Steven Wilson has been the leader, front man, singer, guitarist, and composer of Porcupine Tree for over two decades, while also recording music in some fashion since 1983, when he was 15. Now 45, after decades of impressive collaborations that span work in a myriad of genres with No-Man, Blackfield, Incredible Expanding Mindfuck, Bass Communion, and, recently, his historic collaboration with Opeth leader, Mikael Akerfeldt, on the Storm Corrosion project, the prog rock king returns with his third solo album, on the heels of 2009’s Insurgentes and 2011’s Grace for Drowning.
The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories) is a six-track tour de force, combining the best of the modern progressive rock template, Wilson’s own unique compositional genius, and some of the hallmarks of improvisational music. For the first time, the British artist appears to have found a sound, an idea, a concept, a series of songs, and an opportunity to bring in all of his numerous influences and own sublime musical inventions into a singular statement. The work is vigorous, robust, dynamic, subtle, atmospheric, dark, melancholic, and, yes, quite profound and beautiful, too.
The special edition of The Raven also includes a 128-page booklet filled for the first time with ghost stories by Wilson, and illustrations by German artist, Hajo Mueller. These stories are intertwined with the lyrical content of the songs, and help serve as a literary and visual signpost as well as a landmark storytelling device all its own, which echoes back to some timeless era when the dream world somehow co-mingled with our own.
Wilson has also been recognized as one of the finest producers and engineers of the last three decades, and his work with his many projects, has spawned a parallel life re-mixing the catalogues of King Crimson, Jethro Tull, and numerous other classic bands, all with one clearly defined common denominator—these acts knew how to use the album as an art form, and experimented and perfected the sound of music as progressive rock.
It would take the length of this interview, perhaps two or three more, to properly document the recorded output of Wilson’s long career as a sound wizard who happens to write some fairly memorable pop melodies, gorgeous tone poems, esoteric mindwarps, and raging rockers, as well as some of the modern era’s most complex yet dynamic long-form, multi-part songs, some lasting as long as 55-minutes, but all engaging in a way that is always interesting, always fascinating, always deeply honest, and, yes, always bearing the unmistakably unique Steven Wilson trademark. His music can appear so inspiring and uplifting in a way that defies easy definition that the lazy observer can come to a false assumption. And, as the man himself states in this often philosophical, introspective, and always engaging conversation: “I don’t do drugs. I just dream.”
Jambands.com captures some of those inspired interpretations here, as well as several other Wilson musings. In the end, if new to the Wilson canon, one should start with his latest solo work for a clear and definitive statement of his current artistic mindset. And if one, like this writer, is a longtime fan, one should, again, turn to the new album, for even more time with a very generous and very dear old friend. Indeed, the work endures.
RR: Today, I was listening to The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories) for about the fifth time over the last few days, was on the final track, the title track, and I received an e-mail stating that the video had just debuted for that song, so I had a bit of a synchronicity right there. I have been moved by your music and lyrics in many ways over the years via your numerous projects, and this video had quite a profound impact on me, as well. What are your initial thoughts on it?
SW: It’s beautiful. The girl who did the video, and her partner, did a video for me once before for the Storm Corrosion project I had last year, and they did such a fantastic job. I knew that they would be right for this particular project because I wanted something with almost like a vintage, fairy tale-like quality. They’ve used this very traditional, almost old-fashioned style of stop-motion animation, which, for me, resonates very well with the actual feeling of the story and the record, which all have that feeling. Some would say vintage, I would say timeless, there is timelessness about them.
RR: It ties in with the fact that it goes back to your childhood when you would find some old book in the back of an antique shop somewhere?
SW: Yes, that’s what I told Hajo [Mueller], the illustrator. I said, “Imagine you’ve gone into the darkest, dustiest corner of an antique book store and you’ve pulled out this book that is probably a hundred years old. Imagine how that would be illustrated.” That was kind of my brief to him.
RR: Your first two solo albums were each a leap forward and a consolidation of the ideas that you had over the years with your various projects. But, your latest work seems quite inspired in a way that demands a few listenings to really appreciate the complexity of the tunes. It was as if I couldn’t believe how strong the work is, and I had to convince myself that you had outstripped yourself, yet again, on a very unique and original work. You used the word timelessness, and I don’t want to call the latest work a masterpiece just yet, but it is a definitive statement at this point in time for you as an artist. At the time of the recording, were you aware that you had moved into an area which is groundbreaking and new for you?
