful Fate. You think you could learn our songs and come on tour with us in a couple of months?’
So, obviously, you had to learn all of Timmy Hanson's basslines. How did you balance staying true to his style while putting your own twist on things?
“My aim was to get all the parts as accurate as possible to Timmy's original lines. There were some parts on old recordings where it was quite hard to hear the bassline.
“But there are live recordings from Joey, who has been playing with them a bit more recently. And Joey also did me a massive favor and got a mixdown of the full live show, and had the bass mix really loud so that I could hear exactly what he was playing.
“He's been in the industry and has been doing this job for a lot longer than I have, so I feel that I can trust what he's doing. And of course, the band is used to what he's playing because he did that tour in the summer of 2022.
“It was between listening to the originals and listening to Joey's parts where I kind of found the best parts that I wanted to do. There are a few bits where I could hear Joe doing something slightly different to Timmy. But I really liked what Joey was doing for the live show.
“I think Timmy's lines don't feel too dissimilar to what I would do with the song anyway, so it felt quite easy to strike that balance of honoring his parts, but also doing something that I was comfortable with playing.”
You have also played in a Metallica tribute band. How did you find tackling Cliff Burton's sound and style?
“I dep for them whenever their bass player is away. A couple of years ago, their bass player was really busy and so I did quite a lot of shows. Whenever they need me, I'm happy to step in.
“Cliff is a very unique player. And I think the more you study his basslines, the more you can see and hear his background in learning piano before he learned bass.
“So you can see that he'll use different kinds of arpeggios and scales. Whereas I think most of the songwriting was coming from other members of the band that I don't think had that kind of approach.
“But when he came to add his own mark on it, you can hear that he's applying theory and adding maybe more creative chromatic bass guitar riffs than the other members would present to him.
“Then he'd be like, ‘Okay, I want to make this make more sense in a musical way, because that's how my brain works.’ And that's kind of how I like to write basslines as well. I've always studied Cliff Burton's work as much as possible, so it was really nice to play with a tribute band and be able to take another deep dive into those songs.”
Cliff is a very unique player. And I think the more you study his basslines, the more you can see and hear his background in learning piano before he learned bass
What has been the most surreal moment of your career so far?
“Probably the Mercyful Fate thing. And the show we did in LA – Dave Grohl came and was hanging out backstage. I just didn't expect him to be much of a massive Mercyful Fate fan. But I've got this video of him in the audience singing along, and it's so cool.
“And then afterward I got to meet him, and that was just a very surreal moment. I also got to meet Rob Halford [Judas Priest], another great musician. I never thought these things would happen.”
“I was just in Denmark. Metallica were playing in Copenhagen, and some of the band members are based over there. So I flew over to meet them. We went to see Metallica and we got to meet Lars [Ulrich] at the end because he's a big Mercyful Fate fan.
“So he was happy to have us there at the show, and this was a real full-circle moment. I was like, ‘Oh my god, you're in my favorite band ever.’ And he's like, ‘You’re in my favorite band.’”
