Utter Trash--Porcupine Tree

Arriving Somewhere

An Interview with Stephen Wilson of Porcupine Tree

By Bob Ignizio

l to r: Richard Barbieri, Stephen Wilson, Gavin Harrison, and Chris Maitland)

When British prog rockers Porcupine Tree (Stephen Wilson - guitar, vocals, Richard Barbieri - keyboads, Colin Edwin - bass, and Gavin Harrison - drums) released their album ‘In Absentia’ about 2 years ago, I was fortunate enough to get an interview with keyboard player Richard Barbieri. Now the band has a new disc out on Lava records, ‘Deadwing’, and this time I got to talk with founder/vocalist/guitar player Stephen Wilson about the new record, the band’s rising fortunes, and the influence of metal on the band’s sound, among other things. Read on.

Utter Trash: You’ve been selling out a lot of shows on your current tour. That has to be nice after all these years of trying to break through in the U.S.
Stephen Wilson: Absolutely, yeah. It’s very gratifying to discover that your actually bucking the trend of the industry and your following grows rather than diminishes. I guess that’s a testament to the kind of music we play. I have no other explanation for it, really.

UT: Do you think the tour with Opeth last time around helped expose you to a different audience?
SW: I think we definitely got a younger, more metal element to our audience that we didn’t have before. But that doesn’t explain totally the massive kind of increase. It’s literally doubled since the last time we were here. I guess it’s just the word of mouth continuing to work for us as well. Perhaps a slight change in musical climate that has brought things around in our favor. Ambition and being able to play your instruments doesn’t seem such a strange concept as it did back when we released the last record.

UT: In the liner notes to ‘Deadwing’, it says the album is based on an unproduced screenplay. Is the album sort of a concept album then, or does it just reflect the different moods of the storyline?
SW: It depends on what you mean by “concept album”. Every Porcupine Tree album has been built around some kind of a central lyrical theme. I like to write songs in groups subject wise, I tend to do that. And in that respect this album is no different. All the songs share the same subject matter. But it’s certainly not trying to tell a story or be a narrative. I’ve never really liked albums like that. There’s very few examples of story albums that actually worked. It’s something I’d avoid. But all the songs come from that central core of ideas and inspiration, which is the movie script.

UT: Do you still want to see the script turned into a film?
SW: Absolutely. We wrote it with a view to getting it made, and myself and the guy I wrote it with who’s a filmmaker, have been shopping it around to various producers, agencies, and actors. There’s some interest, but no one has yet been prepared to put up the kind of cash that we need for it yet. I’m kind of hopeful. The album is certainly helping to raise the profile of the script.

UT: In addition to similar lyrical themes, your past albums often seem to share a consistent musical theme. This one seemed a bit more varied to my ears.
SW: Hmm… do you think? Maybe. I’ve always felt that eclecticism is one of the main aspects of what we do. The fact that we can go from incredibly ambient to incredibly heavy in one song. I kind of thought this album was a bit more cohesive. Certainly the last album for me I felt the difference between extremes was wider. I think this time, for example, the metal aspect has been more integrated into the sound, whereas the last record it was very obvious that was a big new element to the sound.

UT: Since you have been bringing the metal element more into the band’s sound, does that make it harder for you now when you write a set list to include some of the older songs?
SW: Yes it does. To be honest, the difference between the music in the beginning and the music now is colossal. It would be very hard for someone to trace a line even from ‘The Sky Moves Sideways’ to what we’re doing now. Philosophically, ideologically, musically, everything is so different. And so sometimes when we pull out an old track, it doesn’t sit very well with what we do now. It almost feels like different people made that. Which is true in a sense, because we were very different people. I’d say probably a good 90% of the set now is drawn from the last 4 or 5 years.

UT: On your first album Porcupine Tree was just you. Do you ever miss having that kind of complete control?
SW: I prefer collaboration, to be honest. Collaboration for me definitely made the music more unique. In the early days you could hear more easily where I was coming from in the terms of what records I was listening to and the bands that influenced me. As soon as you get a kind of melting pot of musicians and personalities and ideas and you immediately get something more unique, because you have four completely different styles that you meld together. And that produces something more unique. Even from the beginning I was only working on my own out of necessity. Simply because I didn’t know anyone else who wanted to play the kind of music I wanted to play. But I’d grown up with the romance of the band. The idea of four or five guys on the road together, in the studio together, creating something special, creating some magic. So I never particularly wanted to be in that situation. As soon as I could, I put the band together.

UT: As you say, you’ve incorporated some more metal influences into your style on the last few albums. Have you ever wanted to do sort of a death growl vocal maybe for one song or anything like that?
SW: Not really. For me, it’s all about taking what you want from a genre like death metal. I like certain aspects of it. I have no aspirations whatsoever to be a generic death metal band, or be generic in any way. So Porcupine Tree is almost this sort of magpie mentality where we just borrow aspects from other genres and try to create an interesting hybrid which is completely unique to Porcupine Tree. So to take what I consider to be some of the more cartoonlike trappings of death metal, whether it’s the cookie monster vocal or the obsession with satan or the corpse paint, and all this stuff; for me, that’s the fluff. It’s not what I’m interested in. I’m interested in taking what for me the real beauty of death metal, which is the power of the riffs, the power of that guitar sound. The attack and momentum that gives you. It’s certainly given us a lot more of an edge, and I think it’s stopped us from drifting to a more middle of the road sound.

UT: If one were to base an opinion of you just off of your albums, they might think you’re kind of depressed. When I’ve seen you live, though, you obviously have a sense of humor and look like you’re having fun. Why do you think that side of you doesn’t come through in the albums?
SW: Because I only write when I’m feeling down, that is the simple answer. I don’t feel the need to write music when I’m happy or content. For me writing is a kind of exorcism of certain emotions, and those emotions tend to always be dark ones for me. I write when I’m feeling angry or depressed, not when I’m happy. In that sense, I think the music gives a distorted impression of who I am, just one aspect of my personality. I can’t explain or rationalize it, that just seems to be the way I work.

UT: Are you still involved with your other band No Man?
SW: All my projects are still extant. I have about 5 or 6 projects right now. Some of them will be dormant for 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 years. But there’s no reason for me to disband them because I never know. I might want to go back and resurrect them. No Man is probably going to make another record next year.

UT: I think every time I’ve seen you it’s been a headlining tour. Have you ever wanted to get on one of these big summer festival tours or open for a bigger band?
SW: The tour we did with Opeth was a co-headlining tour, which I think was sort of the best of both worlds. The bands kind of shared each other’s audiences, but we were both at the same kind of level of profile in the states. And we didn’t have the bullshit associated with opening for a band, like a short set and kind of playing second fiddle. We did actually once do some shows in America opening for Yes, and it was a disaster. It kind of scared us off a bit. But I daresay that was a pretty bad pairing. I could see us opening for a band like Tool, perhaps. There probably is a tour that would be good for us. I wouldn’t rule it out.

UT: What’s on the horizon for the band? Do you have songs already written for the next album?
SW: I find it very difficult to write on the road, so I’m certainly not writing while I’m out on tour. It’s probably going to be a little more of a break between this album and the next one. It’s been quite an intense 15 years, just writing and recording pretty much non stop. I think next year is going to be a time where I take a bit of a hiatus from trying to write and record with Porcupine Tree. Maybe do some other projects, maybe produce some other bands, and hopefully come back fresh to write some new material the following year.