SW: I think I’m aware, but I’m not thinking in terms of “You know what? I’m now going to do something really groundbreaking.” Honestly, all I’m thinking is that I want to do something that interests me. That’s all I’m thinking, and that’s all I’ve ever thought, really. I don’t really like to repeat myself. That’s the first thing. I don’t like to make the same record more than once. On the rare occasions when I have felt that I was kind of repeating myself—it hasn’t happened often; it’s happened a couple of times—I really didn’t feel good about it. I think, for me, it’s important to feel this constant sense of evolution and challenge.
There’s been so many things about this whole experience that have been different for me—the fact that I’m working with a band, the fact that we recorded the album pretty much live in the studio, the fact that we did it in California, the fact that we recorded with Alan Parsons. All of these things made the experience different to any other experiences I’ve ever had making an album. I think, at the end of the day, that’s all I’m looking for—I’m looking for the things that will make the experience unique and different and feel like there’s a challenge and something to keep me interested in continuing making records.
Beyond that, I have to be honest, sometimes in your career…I mean I’ve made like 20, 30 albums in my career, and I think they are all good. When I finish them (laughs), I think they’re all good. Otherwise, I wouldn’t release them. But, I’ve become aware that sometimes, some albums seemed to click better with more people than others. No matter how much I might feel strongly about an album…for example, I absolutely adored the Storm Corrosion album I did last year, but that was an album that very much divided people. I kind of expected it would; it doesn’t mean I like it any less. This album I like just as much as that album. I wouldn’t say I like it more, I wouldn’t say I like it less; it’s another step in my career as a musician. But, I’m already getting the feeling that this album is seeming somehow to click in a way that the last few albums that I have made haven’t clicked. So, there’s something magical that happens, and you can’t plan it, and you can’t consciously decide “O.K., now I’m going to make a definitive, groundbreaking album,” because every album I approach with the same enthusiasm and the same passion as every other.
I guess what I’m saying is that I am really happy that this album seems to be…a lot of people seem to be considering it a landmark album in my sort of career trajectory. That’s a fantastic feeling, but I guess I don’t feel any more strongly about it than any other album I’ve made, which is to say that I feel very strongly about it (laughs)—if you see what I mean. I feel very passionate about it, but I always feel that about every record.
RR: You mentioned your work with Mikael Akerfeldt on the Storm Corrosion project, which created a certain mood and atmosphere that I found to be powerful. It was also a complete album experience, which resonated with me, too. That ‘complete album experience’ was very much present on your recent re-mixing projects—for example, the King Crimson catalogue with Robert Fripp. Did the work on those classic albums influence the direction of your current artistic choices?
SW: The simple answer is, well, of course, but that doesn’t necessarily mean, again, that it was a conscious thing. Here’s the thing—if I’m spending, say, three weeks of my life, 14 hours a day, re-mixing an album like Thick As A Brick by Jethro Tull, which is exactly what I was doing, by the way, when I started to write The Raven That Refused to Sing, I was just in the process of finishing off a remix of Thick As A Brick, I had worked on this album every day for three weeks for 14 hours a day, I finished the record, I take the weekend off, I go back to the studio on Monday, and I think about writing my record, my head is still full of this music. It is still full of Thick As A Brick. It is still full of [King Crimson’s] Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, or whatever it is that I have been working on for the previous few months. My head is full of it, it’s buzzing with it—all the ideas, all the inspiration, all the influences from that music is still buzzing around in my head. I sit down to start writing my record, and, of course, that particular feeling and that particular sound is going to manifest itself through my writing. And I think that’s normal.
Any artist—his or her output is basically a product of his or her input. If I’m sitting around reading a lot of ghost stories, which I was at the time I was making the record, obviously, that’s going to become a theme in the lyrics, which is exactly what happened. I think this process of creating something from nothing—people talk a lot about inspiration, and sometimes they ask me questions like, “Where do you get your inspiration from? How do you create something?” The point is that actually nothing is ever created from nothing. You cannot just pluck something from the air. You cannot look at a blank page and expect to fill it with completely unique thoughts. I do believe (I’m not being facetious when I say this) that the artistic process almost always starts with stealing, stealing from something else. You can call it whatever you like. You can call it inspiration. You can call it influence. Stealing.
You start with basically something that you already know and you already like and you take that for the basis of your own art. But, of course, over a period of time, you hope to filter that through your own personality and your own experiences to create something which has something about it that is uniquely you. But (laughs), at the end of the day, you can’t create something from nothing. You have to start from somewhere. I’m no different than anyone else. I start from the basis of “You know, wow, I really love that track I’ve been mixing for King Crimson. That track is great. Maybe, I can do something like that.”
So, I think this is a very long way to say, “Yes,” to your question. Yes, of course, that work has informed the new record.
