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 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.” “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 equipmen.