Interview with Steven Wilson in Cologne - English Version

(Steven Wilson)

27.10.2011 von Shirin K

He is often called a genius, the mastermind or the father of modern progressive rock. Steven Wilson, the man behind Porcupine Tree, Blackfield and many more projects, is certainly one of the most influential rock musicians of our times and probably one of the most productive ones as well given the number of releases per year. "Grace For Drowning", his second solo album is in my humble opinion one of the best albums of this year. I met Wilson on the European promotion tour for "Grace For Drowning" in the Live Music Hall in Cologne. I don’t know, if he is a genius, but he is surely an intelligent, well-educated, polite and charming man with a subtle sense of humour and an impressive philosophy of life.

Steven Wilson after the interview with MHQ-Editor Shirin Kasraeian backstage in the Live Music Hall (all photographs by Shirin Kasraeian).

Hi Steven! Thank you for taking your time. How has the tour been going so far?

Steven Wilson: It’s been going great. I have been having a lot of fun. It was a big step for me to go out under my own name with the band, the show is under my name and if it had been horrible, it would have been my fault. So I’m lucky to say, it’s not horrible, it’s working fantastically well so far. We’ve done six shows and it keeps getting better and better every night. The response from the audience has been fantastic.

Are you going to change the setlist?

Steven Wilson: No, it’s a show. For me, the analogy would be like you go and see a musical. The whole way it’s structured, the continuity, the films, the flow, the choreography, is very specific. The songs have been sequenced in a way to make that possible. It’s not the kind of show where we can just mash up and add and take. It’s not a rock’n’roll gig. To put in different songs would be something quiet major. Of course, if I go out and do a second tour then I’ll bring some more material, but as far as this tour is concerned, it’s the same sequence of songs every night.

How long did you work on “Grace For Drowning”?

Steven Wilson: Longer than I have worked on anything before, about a year and a half. It’s the longest time I have ever taken over a single album project. I started in January 2010 and I finished the middle of this year.

And why did you decide to release a double album rather than two different albums?

Steven Wilson: I did think about two releases, but I think in the end this material came from the same well of inspiration and felt like it belonged together. It felt like a more substantial artistic statement to release it all as one. But one thing I did do was to try and make it a little more approachable, to split it into two self-contained listening-experiences, each disc has its own title, its own concept, its own flow. I’m not big fan of 80-minute-long albums as a rule, an ambient record is okay, but on an album like this, there is a lot of information, a lot to take in, you have to concentrate, you have to engage with it. So I think to expect people to do that for 85 minutes in one sitting is too much. So I split it. For me it feels like two albums in one package. That’s the way I talk about it.

In which ways does “Grace For Drowning” differ from “Insurgentes”?

Steven Wilson: Well, the first one was more drawing from the music I was hearing when I was growing up as a teenager in the eighties. And the music most of my friends and I were listening to was bands like The Cure, Joy Division, Cocteau twins, so-called post punk music, and I loved that music when I was a kid. So “Insurgentes” was more drawing on the music that was actually being released when I was growing up, whereas this album is drawing more on the music that I went back into the past and discovered as a teenager – largely through my father’s record collection and through my best friend’s and big brother’s record collection. So we are talking about the music of the early seventies, and particularly the way that jazz music was very important to that generation of musicians. A lot of the so-called art rock and progressive rock of the early seventies was played by musicians that had grown up being trained not as pop musicians, but as jazz, classical, blues musicians, there was no rock music until later on. And I think that’s what gives that music such a special quality. And it’s something that is very hard to replicate now because everyone grows up with rock-music, even the most hardcore jazz musician has grown up listening to Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Beatles, so everyone knows the language of pop music. There was only a very short time in the early seventies when that wasn’t the case, when you had this incredible burst of creativity. And I tried to try to replicate that a little bit by bringing in jazz musicians to play what is essentially rock music. I do think it gives it a very different flavour.

Steven Wilson live, Part 1.

How is the experience of working with other musicians, like Robert Fripp, and how big is the part they play on the album?