RR: Porcupine Tree’s The Incident has a series of tracks, which are essentially one long song, clocking in at 55 minutes, and there is a patience to explore various ideas—be it musical or lyrical. Which is quite striking to me because most music these days has to be in your face, or else the listener loses interest very quickly. What I have always appreciated, and this goes back to your work in the early 90s, is that you are taking the time to explore an idea on an album, and the idea is never rushed in any way. This also brings me to the thought that the 70s featured “the Golden Warmth” on recordings, which is echoed in the sound of your own albums, especially The Raven. Did listeners have more patience in the 70s to experience those longer, complex ideas?
SW: Well, I certainly think that in the 70s when a lot of this very groundbreaking music was being made music was something that was still very much part of the way people defined their personality, and it was part of mainstream culture. By which I mean that music was, pretty much starting with Elvis Presley and The Beatles, music was something that actually changed culture. It changed society. It’s been a long time since music had that power. I would say the last time music had any power like that was probably the grunge scene. Grunge influenced everything from fashion to movie-making to commercial-making. That’s over twenty years ago now. Music has long, long, long since lost its power in that sort of sphere. It has become something which is usually experienced in a more passive way. It’s background music when you’re in the gym, it’s background music when you’re on the train, it’s background music when you’re jogging, it’s background music when you have your dinner party, and that’s obviously not the kind of music that I make, it’s not the kind of records that I like to make.
I like to make records in the way that people used to that are intended to be engaged with—not in a kind of pretentious, intellectual way, but to listen. The funny thing is that people still do that with movies. The funny thing is that I find that people are quite prepared to put aside two hours in their evening, either to go to the cinema and see a film, or to sit down even at home with their home cinema setup, turn off the phones, turn off the lights, and watch a movie for two hours. Why don’t people do that with music anymore? Obviously, some people do, but I’m talking about something that is generally accepted in culture. People very rarely will sit down, and say, “You know what? I’m going to sit down for the next 45 minutes, and I’m just going to listen to this music. I’m not going to reply to e-mails, not going to check my text messages, not going to have the T.V. on with the mute on to check it with subtitles. I’m actually going to sit down and listen to this music with no other distractions. And I believe that was something that people did a lot in the 70s.
It was why albums like Dark Side of the Moon, Tubular Bells, and those kind of records could prevail and sell in such massive quantities because people not only responded to that kind of music, they wanted that kind of music. So, it’s tough. I think there is a subculture now, a substantial one, it’s still a small one, but it’s substantial, if that’s not an oxymoron, of people who do still want to engage in music in that way and at that level. And, not just old guys like me and you (laughs), but young kids, too. There’s almost a trend now within young kids, a small one, for buying vinyl and really engaging music on a deeper level. So, I think it’s like anything in society when there’s a big swing in a particular direction, there’s always a little bit of a pendulum swing back in the opposite direction, too. I do feel that. I feel that there’s more and more people appreciating what I do every time I come out with a new record.
RR: You spoke of this solo band being unique, while it is also unique for you to record live in the studio and in California. Describe the demo process, and how that worked when you passed the music on to this particular group of musicians. I would think it may be different from your process with other projects, right?
SW: Sure. I demoed the stuff much in the way I’ve always demoed stuff. I’m a little bit of a control freak. I find it difficult…I’m not the kind of guy that just brings in a song that is just strummed on an acoustic guitar. I bring in a demo that’s got all the drum parts, all the bass parts, all the keyboard parts (laughs), all the vocal harmonies, and everything is already worked out because, firstly, I’m a control freak, and, secondly, because I can’t really feel the music until I know exactly what everyone is going to be doing and how all the parts are going to interlock and fit together. You see, O.K., on one hand, that’s kind of limiting for the musicians that you bring the music to, but on the other hand, it’s not because what I’m looking for from these guys particularly is to then take that basic structure and basic kind of idea and arrangement and take it to another level. The thing is with all these guys, when they step up to take a solo, for example, and there are lots of solos on this record, that’s completely them that you’re listening to, that’s completely their voice, and their improvisation that you’re hearing, so I’m not controlling what notes they play in their solos. There is still a lot of room for these guys to express their own musical personalities within the structure, and I think what I really tried to do with this record is try to find a balance between structure, almost in a way between the traditions between rock music and jazz music.
Rock music is traditionally quite structured, it’s quite clinical, it’s about patterns, it’s about riffs, it’s about how many times do we go around this riff, and how many times do we go around that riff, and jazz is kind of the opposite. Jazz is like, well, you know, the conversation is as long as we want it to be, the solo is as long as I want it to be.
I think what I tried to do, starting with Grace for Drowning and definitely continuing through to this record is to try and strike the right balance between those two disciplines, if you like—the control and the structure and the arranging of rock music, which, of course, is what I’ve pretty much always worked in, and the freedom of musical expression and spiritual expression that jazz musicians tend to bring to the table. I do feel that there’s quite a nice balance between those two things on this record.
