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

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

King recalled in a 2006 newspaper interview,[4] "it was post-war, with one brass tap, an outside toilet and a zinc bath in front of the fire".

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

Gould also remembers the young King as being a budding multi-instrumentalist, a "really good guitarist" who would "play around with programming, synth stuff.

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.

Although a drummer, King found himself having to learn bass after landing a job at Macari's, a musical instrument store.

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.

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.

[7] 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.

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.

With the exception of Trash, he has only issued one new professionally released studio album in the eight-year period, September 2006's Retroglide under the Level 42 banner.

In 2016, King joined supergroup Gizmodrome, also featuring Stewart Copeland, Adrian Belew and Vittorio Cosma.

[9] In 2019 King played and sang on Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders song "Queen of the Clowns" from the album Get the Money.

King also took part in a comedy skit titled "The Easy Guitar Book Sketch" with comedian Rowland Rivron and fellow British musicians Mark Knopfler, Lemmy from Motörhead, David Gilmour and Gary Moore.

On 20 June 1986, King and Lindup performed alongside stars such as Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler, Midge Ure and Elton John, at The Prince's Trust All-Star Rock Concert at Wembley Arena to celebrate the first 10 years of the Trust; a recording was subsequently released on video.