Steven Wilson: The influence of Robert and King Crimson is definitely clear on this record, but he is not actually on it himself. Steve Hackett is on it. There are other King Crimson musicians; Pat Mastelotto, Tony Levin, Trey Gunn, Rob himself is more of a silent contributor, because his whole approach to making music is so much of an inspiration to this record, I think people almost assume he is on it. When I work with musicians I always want to be surprised by what they will bring to it, I am not that kind of person who says “play this note, play that note”, I’m like “here’s a piece of music, show me what you’ve got.” Usually when you do that, you always get something that you wouldn’t have thought of yourself, there is no point in having someone collaborate if you are not going to allow them to do what they do naturally. So they play a very important part. I guess I’m the director, directing the performances, carry the distinctive quality that each musician brings.

Another source of inspiration you’ve been often mentioning is Ennio Morricone. I also think of David Lynch and Cronenberg when I listen to “Grace For Drowning”.

Steven Wilson: Yeah, lots of surreal cinema, European cinema, or American directors that worked in the tradition of the European cinema. Cronenberg, David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, all have a very European quality. I love that. I don’t like Hollywood movies really, I love European cinema and there’s a massive influence, not just from the soundtracks, but also from the whole quality of imagination and the surrealism.

Is that the reason why the album also has the quality of a soundtrack? Would that be something you would like to do in the future?

Steven Wilson: I have been hearing that for almost twenty years, that my music would be great for cinema, and that’s right, the music is very colorful and a lot of it is instrumental and atmospheric. But the problem with doing soundtracks for movies is that you really need the director to approach you. The reason Trent Reznor is doing all the David Fincher movies now is that David Fincher is a fan of his music. Or like Sofia Coppola asking Air to do the soundtrack of “Virgin Suicides”. That’s how musicians get into movies, otherwise it’s Hans Zimmer or John Williams. So, I guess I am just waiting for the day the director will approach me and say: I like your stuff, would you like to do the soundtrack to my movie. Of course I would love to do it.

I didn’t know it just worked only that way...

Steven Wilson: Well, I have a new publisher now, I’ve just done a new deal with Universal publishing. They say that they are going to try and approach some directors on my behalf, so you never know...

Do you ever write love songs and are there any love songs on this album?

Steven Wilson: No, but I write break-ups (laughs) one thing is true of all my music: I don’t write it when I’m happy, I don’t write it when I am with a positive frame in mind. I always write it as a kind of exorcism or a cathartic process – to try to deal with more negative or darker things. So I wouldn’t write a song about being in love, but I would write a song about being fucked up. There is this song on the record called “Like Dust I have Cleared from my Eye” and this is the whole idea of trying to brush aside a relationship as if it meant nothing. On the surface it’s saying it meant nothing, but the subtext of course is that it meant everything. I find there are different phases to a break-up, there is the anger, the melancholia, and there is the kind of depression, the aftershocks and I’ve written songs in all those kind of states. But I don’t think I have actually ever written a song about the good side. Just doesn’t strike me as something I would be very convincing at.

Guestmusician Nick Beggs on bass - live in Cologne.

“Belle de Jour” sounds like it could be a love song...

Steven Wilson: Well, “Belle de Jour” is named after a Luis Buñuel film, which is a very perverse movie – in a way all songs and all films are about love, about obsession and the human condition. In those ways they are all twisted love songs. Even a song about a serial killer that breaks into a house and ties up families, which “Raider II” is, and rapes them, in a way it’s a very twisted form of empathy and love and whatever you want to call it, so there are many different guises of love or passion.

You have this serial killer coming up in “Raider II” and then there is the creepy collector in “Index”. Are those songs some kind of case studies?