RR: I recently saw a bit of film with Alan Parsons in the studio with you recording this latest solo album. That image brought to mind that I was seeing two monoliths right there, in every way, of masters of classic recorded sound, in the same shot, and it made me think of seeing something amazing like Jimmy Page and George Martin in the same shot in the studio. What was it like to work with Alan Parsons in the engineering context? He hasn’t really worked in that way in quite some time.
SW: No, he hasn’t. I’ll tell you—obviously, the questions that are coming up a lot at the moment are: “What was it like working with Alan?” “What did you learn from Alan?” “What did you see him doing?”
RR: Well, what did he learn from you ?
SW: Not a lot, and I’ll tell you why. When you hire Alan Parsons, you almost say to yourself, “Now I’ve hired Alan Parsons, I don’t need to pay attention to how the record’s being engineered (laughter) because I implicitly trust this guy.” So, if you imagine the situation we had—we had the studio, we had the main room where the band was set up, we were all playing together live, we were all facing each other, and on the other side of the glass in the other room is Alan recording the record. I don’t know what he did, but it sounds good (laughter). I’m kind of in the room with the guys being the musical director and the producer because I completely and implicitly trust the guy on the other side of the glass who is doing a great job. So, I didn’t really notice too much about what he was doing, but every time I would come into the control room to listen, it sounded great! Fabulous. Just let him get on with it.
In that sense, the control freak in me finds those things hard to do in a way, to let go of part of the process, but with someone like Alan, I obviously feel a lot more comfortable and a lot more secure about letting go of that process because this guy is like second to none. That was a good feeling—to know that I could, in fact, delegate something like that to somebody and not have to worry about that. Maybe, that’s another reason why the record sounds as good as it does because, this time, I wasn’t trying to be everything. I wasn’t trying to be the engineer, the producer, the guitar player, the singer—I let some of the process go, and I was able to, perhaps, be a little bit more focused on the really important stuff, which is the music and how the music was being performed by the musicians.
RR: It’s interesting that you consider yourself a control freak and, yet, you are considered one of the best modern collaborators. I do understand how the two concepts can be married to each other. For example, getting back to the idea of the imagery on The Raven matching up with the music and lyrics, how did you conceptualize your ghost stories, which come with the album, and how did you get the illustrator to collaborate with you, so that vision could come together, so well?
SW: Hajo Mueller is a German artist, and I’ve known Hajo for a few years now, and actually Hajo’s been sending me his self-published books of his illustrations, his prose, and his own stories. I’ve always felt that they are absolutely wonderful, and I’ve been waiting for the right project to come along where I could work with Hajo on it from beginning to end. This seemed like the perfect project for Hajo because Hajo’s style has an almost childlike fairy tale quality to it, but it’s also very dark, very surreal, and very melancholic. I thought it was just perfect for this particular project because as soon as I had this idea that we were going to do a book of ghost stories in musical form, I immediately thought of Hajo because if you are going to do a book of ghost stories, and you want it to feel like it’s something from a hundred years ago, you don’t really use photography. Photography is pretty much what I’ve always used on almost every project that I’ve ever done. It has been photography-based until this one.
The reason I didn’t want to go with photography is because I did want this feeling—this is like the way a book from 1904 would have been illustrated. This is the way that Lewis Carroll or Edgar Allen Poe would have been illustrated. Photography at that point became kind of irrelevant, so I knew that I wanted illustrations. As I said, I had known Hajo for a few years, and I was kind of waiting, really, for the right opportunity to collaborate with him. In fact, some of the visual ideas we have in the special edition come from things I already knew from his self-published books. I would see something and say, “You know what? We should definitely use those characters and that kind of idea you’ve got there that you published in your previous book. We could use that. We could steal that for this song here.” That was the way we worked. He’s a bit like me. He’s incredibly fast and very prolific, producing all these ideas, and it was almost a question of sifting through to find the ones that resonated the strongest for me with the music and the lyrics.
RR: You wrote two ghost stories in the book, which accompanies the album, “Luminol” and “The Birthday Party.” You also co-wrote a ghost story, “The Raven That Refused to Sing” with Hajo Mueller, from an original idea that he had.
SW: He’d written this story, which was about this old man who lost his sister when he was very young, and a raven stopped to visit him. I loved the basic fairy tale quality of that, so I basically took his original story and re-wrote it and added ideas of my own—the idea that the raven became the manifestation of the dead sister, and that the sister would sing to him when he was young and, so, therefore, he feels that if he can get the raven to sing, then it will be proof to him that the raven is the manifestation of his sister. So, it turned into more of a classic fairy tale. His story was incredibly depressing and incredibly dark. It was wonderful, but I felt that it was almost comical. It was so depressing (laughter), so I kind of turned it a little bit more into a fairy tale, gave it a little bit more of a classical feeling, but it is basically his original concept.
RR: Some of your music over the years, including this current work, is melancholic, but it is very beautiful music, while also being very inspirational. I find that to be a strange dichotomy—when you can touch upon a melancholic feeling, or vibe, or touchstone, and, yet, make a listener have a very life-affirming moment, too. Are you aware of that particular feeling in your music, too?
SW: Yeah, absolutely. I think you are touching on a universal there, which is that anything that is sad and melancholic and somehow manages to encapsulate part of the human condition is going to make you feel good. The reason it makes you feel good is because I think subconsciously it makes you understand that you’re not alone in feeling these things, that we are all part of a collective, and that, ultimately, we all share the same kinds of experiences and feelings. We all know what it’s like to be sad, depressed, and melancholic. We all know what it’s like to be in a relationship that’s not going anywhere, a job that doesn’t make us happy, whatever it is that is making us sad, we can relate to someone when they write about that, when they sing about that, when they make a film about that, it kind of makes us understand that there is something beautifully tragic about the human condition. Again, I think it’s all tied to this idea of mortality.
One thing I love about ghost stories is that they are also quite beautiful in their own way. The classical ghost stories are scary, of course, but they are also very beautiful because, effectively, they are ultimately about this idea of mortality, about regret, and about loss. The ghost becomes a symbol of regret and loss, for me, and fear of mortality.
The thing is that all of us on this planet, whether we admit it to ourselves or not, we measure everything we do in our lives against this kind of tick-tick-tick of our life basically passing by, and I don’t know if animals are aware of their own mortality, or if human beings are the only creatures on this planet that actually know one day they are going to cease to exist, and the incredible burden that is to carry around with you particularly if you’re sad, lonely, or depressed because time is ticking away, and you’ve got only so much time to fix that. I think subconsciously everything that we do relates back to that idea of mortality. Every piece of art, every love affair, everything we do in life in terms of career and relationships and all of that stuff—it’s all measured against this idea that we’ve got so much time to make sense of our lives. I think that is the tragedy and beauty of the human condition, isn’t it? At least it seems that way to me.
RR: Absolutely. That is very profound. It is also almost like other creatures on this planet have a Zen-like ability just to ‘get on with it’, even if they knew what was going to happen. Whereas, the rest of us, there is some sort of self-sabotage going on, or something that happens where one can’t quite get to where one needs to go.
SW: I think because we are aware of our own mortality, we realize that we kind of implicitly accept that we cannot possibly do everything. We can’t. We just don’t have time. We don’t have enough years to achieve everything we want to achieve. Someone told me something really interesting the other day, which is the word “decide”—every other word in the English language, or many other words in the English language, that end with “cide”—suicide, homicide—are to do with killing something. In a way, the word “decide” also has something to do with killing something. It’s killing your options. It’s making a decision, and it’s therefore, by definition, cutting out the other options. And there is something about the decision-making process that becomes some form of sacrifice, becomes some form of way of moving forward that, ultimately, may lead to this idea of regret—you can’t do everything, you can’t be with everyone you want to be with; you can’t be a novelist, a writer, a filmmaker, a musician. God knows I’ve tried, trust me. (laughs) You can’t travel the world and meet everyone in the world, but, you know, you’d like to. You just can’t do those things. So, this idea of making decisions again ties back to this idea of mortality and there’s only so much time you’ve got to squeeze all this stuff into. It’s amazing how much time we spend thinking about things and not doing them, and then we realize that it’s too late, so this kind of idea of regret comes back. For me, regret has the most pathos of all to it—the idea that somebody would get to the end of their life and say, “I wasn’t with the person I should have been with, I didn’t have the job that made me happy, I wish I had done this, I wish I had said that”—it’s such a tragic thing, but at the same time, so beautiful, that kind of emotion, regret.
RR: Well, let me ask you this—I believe it has been 30 years since you’ve been actually recording music in some fashion. I am not sure how you, personally, track it back to the origins of your career. Do you track it all the way back to your childhood? Or, do you recognize 1983 as when you started? Regardless, do you stop, and think that you’ve been able to do things that have made you happy? Compared with most modern musicians, you have accomplished quite a lot of admirable work. As you said earlier, each time you finished an album, you were thinking that was a good album at that time, so I would imagine that when you look back over the last 30 years, you may stop and pause and think, “Wow, look at how far I have gone.”