Steven Wilson: I am fascinated by things I don’t understand. That could apply to songs I have written about drug culture, which I don’t understand, or the obsession with the virtual world, which I don’t really understand, and serial killers is another theme that constantly comes up in my songs. Fascinating theme, I’m not the only one fascinated by it, we’re all fascinated by it, look at the TV with all the shows about murder mysteries. What’s fascinating about it is to see all the different kinds of serial killers there have been, what their obsession was and what their motivation was. “Raider” is about a guy that craves to be a part of a family and his way of fulfilling that is to break into the homes of families, tie them up and sit there, having dinner with them and watching TV with them before raping and killing them. Now that is very bizarre! And then the collector is about a guy who basically collects butterflies and mounts them under glass and applies the same kind of philosophy to the way he treats women and other people. A completely different kind of damage, and that’s fascinating to me. I suppose we are all perverts at the end of the day, I mean, everyone has their own sexual proclivities in the way that they relate to people. Everyone’s perverted, there is no such thing as a normal kind of sexual appetite, I don’t believe in that. But when it’s taken to an extreme like that, it becomes really dark and twisted and destructive, that’s endlessly fascinating to me.

And with your photographer Lasse Hoile you have find someone who understands that...

Steven Wilson: Yes, Lasse is also equally fascinated by that... and he has the means to visualize that.

How long have you been working with Lasse now?

Steven Wilson: Almost ten years. This was the biggest project we have probably done together. We started planning this almost at the same time when I started writing this, a year and a half ago. I said that I was going to make these records and that I would like to think about the visual ideas almost as soon as the songs are written. He was the first person I played the songs to: “here’s new song, what can we do visually for this?” We still didn’t have enough time, because originally we wanted to do a film for every song on the record, but we only did five or six in the end. There is never enough time...

How do you work together?

Steven Wilson: It’s more like I say to him, look, I got this idea, this is what the song’s about, and then we talk about movies, certain scenes in a movie, and then he’ll send me pictures or some youtube-clips he has found, some obscure 50s surrealist movie so there’s a kind of dialogue. But usually I have a pretty strong idea to start with about how I would imagine the song visually interpreted. And then he goes away and acts to that.

On the cover of "Grace For Drowning" you are standing alone in an almost empty scenery in orange light...

Steven Wilson: In the sunset, it was taken using a pinhole camera, directly onto Polaroid film, so there is no digital manipulation at all. It was one of those happy accidents. The thing is when you are working with pinhole cameras, which literally is a box, it’s very trial and error, 90 percent of it is rubbish – So, we were taking pictures all afternoon and then we just kept working and working and the sun was going down and the way the pinhole camera and the Polaroid film reacted to the twilight sun just gives it that fantastic orange glow – we took the polaroid out of the camera, watched it develop and then we went: “that’s the cover!” It was one of my happy moments.

Do you take photographs yourself?

Steven Wilson: I used to, I haven’t done recently, cause I haven’t got the time. I bought a camera a few years ago and I started to take pictures. I think it was alright. I have some visual sense, otherwise I couldn’t work with Lasse. But the thing is when you work with Lasse, who’s so much better, it’s almost like “what’s the point?”, what’s the point of me taking pictures when Lasse can do it ten times better. I have concentrated more and more on what I am good at, which is music.

I just got the limites edition of the album with the exclusive photo book, and I love it. Is the visual artwork an essential part of the album?

Steven Wilson: For sure. I have never understood this thing that some musicians make the music and then that’s where the creativity stops. For me, it’s, you make the music, then you work on the album cover, you design the website, you design the live-show. For me it’s like presenting a piece of art. And music needs to be presented in a kind of artistic way nowadays, because you can’t expect people otherwise to want to pay for it. They’ll just download it otherwise. If you don’t give it a kind of tactile, aesthetic quality, that they feel like they want to treasure and own, then they don’t buy it. I think that’s something that more and more people have to think about, how to present the music again in beautiful ways.

Is that why you also came up with an app?

Steven Wilson: I am not a huge fan of some aspects of the internet revolution, I think in some ways it’s taken away a lot of the mystique from art. I don’t particularly like it when musicians blog about what they had for breakfast. But at the same time I always approach everything like there must be an interesting way to do this, that is in keeping with the overall aesthetics of the music. So we worked very hard on the app to try and make it fit in with everything, with the live show, the album, the music, give some exclusive content there. For me it’s like a better the devil you know. I can’t turn my back on the fact that this technology’s there, I can’t ignore it, because if I do, then I’m going to miss out on reaching the young generation. You make music to share it with as many people as possible. What I can do is say, well, I have to embrace this, so let’s try and do it in a way that raises the bar and sets an example for how you can do it in a creative way.