SW: I do feel that, but it’s one of the strange things about setting yourself goals and setting yourself ambitions. When I was 15, and I was starting out making music in my first bands at school, always looking at the horizon, and thinking, “Wow, I really wish one day I’m going to be there,” looking off into the distance, and this thing way in the distance, “and, maybe, one day, I’ll actually make an album, and have a fan base, and go out and play live, and people will actually listen to what I do and care about what I do.”
And then one day, you find that what you were looking at in the distance on the horizon is now where you are. But what do you see when you get to the horizon, and you look into the distance? You see the horizon. (laughter) Whenever you get to a point in the distance that you were looking at a few years earlier, you’re still seeing the same thing in the distance. In that sense, you’re always looking forward.
If I can ever objectively analyze where I started and where I am now, I can say, “Yeah, I’ve achieved a lot. I’ve made some great records. I’ve met wonderful people. I’ve toured the world. I have fans that are very loyal and love what I do.” But, I am still looking at the next horizon. I think that is what drives me, in a way, and I suppose, ultimately, what that means for me anyway is that it is a very personal quest. All this other stuff at the end of the day is great, but it doesn’t really change my process. I’ve always wanted to keep things interesting for myself and, in a way, I wonder if that isn’t what being an artist is all about—isn’t being an artist actually being incredibly selfish? Isn’t being an artist pleasing themselves, and not anyone else? If you start trying to please other people and thinking about success and money and status then you’ve become an entertainer. Being an entertainer is not what I want to be.
I like to entertain people with my art, but I think there is a distinction. Objectively speaking, I can see that I’ve traveled a long way since I started, you know, but, in a way, I haven’t really traveled anywhere at all because I still feel the same way, and I still feel like I’ve got just as much to learn as I ever did.
RR: That’s great because it doesn’t seem like the word “complacency” is in your vocabulary. What you said about ambition is interesting because of your various collaborations with Mikael Akerfeldt, not only on the Storm Corrosion project, but your work producing and/or engineering Opeth albums. You both appear to have two completely different personalities, but mesh well in the studio with a multiple set of ideas. Indeed, you both have the uncanny ability in your respective careers of not doing what people expect you to do, or to duplicate what you have done before, instead going off into a new and fascinating direction. Have you two musicians ever talked about that concept—this is why we shouldn’t do this, and this is why we shouldn’t do that? Or, do you talk about what interests you at that moment?
SW: I guess we have talked about it. What’s great about having the friendship with Mikael is that we are encouraging each other to be more like that—exactly what you just described. It’s much easier when you have someone like that who is a very close friend that is also like that. If you ever have any doubt like “Should I really be doing this?” The other guy will say, “Yeah, of course, you should. Fuck what people think. If it’s important for you to do it, then you do it.” It’s important to have someone like that—someone that is a foil for you, someone who is encouraging you to have the courage of your convictions.
The other thing about Mikael and about myself is that—I think it sounds like an obvious thing to say, but I’ll say it anyway—we love music. The reason I say this is because a lot of people in the music industry that make music don’t. They really don’t like music. They probably did once; when they started out, they really liked music, and they formed a band, and they released a couple of albums, and they got a record deal, and they became famous, and at some point they actually stopped really loving being able to make music, and it became their job. You can almost hear the point when that happens in career trajectories of a lot of great artists. They begin to stagnant, and you can almost identify the exact point of which music is no longer their passion, it’s become their job.
And I’ve got to tell you, that’s never happened with myself, and that’s never happened with Mikael because every time we make a record, it’s almost like it is a sacred thing. If you’re going to make a record, you’ve got to make it, and really love it, and really believe in it. If you don’t, if you are just in the business of creating product to keep the bandwagon going, I’m not interested in you, and I don’t want to work with people like that. Mikael is exactly like myself in that respect. And I think this comes back to the earlier question about, you know, actually being an artist is quite a selfish pursuit, and it should be. You should really only think about pleasing one person and that’s yourself. Because if you are doing it for the wrong reasons, people are going to pick up on that. People are going to hear it. I really believe this. If I made a record that I wasn’t completely sincere about and passionate about, I think people would hear that I was faking it. I really think that. It’s important to me that people don’t hear that I’m faking it. And I know Mikael is exactly the same.
RR: You touched upon an important aspect—the concept that an artist must be selfish. I think that also describes why I enjoy your music so much. A dream is a singular experience for the most part. One doesn’t normally dream as part of a group consciousness. When one is in a dream, sometimes the perfect song is heard, and then, when one wakes up, the song is forgotten. I think that is my highest compliment. Your music sounds like something that transcends those two fields of consciousness—the waking life and the dream life of an individual, at least to me. I think that is why the ghost story aspect of The Raven has such a strong hook because you have stories about people in the here and now, and then you have beings from other dimensions. I hear your music in both states of consciousness.