You are playing in most of the videos of Lasse. How do you think about your acting skills?

Steven Wilson: I have never done performance videos with Lasse before and it wasn’t deliberate policy this time. The first video we did was ”Index” and then we did “Track One” and I kept coming up with these ideas that for some reason I had to be in them and they came out good I think. There is always a way to do something, lip-synch videos in principal can be very cheesy, but then you start thinking, there are ways to do this and still maintain the atmosphere. I’m no actor, but the songs are special to me and I understand the characters in the songs, at least I think I do, so I am pretty proud of those.

Steven Wilson live, Part 2.

To some people you are the God, the mastermind, the genius, how does that feel?

Steven Wilson: Well, obviously I am not a genius; I have a passion about what I do. To me a genius would be Mozart or Frank Zappa. I am just very passionate about making music. For everyone who says I’m a genius, I can find someone on the internet who thinks that I’m an asshole. It’s not unanimous by any stretch of the imagination. Lots of people think I’m arrogant, I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing, I don’t deserve to be respected and all that stuff. Plenty of people like that, trust me. So, I take everything with a pinch of salt. Everyone has their own idea of me. Some people think I am a workaholic for example, but I’m not. It’s fun, it’s not work. It’s like saying to someone, you know, what you’re doing is stressful and a burden. But it’s not, it’s great fun! if somebody asks me for my opinion, I give it to them, because I am very passionate about music, if someone asks me what I think about a particular musician, I am not going to do the American thing “hey man, he’s awesome, dude!”, cause I hate that kind of fake bullshit. I’m English, you know. So, if someone asks me, I say, sorry, that’s not my kind of thing, it’s technical, cold, doesn’t appeal to me. Now, when that appears on the internet out of context, people take offence to things like that, generally people take offence to anything if you express your opinion, so believe me, I have plenty of people who believe I’m an arrogant asshole. And there are other people who think I am somehow a figurehead for a new progressive movement. I love working with the older generation musicians – not by design really, and in a way I’ve fallen into this role of being almost a bridge between the old generation of progressive musicians and the new generation. I am very proud of that, but there is no genius involved in that. It’s just passion.

How would you recommend people to consume “Grace For Drowning”?

Steven Wilson: I think it’s an album you need to engage with – it sounds horrible to say – but you need to engage with it on an intellectual level and I don’t mean it in a pretentious pompous way. What I mean is that there is a lot going on. It’s not easy music and you do need to have some degree of concentration and engagement with it. And of course that in a way is almost a dying art, cause people have less and less time to listen to music, they have more and more distractions. It’s a big ask to expect someone to listen to "Grace For Drowning". But I think people are taking the time, they’re giving it the respect that I wanted them to give it. One thing I’ve heard a lot is people saying to me, it took them four or five times and it’s amazing to me that they would give it that much time. Because most of the times people make up their mind the first time and never go back. That’s great for me to hear people are finding enough in it that fascinates them, even if it doesn’t click, and that there is enough that makes them curious enough to want to go back two three four times. That’s great!

Very short question. What about your project with Mikael Åkerfeldt from Opeth?

Steven Wilson: This project is finished, it’s coming out in the spring I don’t know if there will be any shows but there will be some promotion.

Porcupine Tree?

Steven Wilson: Don’t know really. I am having a lot of fun doing what I’m doing at the moment, but I am sure there will be a time when we get back together.

And one last personal question, you are 43 and you look like 30, what’s your secret?

Steven Wilson: Thank you very much. Well, I’m vegetarian, don’t do drugs, don’t smoke, I am very happy, I don’t have kids, I’m not married. There are a few reasons. And you know, I love what I do. It sounds simple to say but my whole life is fun. I don’t have a family and I think that can be very stressful to try and balance work with family. Some people would think that’s a terrible sacrifice I’ve made. I don’t feel like that. As Milan Kundera says, I have the unbearable lightness of being, I love it. I like to feel good, and I don’t like to feel hung over and all that shit. I guess I am fairly conservative with the way I live my life.

With many thanks to Marco Linke (CMM) for his support!