SW: Number one, that’s very flattering, thank you. Number two, that does make sense to me because I’ve always felt that all the kind of art that I respond best to, or strongest to, has an element of what I call ‘otherness’ to it—something that is a little bit not of this world, perhaps almost surreal is a word that I would use, but dreamlike, also.
It’s funny. One of the questions I get asked a far amount is the drugs question. People listen to my music, and a lot of the times they assume that I must be a stoner, or doing something because I have these ideas that don’t obey the rules. I don’t write songs in this sort of conventional pop form. The songs unfold, very often, in unpredictable ways. I think the way a lot of people can explain that to themselves and then ask me to validate their theory is “Oh, must take drugs.” I say, “I don’t take drugs. I just dream. I’m in touch with my dreams.” The stuff that happens in your dreams is a lot crazier than anything you’ll experience under the influence of drugs. If you can tap into that, if you can tap into what I call “dream logic”—which, of course, there is no logic in dreams; that’s the beauty of dreams—dream logic is fascinating, it’s a wonderfully inspiring thing. I think to be able to tap into that, like for example, filmmakers like David Lynch, I’m a massive admirer of, and he is someone that I think totally taps into dream logic.
And I’ve always tried to do that with the music, too—tapping into that slightly surreal, illogical, unpredictable world of dreams, which has nothing to do with drugs, and nothing to do with artifice. It is what the mind does when it is left to its own devices.
*RR: I recently spoke with Chris Squire about some of the classic Yes albums, so when I heard the first track, “Luminol,” on your new album, I thought, “Wow, Chris Squire would really think this is a strong track [because of its powerful bass presence early on in the track].” As we spoke about earlier, in the last few years, you were part of various re-mixing projects of classic 70s albums, including Jethro Tull, King Crimson, and ELP. Were you aware of what may have specifically come from those sort of influences when you were writing and recording the new solo album?
SW: Here’s the thing. There’s no easy answer to this question because some of the reference points of course I’m aware of and others I’m not. The reference point you’re talking about on the opening of the record—it opens with a very strong, very upfront lead bass riff—to be honest, there are only two or three bass players in the world that have (laughs) ever done that. So, the reference points are going to be Chris Squire and Geddy Lee. I can’t think of anyone else that have ever done stuff like that. Almost by definition if you have a strong lead bass with a lot of treble on it, playing riffs, and very upfront, people have said to me, “Geddy Lee” or “Chris Squire.” And they are both right. It is basically a guy playing a Rickenbacker very upfront, playing a lead bass riff. I’m definitely aware of those reference points. But at the same time, the riff that Nick [Beggs] is playing there is not a riff that either of those guys have played. It’s more of a reference to a particular sound, or a different approach.
I’m also very much more confident, perhaps, than I would have been five or ten years ago in referencing things like that because now I feel more confident that anything that I do is still, ultimately, going to sound like me anyway. And that’s an important threshold to cross. For example, there were a lot of things that I didn’t do, perhaps, in the 90s and the last decade because I was afraid that they would be perceived as derivative, or sounding too much like someone else. I threw out a lot of ideas that I actually instinctively liked. Now, I guess I’m a little more confident, a little bit more bullish, and some might say (laughs) more derivative. I’m leaving these reference points a little bit more obvious because I guess I feel more confident that actually, anyway, it sounds like me.
This is borne out by things because I played stuff to Robert Fripp. There’s a track on the album called “The Watchmaker.” I was influenced by the early Genesis sound, the 12-string guitars, the way they were used. I think you know what I’m talking about.
RR: Steve Hackett.
SW: You do. I’m sure you do, yeah. The way they were used is a very chime-y 12-string guitar. That was a starting point for “The Watchmaker.” I played it to Steve, and I said, “Steve, have a listen to this, and tell me if I’ve really ripped Genesis off here.” He said to me, “It just sounds like you .” He didn’t even hear the Genesis in it, and the same thing happened with Robert Fripp. I guess if these guys can’t hear it, then maybe I shouldn’t be worried about it. I don’t know if the reaction to the album will bear me out on this or not. But those reference points, yes, I’m aware of them, but I think, ultimately, I think anyway they are re-fashioned into something, which transcends, at least I hope so, and just becomes my sound.
RR: I didn’t intend to imply in any way that your work is derivative. I hope that, if anything, over the last hour we have spent together, you have understood that.
SW: No. No. I guess I’m being preemptive here for what other people may say because you’re absolutely right. I think when you hear that [bass in “Luminol”], one or two names will immediately pop into your mind—Geddy Lee or Chris Squire. And, of course, I’m aware of that. I’d be lying if I didn’t say to you that when we were in the studio, I was saying to Alan, “Make it sound more like Geddy Lee. Make it sound more like Chris Squire.” This goes back to what I was saying to you earlier, everything starts off, actually, ultimately, being taken from somewhere else. You start off with reference points, and you hope that in the process of the artistic process, you will transcend those reference points. They are important reference points. No question.
RR: “The Watchmaker” has so many different layers. It’s a tone poem, it has atmosphere, and a time and place. You mentioned your intricate, well-crafted demos. How do the individual musicians learn those parts? Are they learning it section by section, and then you are running through the entire track as a whole?
SW: These guys in this band that I am very privileged to have together right now are so good, they are so good, that you send them the demo, and the next thing you know, it’s like easy for them. They have all the parts, and they’ve written them out, and they say, “Maybe, we can play a bit like this, Steve,” “Can I try this and that,” and they are coming up with all these ideas that I haven’t thought of, and really taken the music to the next level. Yeah, the demos—everything’s there, and these guys are able to listen to them once or twice and play it back to me as if they have been playing it their whole life. That’s how good they are. [Author’s Note: And, at long last during this formidable and insightful conversation with Wilson, it would be highly shameful if one did not note the fantastic musicians who accompany Wilson on his new solo work: Guthrie Govan, guitar; Adam Holzman, keyboards; Theo Travis, flute/sax; Nick Beggs, bass; Marco Minneman, drums. Wilson, himself, sings and plays Mellotron, keyboards, guitars, and bass guitar on “The Holy Drinker,” while Jakko Jakszyk, Wilson’s sometimes Blackfield band mate, lends additional vocals on “Luminol” and “The Watchmaker.”]
RR: To this day, you can’t read and write music.
SW: No, I can’t. The thing is, as time goes on, there becomes less and less need to do that. With computers now, you can play something into a computer, and it will print the music out for you, so there is even less reason to do that.
RR: Which is also why some people want to know where you get your inspiration, and that makes your creative process fascinating, and makes me think of how you hit upon your next idea. When you are going through your project possibilities, like right now, are you already thinking, “O.K., I know where I want to go next?”
SW: Actually, no. Sometimes, at this point, I have got a clue, and sometimes, I haven’t. This is an occasion when I don’t really have any great plans, or a master plan about where to go next. Right now, I just want to go on the road with this music, and we’ll see. As I said to you, I think it’s very important to me that there is always a sense of something different to do with each record. I don’t know what that will be right now.
RR: Speaking of your travels and relating it to your success with your work, how does it make you feel when someone approaches you who has been impacted in a positive way by the music you have made over the years? Is that a burden, or is it something that frees you up as an artist? Or, finally, is it something that must be moved to the background, so it doesn’t impact your art?
SW: I think one of the really amazing things about my career, particularly the last five years, is being able to bridge between the two generations of this kind of music, whatever you call it. Most people call it progressive rock, but whatever you want to call it. One of the most wonderful things in my life is being able to almost be a bridge between the original generation—the guys who kind of wrote the blueprints, in a way—but, also, be someone who is creating new music in the same tradition. Of course, that’s been wonderful for me because of how much I’m able to learn from the former to bring to the latter. Of course, you hear, we’ve already talked about those reference points, but one of the reasons my music has gone the way that it has over the last couple of records is because of what I have been able to learn by being able to actually go inside the music and actually understand it a little bit more from the inside, and actually going into the master tapes, and hearing all instruments in isolation.
I’m talking about the Crimson records and the Jethro Tull records and actually being able to hear the way they put the music together. And just a very simple thing, like we talked about, the fact that I did this album live in the studio with the band, or playing together in the same room. I’ve never done that before. I never thought to do it before until I started to realize that a lot of what I loved about those early records was there was this feeling of chemistry and electricity of a band playing together in the studio. Never made a record like that before. I’ve always done records in the way of the 80s and 90s technique—get each instrument in separately, and control it and analyze it to the nth degree of detail. I realized how much I was losing making records that way. So, it’s been a real education, and I think that’s been the secret for me the last four or five years about why my art has continued to evolve and been so much fun.
RR: This has been one of those moments where I straddle the fine line between music journalism and being a genuine fan. It’s been a deep honor to get a chance to speak with you, Steven. I doubt that I could adequately put into words how much your music and lyrics have meant to me over the years, and how much I respect the choices and directions that you’ve taken over the course of your career.
SW: Thank you so much, Randy. It’s been a pleasure to speak to you, too, and I’m really grateful for the support of people like yourself. I’ve got to say it has not been easy these last (laughs) 25 years. It’s been a war of attrition, and it’s always chipping away a little bit more with each album, I feel. It gets a little bit easier, but it certainly helps having people like yourself waving the flag, as it were.
